A detailed analysis of a six-month period in a child's acquisition of phonetic and phonological capacities indicates that the apparent plateau of the second year is a site of intensive language learning, which is not reflected in the growth of vocabulary or mean length of utterance. (Author/EJS)

Reports on a child who evidently used a gestalt strategy (proceeding from the whole to the parts) in learning his first language. Further evidence for a gestalt strategy exists in the literature, albeit implicitly, and any theory of language or language acquisition should be able to account for it. (Author/KM)

This paper reports on a study of two girls about one year of age, part of a longitudinal study of the development of consonants by children learning their first language. Data are compared with a third child whose progress has been previously documented. Phone classes were grouped and phone trees analyzed for each child. A high level of…

The monograph under review is a study of the acquisition of certain complex linguistic structures by children over the age of five. After a short introduction, Chomsky describes in chapter 2 the linguistic properties of four types of constructions: (1) John is eager to see; John is easy to see; (2) John promised Bill to shovel the driveway; John…