If a child asks a friend to play football and the friend replies, 'I have a cough', the requesting child must make a 'relevance inference' to determine the communicative intent. Relevance inferencing is a key component of pragmatics, that is, the ability to integrate social context into language interpretation and use. We tested which cognitive…

This study investigates the acquisition of the discourse/pragmatic notion of topic, based on an experimental task eliciting topic vs. focus subjects. In spoken French, these are obligatorily realized as dislocated vs. nondislocated noun phrases. The results provide overwhelming evidence for the early mastery of topic, even by the youngest children…

This article looks into why infants learn to talk, using a series of illustrative proposals as to the short- and long-term consequences to the infant behaviors that lead to linguistic competence. The goal of the article is to encourage investigation of behavioral dispositions that nudge the child toward proficiency in the use of the spoken…

Investigates mixed early two-word utterances by bilinguals to determine whether function words match the language context less frequently than content words. Data collected from two language contexts from a child acquiring English and Spanish from birth were used to identify those two-word utterances occurring in the first 2 months of two-word…

Children's use of proforms in spoken descriptions of real situations was studied and compared with that of adults to explore possible developmental progressions in the use of indexical reference. A discourse distinction between situational and textual reference was applied to data from 6-year-old and 10-year-old children and from adults. Subjects…

Examination of object word learning and use in beginning (vocabulary of less than 50 words) and advanced (vocabulary of more than 50 words) infant speakers indicated that both groups formed concepts, learned, and generalized words for the to-be-learned objects. Advanced speakers learned more words and concepts and engaged in broader generalization…

Challenges the hypothesis that different linguistic codes are specifically related to different social groups, observing that children's language usage shows qualitative differences determined by the situations they face rather than by their sociocultural background. Supports this observation with an analysis of children's attempts to explain the…

The influence of information level on the production of accuracy of 20 children was examined. Data were children's productions of nouns in sets of utterances referring to triplets of pictures representing noun-verb-noun utterances. (Author/JL)

Illustrates how children constantly solve communication puzzles in the course of language acquisition and offers suggestions for teachers and parents to assist children in their understanding of language. (HTH)

Presents conversations of a group of fifth graders collaborating on a social studies task to illustrate how childen use language to learn. Focuses on one student whose oral language was rapid and chaotic but who demonstrated extremely sophisticated and complex structuring of knowledge to understand a particular social studies concept. (HTH)

Longitudinal data on conversations recorded from 1 child between 18 and 27 months of age and 3 children between 27 and 62 months were analyzed to chart acquisition of the word "if" and of conditional inference. Within six months of speaking their first "if," children produced "ifs" at the same rate and forms as…

The language development of one child was examined from birth to three years of age in order to map the similarities and differences in the acquisition of oral language, reading, and writing skills. The study also sought to provide insight into why learning to read and write are not as naturally easy as learning to talk. Data were collected by…

Presents case studies of two first-grade children, examining their writing as a linguistic and social process that involves the child in an exploration of both oral and written language within the social context of the classroom. (HTH)

Four scales developed by Marion Monroe for recording, describing, analyzing, and rating children's oral language skills are described and presented in this paper. The skills assessed by the scales are first described as follows: (1) how a child thinks, as revealed by the quality of ideas; (2) how a child thinks, as revealed by definition of words;…

Argues that "kid watching," the model of the successful reader, story schema, predictable materials, language experience, and supportive writing are all indicators of the return to common sense in reading education. (FL)