The written compositions of 11-year-olds in Great Britain's National Child Development Study were analyzed using the T-unit length as a measure of syntactic maturity and composition length as a measure of productivity. Results are discussed in relation to cognitive and linguistic development. (Author/RM)

This collection of papers examines how children acquire language and how this affects language change over the generations. It proceeds from the basis that it is important to address not only the language faculty per se within the framework of evolutionary theory, but also the origins and subsequent development of languages themselves, suggesting…

Study examined the hypotheses that adults do not speak to children as they speak to other adults and that the speech addressed to a child becomes more adult-like as the child increases in linguistic competence. (Author/CB)

Research supported in part by a Public Health Service grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development. (VM)

Article supported in part by a grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (VM)

Preliminary version of this article presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 1971. Research and preparation of the paper supported in part by an Intramural Grant from the Regents of the University of California to T. Kenney. (VM)

Results imply that in early childhood education the language of test instructions and reading programs could be better geared to the child's linguistic competence. (Author)

Paper presented before the Indiana University Linguistics Club on May 13, 1971, in Bloomington, Indiana. (VM)

A study indicates that many elementary-age disabled readers pass through the same developmental stages in acquiring complex syntactic knowledge as do average and above-average readers. (CJ)

The relationship between knowledge and reasoning was explored through 12 males' and 12 females' (aged 12, 15, and adult) solutions to written syllogisms containing four conjunctions, and evaluations of single sentences for their pragmatic content. The relationship between comprehension of pragmatic uncertainty and detection of uncertain…

Eighty learning disabled (LD) students at four age levels (ranging from 7 to 14) were studied to compare their vocabulary and syntactic maturity with normal children and to describe the developmental trends (using several instruments). (PHR)

Examines the relationship between language universals and language acquisition, comparing data from studies on first and second language acquisition and universals of relative clause formation. It is concluded that second language acquisition data provide a clearer window for the investigation and verification of language universals than first…

Reports on an investigation of the surface forms used by mothers to direct their children's behavior, and of the ways in which these forms are modified as the children grow older and their comprehension of indirect speech acts increases. (AM)

Three studies assessed children's knowledge of the wh question modal auxiliary placement rule by asking the children to imitate (and in Study 3 judge) grammatical and ungrammatical model wh questions. (Author/MP)

Preschool children aged 2.6 to 5.0 were presented with reversible active and passive sentences in four comprehension test settings. The children's response patterns were analyzed in terms of individual response patterns. Extralinguistic cues accounted for the most common patterns. (Author/AM)