This paper begins with a review of recent studies of the development of phonology, syntax, and semantics between the ages of five and twelve. Studies in pragmatics (or the functions of language) are also considered. The paper then turns from investigations of oral language acquisition to an examination of the interplay between oral and written…

Experimental research on the environmental conditions that promote generative language learning is reviewed. Recombinative generalization is introduced as a process that enables individuals to express and to comprehend novel utterances. This review focuses on the use of a miniature linguistic system paradigm to explore how recombinative…

Subjects 9 to 15 years old were divided into four age levels by 18-month increments to compare learning disabled and normal students on indexes of both oral and written language. Four questions guided the inquiry: (1) Does the syntactic development of oral language differ at the age levels measured? (2) What is the trend of syntactic development…

A study of data on Japanese children shows that the development of verbs occurs at the same time as the development of nouns and may even precede it. The subjects for the study were two children who were learning Japanese as their first language. Four speech samples, taken between the ages of 22 and 28 months, were audiotaped and supplemented by…

"THE SOUND PATTERN OF ENGLISH" PRESENTS A THEORY OF SOUND STRUCTURE AND A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE SOUND STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR. IN THE PREFACE TO THIS BOOK THE AUTHORS STATE THAT THEIR "WORK IN THIS AREA HAS REACHED A POINT WHERE THE GENERAL OUTLINES AND MAJOR THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES ARE FAIRLY CLEAR" AND…

The verbal behavior of three children was sampled. The samples were analyzed to obtain a picture of three stages of the children's language development, specifically the interrogative structures. Each stage was about 4- or 5-months long, starting at the 18th to 28th month, depending upon the child's level of linguistic ability. The interrogative…

Traditional research on the written language of hearing-impaired persons has tended to support a position of deviant language processing in such individuals. The major reason for such findings has been directly related to the lack of appropriate control groups. Recent studies which have emphasized the comparison of the language of hearing-impaired…

A longitudinal study investigated early syntactic forms in child language; this paper reports on findings dealing with differences in approach to syntactic acquisition. Seven children aged 16-20 months were the subjects, and audio or video tapes were made once every three weeks beginning prior to the development of syntax. Data collection…

A detailed description of the syntax in the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) Mod 2 Kindergarten stories is presented to aid in the formulation of comprehension assessment and instruction. The lexicon and surface structures of the sentences appearing in the stories were classified and tabled in terms of types of elements and functions. The new…

The major purpose of this paper is to initiate discussion on the validity of systematic phonemics in the area of language acquisition. This is not an attempt to write a phonology, but rather an outline of some theoretical and formal devices that may be used for gaining insight into the phonological system of the child. An evaluation procedure…

This paper, based on Rosenbaum's (1967) grammar of adult English, attempts to apply ideas of deep structure and transformations to child grammar. The main rules predicated include phrase structure rules, segment structure rules, contextual features, and transformational rules. In this approach, the role of transformations is to segment and place…

The monograph under review is a study of the acquisition of certain complex linguistic structures by children over the age of five. After a short introduction, Chomsky describes in chapter 2 the linguistic properties of four types of constructions: (1) John is eager to see; John is easy to see; (2) John promised Bill to shovel the driveway; John…

Six papers dealing with crosslinguistic generalizations are summarized and discussed here. Two of them were about question structure: "Language Universals and Sociocultural Implications in Deviant Usage: Personal Questions in Swedish" by C. Paulston and "Valley Zapotec: Identical Rule for Both wh Question Movement and Relative Clause Constituent…

To determine the effects of two facets of the adult's input in a child's acquisition of syntactic structures and vocabulary, fifteen classrooms of kindergarten, first, and second grade children from four middle socioeconomic class schools were assigned to either a literature group (which provided exposure to reading rich in varied syntactic…

The inductivist model of language acquisition was tested by comparing the linguistic development of impulsive kindergarten children with that of reflective children, who, in general, make fewer errors on inductive reasoning tasks. The 81 children sampled were tested with the Matching Familiar Figures Test and with measures of syntactic and…