This is a study of linguistic variability among social levels in West Germany and of the problems associated with doing such an analysis. The data, ordered according to sex and social levels, were collected from young children retelling narratives heard on tapes. The report represents a comprehensive study of the children's syntactic performance…

The aim of this collection of Noam Chomsky's writings over the past 12 years is to present the main outlines of transformational theory, using as far as possible Chomsky's own words, but arranged in such a way that a non-specialist will have no difficulty in following the text. The topics covered include syntax, phonology, semantics, and language…

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."…

This bibliography is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students who desire a convenient guide to linguistic scholarship in English, education, linguistics, and related areas. The listing is selective, but the compiler has tried to provide ample coverage of the major fields and topics, with emphasis on works published in the…

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)

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…

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children aged 2;0 to 13;11 and elicited passives from 262 college students were analyzed. Full passives were classified as reversible (The dog was chased by the girl), instrumental non-reversible (The lamp was broken by [or with] the ball), or agentive non-reversible (The lamp was broken…

This article presents a non-technical discussion of the way in which modern transformational generative linguistics can help in understanding the reading process. (FB)

The paper shows informally how model-theoretical semantics may be used by a computer to give a straight-forward analysis of the meaning of children's language. This approach to semantics grows out of the main thrust of work in mathematical logic. It is discussed in the framework of generative grammar and is based on the application of the…

This paper deals with methods and models appropriate to the systematic linguistic study of the child's acquisiton of phonology. Sections I through IV present a review of previous studies in the field, discuss the usefulness of the concept of "innateness," discriminate between phonetic and phonological ability, and discuss the concept of discrete…

The comprehension of deviant sentences is dependent on several linguistic variables. Grammaticalness (G), meaningfulness (M), and familiarity (F) are three variables which are potentially such. In order to study the effect of violating these variables upon Ss' responses to deviant sentences, 85 deviant and 15 correct sentences were assigned to…

Some of the assertions made by Chomsky in "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax" are considered. In particular, the notion of a "competence" model in linguistics is criticized. Formal postulates for a conceptually-based linguistic theory are presented. (Author/JD)

The syntactic properties of the child's language are studied. Within the framework of transformational grammar, the rules of syntax can be divided into three types: base- or phrase-structure rules, transformational rules, and morphological rules. Each of these rules is discussed. It is stated that the one process that appears to characterize each…

In order to investigate the development of word-formation abilities, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds were asked to act out with toys, judge, and make up sentences containing instances of class extension. Some sample sentences are "Can you upside-down the clown?" and "Broom the spoon." Children dealt with such sentences in much the same…