A study is reported which examined the acquisition of deictic verbs by asking children to identify the speaker or the addressee of utterances containing "come,""go,""bring," and "take." Analysis showed that children go through several stages in the acquisition of deictic verbs. (Author/RM)

Research is reported in which children were tested for their comprehension of four types of sentences with relative clauses. The Parallel Function Hypothesis is proposed, and implications for adult grammar are discussed. (Author/RM)

Research supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation; reports results of experiments in general cognitive development of children tested for their comprehension of the words more'' and less'' (RS)

This study compared the ability of Southern urban higher status white and lower status white and black four-year-olds to imitate, comprehend, and produce selected standard English grammatical structures. The higher status white group performed better than either of the lower ones. Possible effects of dialect differences on the results is…

A production-based method of investigating children's understanding of deictic verbs is described. Use of "come/go" and "bring/take" by 4-7-year-olds is compared with Clark and Garnica's 1974 study. Data reveal different facts about verb acquisition processes and order. (CHK)

Two claims about early stages of language development--that of a limitation on length of utterance and that of reduction rules which delete major constituents from simple sentences--are questioned. Supporting arguments are reviewed, and alternative explanations offered. (RM)

A study is described which examined the retrieval of regular and irregular past tense verbs. Results suggested that preterites such as "taught" are not stored as separate and independent lexical units but are formed from the verb stem by means of derivational rules. (Author/RM)

Two investigations of the acquisition of the meaning of "always" and "never," and "always,""never,""usually,""seldom," and "sometimes" are discussed. Results demonstrate that the acquisition sequence of meanings of related words may vary among children at the beginning, but become consistent in later acquisition. (CHK)

This study was conducted to examine the acquisition of the meaning of the temporal conjunctions "before" and "after." The initial hypothesis was that in the acquisition of a word, the child learns its semantic components one at a time. The subjects were 40 school children attending the Bing Nursery School at Stanford…

Five experiments are carried out to determine the comprehension of passives by children. Results obtained demonstrate that comprehension rests on knowledge of syntactic structure. V - NP were interpreted as verb-object. Passives lacking a preposition were interpreted as actives. Competence in passives may be at a high level before performance is…