Argues that the measures of content and style of maternal talk used by the Murray and Trevarthen (1986) study of temporal patterning during vocal engagements did not directly indicate the ways in which the behaviors of the partners (mothers and infants) were combined on a moment-to-moment basis. (Author/CB)

Analyzes mothers' speech in free-play interactions with their 12- to 27-month-old children for frequency and type of fantasy relationships. Results indicate that the older the child, the more fantasy talk a mother is likely to use. (EKN)

Focuses on generic discourse practices by tracing the persuasive heterogeneity and the distributed nature of discourse genres in use. Three examples from research are explored: a father and his two daughters playing a family-created verbal game; a family's engagement with their 2-year-old's creative retellings of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit"; and a…

Reports results of a longitudinal study of the acquisition of first words by 18 infants. Strategies used in word acquisition and environmental variables related to language development were investigated. Results were analyzed in terms of an interaction model of the language-learning process. (DP)

Followup to earlier report that focused on initial uses of first 10 words produced by 4 children is presented. Results of analysis of subsequent use of these 40 words is presented. Findings indicate that the role of linguistic input in early lexical development may decline sharply once a child has established initial uses for words. (24…

The early acquisition of the interrogative system, with data from Serbo-Croatian, is investigated. The subject is approached from the angle of adult-child interaction. A first-born pair of dizygotic twins were observed, beginning a month prior to the time when they first began to produce questions. (Author/RM)

The speech that upper-middle class mothers used with their young children was compared to that used by working class mothers. Mother-child interaction was recorded in four settings: mealtime, dressing, reading, and playing with toys. Also investigated were mothers' child rearing beliefs and goals. Participants included 33 upper-middle class and 30…

Examines the conversation behavior of mothers toward their children with respect to two hypotheses: that the mothers' underlying interactional intent can be inferred from patterning in their conversation and that the utterances having a directive or controlling function will show a negative relationship to those designed to elicit conversation…

Finds important differences between Quebecois and French mothers: the Quebecois mothers spoke more than French mothers and produced a greater number of assertive and expressive speech acts than the French mothers. Shows that speech used in both of these cultural groups varies according to the mother's child-rearing style, with coercive mothers…

The frequency with which a child's parents use a given linguistic form has been considered influential in language development. This hypothesis has been challenged, however, notably by Ervin (1964) and Brown (1973). The frequency hypothesis makes the assumptions that: (1) children are not selective in what they attend to, (2) they listen to most…

Indicates that (1) children's violations decreased with age; (2) in the dyadic context, fathers assumed a more directive role in response to children's violations than did mothers; (3) there were no between-parent differences between parents regarding reactions to children's violations in the triadic context. (NKA)

The crib talk reported here of a 2;2-2;4-year-old boy replicates the phenomenon of crib talk reported in previous studies by other investigators. This study adds a corpus of mother-child interaction (MCI) and tests one aspect of the hypothesis that crib talk may enhance production of linguistic forms at a later date. Transcripts of monologues were…

This study investigated the linguistic characteristics of speech addressed to the child and the features of the verbal environment critical for learning language. The study focused on the prosodic and paralinguistic features of adult speech to the young child. Adult speech directed to children was compared to other kinds of systematic speech…

The project described in this report examines the development of Swedish-speaking children's syntax from the appearance of the first two-work sentences until all the basic syntactical rules are mastered. The procedures and techniques for the experiment are described and preliminary findings are discussed. Children practice language by repeating an…

Patterns of speech from lower socioeconomic status mothers to their infants were analyzed to determine correlations with infant risk of mental retardation. Measures of maternal language included sentence form, amount of speech, and syntactic complexity. The proportion of imperatives was positively correlated with risk status and negatively…