This dissertation draws on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate the linguistic practices of teachers and children who are learning Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) in two dual immersion preschools in California. CHL children have been interpreted as novice members in local speech communities who actively explore…

This study compares the use of the variable (q), which is realized as rural [q] and urban [?], in the speech of twenty-two parents and their twenty-one children from the village of Oyoun Al-Wadi in Syria. The study shows that children acquire the general gendered linguistic pattern of the community but do not replicate the linguistic frequencies…

Narratives from part-Hawaiian children 5 to 12 years old in a variety of circumstances were collected for several years. Typical verbal routines, ways of analyzing the data, tendency of routines to structure speech events, functions of nonnarrative routines in narrative performance, and establishing a context for narration are considered. (EJS)

Presents a variety of social contexts for verbal interaction between adult and child and between children. Discusses the variations in interaction caused by different contexts, as well as features that are consistent across contexts. (HTH)

A study of the acquisition of interrogative forms in children of high socioeconomic status reveals that utterances belong more to the colloquial than to the standard range. It is concluded that disadvantaged children would show similar usage, leading to the suggestion that teachers teach language as they use it. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

Selected phonological, morphological, and syntactic evidence from two hours of tape recordings of conversations of a four-year-old Native American New Mexican was examined to determine its value in assessing the child's bidialectalism. (Author/SW)

Paper read at the National Council of Teachers of English meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 28, 1970. (DS)

Surveys recent research in language acquisition, emphasizing the views of M. A. K. Halliday. (RL)

This article discusses how and when children acquire and master various speech styles, and specifically deals with the development of sex-specific speech as influenced by role expectations. (CLK)

This study describes the segmental phonemes of five 4-year-old speakers of Black English, and analyzes both their language development and ethnic characteristics. The study group of Negro children, born and living in Washington, D.C., came from homes that met two of three specified criteria based on the mother's education and family income. The…

Examination of the use of the simple present verb tense by three-year-old children (N=2) indicates that analyses in terms of tense or aspect are not adequate to account for its use. Results indicate a need to recognize the way in which the form implicitly refers to norms and thereby entails a type of impersonal motivation. (Author/CB)

The recognition of linguistic stereotypes based on gender and actual speech production were examined in 10 four-year-old and 10 six-year-old children. Eight linguistic forms were presented to the children in two different contexts in a story. After each sentence containing one of the forms, the children were asked whether a boy or girl had spoken,…

Explores perspectives and methodologies that sociolinguistics brings to ethnographic research in schools. The article identifies the methodological contributions arising from linguistics that interactional sociolinguistics and microethnograpy share, such as the use of naturally occurring language data, the consultation of native intuition, and…

In this paper, the structure and the use of language are postulated as socializing agents influencing sex-role learning in three major ways: (1) sex differences occur in language use and parallel sex-role stereotypes; (2) the language that is addressed to children is usually the language of socialization which instructs the child what to do,…

In addition to the communicative end served by language learning, there is another objective: the discovery, by the student, of the system and the workings of his native language. The values of this objective include: (1) formative value: the possibility of achieving a better understanding of the fundamental and uniquely human phenomenon which is…