This article discusses a study designed to ascertain the comprehension of the role of "because" in a sentence in children between the ages of 5;8 and 10;11. (CFM)

This article discusses a study designed to determine the order of acquisition of the two expressions "in front of" and "behind," using two featureless objects. (CFM)

Early childhood learning of language has led some to postulate innate knowledge of an abstract symbolic linguistic system. However, if the child's abstract understanding initially requires concrete support in the form of agreement of the message with his nonlinguistic experience, the indication would be that the development of syntactic…

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…

Three investigations of preschool children's comprehension of "younger" and "older" are discussed. Results suggest children focus on height in their initial hypotheses about meanings of the terms, ignoring age or function cues. These and findings about acquisition of antonyms are discussed in terms of recent theorizing about lexical-meaning…

Children's understanding of the nature of polar terms and comparative terms between the polar opposites is discussed. (CHK)

Diary observations of two-year-olds' over-extended word use have been interpreted as arising from the word's underlying semantic feature structure. This interpretation was rejected after a study of five children. The need to construct models of early word meaning reflecting certain early language development patterns is discussed. (CHK)

The comprehension ability of 36 children at three stages of telegraphic speech was assessed using active behavioral responses to declarative and imperative sentences. A significant increase in verbal and behavioral appropriateness with age was found for imperative and declarative forms. Results are compared with Shipley, Smith and Gleitman's…

Active and passive sentences were presented with probable and improbable semantic content to 100 first graders and 100 kindergartners. "Irreversible" sentences were considered improbable. In a design employing syntax, probability, grade, and sex as factors, probability and syntax were found significant both as main effects and in their…

To explore adjective language development and examine its relationship to seriation, several tasks were given to 40 children aged 4-8. Comprehension and production of adjective forms were measured--vocabulary, coordination, comparison. Ability to order objects by size was used to assess intuitive-level seriation. (CHK)

Children aged 2 1/2-4 were asked questions containing comparative and superlative forms of adjectives in pairs designated as unmarked/marked or positive/negative. Differences in frequency of correct responses were greater between unmarked/marked pairs than between positive/negative pairs. No evidence appeared for a marking explanation of adjective…

In testing kindergartners and first graders in their comprehension of the words "before" and "after," it was found that when temporal terms are acquired, they are first used as prepositions and then as subordinating conjunctions. (Author/NCR)

Preschool children's comprehension of the adverbial modifiers "very" and "sort of" was experimentally investigated in 64 children. (Author/NCR)

In this experiment, children were given three words (a triplet made up of two nouns and one verb) and were asked to produce an utterance with them. The results were analyzed in terms of word order chosen and age of child. (NCR)

Evidence is provided to refute the suggestion, made by Macnamara et al. (1976), that four-year-old children perform logical operations corresponding to formal logic upon the sentential components of implicative verbs to produce indirect implications. It is argued that children use past knowledge plus additional premises to derive indirect…