Examines development of verb structures in the multiword combinations of two Korean learners, starting from 15 months of age when both children produced their first word combination. (Author/VWL)

Aspects of language that develop during the adolescent years are discussed in the domains of pragmatics, syntax, and semantics. Selected topics include complex conversational behaviors that adolescents employ, syntactic attainments associated with persuasive writing; and the understanding of proverbs and figurative expressions. Relevant…

This article reports on a series of 5 analyses of spontaneous production of verbal inflection (tense and person-number agreement) by 2-year-olds acquiring French as a native language. A formal analysis of the qualitative and quantitative results is developed using the unique resources of Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky, 2004). It is…

This paper examines two- to five-year-old children's knowledge of inversion in English yes/no questions through a new experimental study. It challenges the view that the syntax for inversion develops slowly in child English and tests the hypothesis that grammatical competence for inversion is present from the earliest testable ages of the child's…

Existing work on the acquisition of syntax has been concerned mainly with the early stages of syntactic development. In the present study we examine later syntactic development in children. Also, existing work has focused on commonalities in the emergence of syntax. Here we explore individual differences among children and their relation to…

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the leading inherited cause of mental retardation. In this article, we review what is known about the language and related problems of individuals with FXS. In doing so, we focus on the syndrome-specific features of the language phenotype and on the organismic (i.e., genetic and individual neurocognitive and behavioral)…

This paper addresses bilingual children's speech in relation to data from a case study of a child in Wales acquiring English and Spanish between the ages of 1 and 3 years to establish how language choice and code-switching can be recognized in young children. Data is reviewed from the one-word stage, the early two-word combination, and the…

Papers included in this volume include the following: "Prosodic Aspects of Hearing-Impaired Children: A Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment" (Teresa Y. C. Ching); "The Role of Linear Order in the Acquisition of Quantifier Scope in Chinese" (Thomas H. T. Lee); "Some Neglected Syntactic Phenomena in Near-standard…

A study investigated the hypothesis that, for adult native speakers of English, increasing syntactic complexity would lead to increased salience of phonological properties of words. The study also examined whether syntactic simplicity would lead to a greater salience of semantic properties of words. Subjects were required to name a word presented…

The experimental evidence on the value of a sentence-combining approach to improving reading comprehension is still sparse, but the possibilities seem rich.

In an examination of the acquisition of the spatial syntax of American Sign Language (ASL), 43 children aged 3-10 years were given a range of comprehension and elicitation tests designed to analyze the subsystems involved in the corrrect use of ASL syntax. The subsystems were nominal establishment, verb agreement, and consistency of reference. The…

The paper reports on a study of the rate of language learning of 12 children aged 2 to 10 with severe to profound bilateral hearing losses. Intended to help deaf children learn spoken language at the same rate as average hearing Ss, the intervention stressed three qualities of linguistic information: (1) clarity, (2) appropriateness, and (3)…

Two studies investigated whether young children acquiring verbs at an exceptional rate can use the syntactic structure of familiar and unfamiliar verbs to make conjectures about some aspect of the meanings of those verbs. The preferential looking paradigm (Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek, 1981) was used to set up a naturalistic pairing of scene and…

Two experiments examined the process of acquisition of sentence structure in the passive voice among young children. The subjects were several hundred monolingual French-speaking children aged 4-11 in schools in Liege, Belgium. The two experiments used different subject groups. In the first experiment, the children were required to interpret…

The problem of English language-processing by 30 prelingually deaf high school students is examined from a contextualist perspective. The influence of language mode (print or sign) and syntax--English or American Sign Language (ASL) on recall, preference, and comprehension was approached through the processing of meaningful and coherent passages…