Children's cognizance of linguistic selectional rules was studied in a controlled sentence production task. Forty-five third grade and 45 sixth grade children wrote noun responses in active and passive sentence frames in which only verbs and function words were given. The verbs varied in how animate nouns were required as both logical subjects and…

In the current debate about the development of language in children, the author agrees with those psycholinguists who emphasize the role of "imitation followed by analogical extension." That is to say, that if there are inborn discovery procedures for the acquisition of language, they are distributional rather than transformational in nature. On…

The theme of this book is the concept of a sentence and the role which it plays in child language acquisition. The author argues that the concept of a sentence is innately available to children and is the "main guiding principle in a child's attempt to organize and interpret the linguistic evidence that fluent speakers make available to him."…

The present study explores accuracy and speed of responses by the five-year-old child to expanded and conjoined sentences. The following factors were considered: (a) number of transformations, (b) types of transformations, (c) auxiliary-type sentence expansion and (d) type of query (those designed to elicit responses which should reflect…

The present study explores accuracy and speed of responses by the five-year-old child to expanded and conjoined sentences. The following factors were considered: (a) number of transformations, (b) types of transformations, (c) auxiliary-type sentence expansion and (d) type of query (those designed to elicit responses which should reflect…

A report on a study in progress of the acquisition of a syntax rule: inversion in questions beginning with "Wh..". Its purpose is to show how certain modifications of linguistic theory and practice can contribute to this study and to psychology of language in general. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

THE AUTHOR FEELS THAT TO APPROACH CHILD LANGUAGE TRANSFORMATIONALLY IS TO USE A TECHNIQUE SUITED TO PROVIDING ADDITIONAL INSIGHT INTO A WELL-KNOWN LANGUAGE FOR TREATING AN UNKNOWN, OR AT BEST LITTLE KNOWN LANGUAGE. SHE MAKES THE FOLLOWING CRITICISMS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL ANALYSIS OF CHILD LANGUAGE--(1) NOTHING CAN BE DIRECTLY INFERRED WITH REGARD TO…

Children's language acquisition is viewed by developmental psycholinguists as a process of change in the organization of language processing operations. Normal children seem to acquire their native language by this process, rather than by eliminating specific mistakes. Preschool language develops in stages, and knowledge of where syntactic change…

The relationships between a child's perceptual space and the acquisition of language are discussed in light of the work of Clark, Fillmore, and Chafe. Early language is analyzed as a semantic structure where linguistic ties are established between semantic features and inherent and relational perceptual features. Of these, it is the relational…

This article clarifies the position taken in the Greenfield and Smith book (1976), including relation to speech act theory, and elucidates some general theoretical issues in early language development. (Author/NCR)

Kuczaj challenged the hypotheses that young children construct utterances by applying transformation rules to an abstract underlying structure. It is contended that Kuczaj's alternative hypotheses do not account for Hurford's data, and some of Kuczaj's new evidence actually supports the Transformational Hypothesis. (SW)

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…

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…

This chapter, to be included in "Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology," edited by P.A. Mussen, deals with the connection between the acquisition of language and the growth of intellect, and the connection between both of these and the process of maturation. The author feels that various theories of development cannot account for the child's…

This article reviews and criticizes Fay's particular transformational descriptions as implausible. (Author/NCR)