In this article, we propose that the Root Infinitive (RI) phenomenon in child language is best viewed and explained as the interaction between morphological learning and syntactic development. We make the following specific suggestions: The optionality in RI reflects the presence of a grammar such as Chinese which does not manifest tense marking.…

Adult "redoing" sequences (expansions and repeats) in conversations between adult and child (age 1;6) are analyzed with a conversational analytic approach, and two ways in which redoing sequences are involved in the initiation of repair are explored. It is proposed that a redoing sequence picks up a child's utterance and displays it for some kind…

A study of 71 mothers interacting with their 2- to 5-year-old children analyzed structural organization and communicative function of their speech and identified three maternal communicative styles: non-intervening; explaining; and directing. Internal consistency of the three styles appeared to be both satisfactory and related to relevant child…

A study tested the hypothesis that if, for the 2-year-old, the transitive/intransitive distinction functions to signal differences in the conceptualization of actions, the child's sentence production should show a relationship between sentence frame and (1) locus of change animacy and (2) the child's expectations concerning an action's outcome.…

Explored effects of interactional feedback on children's second language (L2) development in a prettest/posttest design. Child learners carried out communicative tasks that provided contexts for targeted forms and interactional feedback to occur. An experimental group received interactional feedback in response to non-targetlike production of…

"How does a child come to be able to relate his own experience to the formal means of communicating about that experience in the language to which he is exposed?" The author maintains that the innate predispositions that underlie the development of the cognitive ability to organize and structure experience also underlie the acquisition of the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 34 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the influence of rhyming verses on young children's ability to repeat rhythmic phrases; (2) schools of thought in linguistics; (3) the great vowel shift in the…