This dissertation studies the acquisition of verb argument structure in the basilectal subvariety of Jakarta Indonesian (henceforth, bJI). There are two characteristics of bJI that potentially affect the acquisition of verb argument structure. First, bJI sentences can surface not only in the full frame but also in truncated frames. Second, the…

The normal" six-year old has control of all aspects of his language when he begins attending school. The teacher must expand these skills. (MF)

In dealing with the differences between the school and non-school language of Black children, the author uses a contingency grammar," which considers all speakers of a language to have the identical linguistics competence but includes a level of systematic performance" to account for dialectal and other systematic differences. (FB)

A study was conducted in which a series of stories was used to teach six four- to five-year-olds to identify objects as "nouns," attributes of objects as "adjectives," and actions as "verbs." All the children appeared to have well-formed semantic fields for the three form classes. (Author/RM)

The present volume reflects the proceedings of the fourth annual symposium at the Carnegie-Mellon University, which dealt with developmental linguistics in general and with child language acquisition in particular. Contents include an Introduction by John R. Hayes; "Derivational Complexity and Order of Acquisition in Child Speech," by R. Brown and…

Applications of research in psycholinguistics, particularly Noam Chomsky's research, have suggested some drastic innovations in the practices of both the classroom teacher and the child development researcher. For example, more emphasis is needed upon asking what a speaker knows about the grammar of the language with less concern about how…

Compares data gathered for 5-year-olds in Montreal and Paris, and shows that the differences between the two communities are marginal in terms of the complexity of the acquisition process. Notable differences are observed in performance. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

Adapted from "Work in Progress" n5, 1972, Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh. (DD)

This study is an attempt to investigate the efficacy of using existing semantic relations categories for understanding how children comprehend the verb "with" + noun construction. (Author)

Examines the relationship between language acquisition and current linguistic theory, with specific reference to Chomsky's work. Linguistic areas that should be explored in relation to acquisition are suggested, including regional dialect studies, the place of sociolinguistic factors in acquisition, and syntax. Suggestions as to how to analyze…

An investigation of children's ability to convey and respond to requests for action was based on the spontaneous speech of 36 dyads of nursery school children (3;6--5;7). Examinations of the contexts of direct requests indicated that speaker and addressee shared an understanding of the interpersonal meaning factors relevant to requesting.…

A group of three-year-old children was compared to one of four-year-old children in the usage of 26 syntactic transformations on the basis of 60 utterances per child. The older group used significantly more sentence transformations per child and significantly fewer simple active declarative sentences than the younger. Among the older group 10 out…

Revised version of an article which appeared in the June 71 Bulletin" of the Centre de Recherche de l'Education Specialisee et de l'Adaptation Scolaire. (VM)

The attribution of function of various kinds to elements of child speech is discussed, and the question of the validity of the interpretations on which such attribution rests is explored with reference to Halliday's work on the development of meaning. (Author)

A study examined the type of Wh question (those introduced by who, what, when, where, why, or how) and the phrase structure rules required for the verb phrase to determine how they relate to the acquisition and development of the Wh question transformation. Children ranging in age from 2 to 6 years were given three tasks, each containing 36…