The effectiveness of a performance-based, experimental writing program was investigated in samples of fifth- and sixth-grade children. The writing program provided instruction in specific syntactic variables from Golub's formula for syntactic density. Six teachers in one school were involved in the 15-week experimental program; four teachers in…

This paper reports on a case study of a Cantonese-speaking child age 2 and considers the implication of tone acquisition for tone studies in general, and Cantonese tonology in particular. (NCR)

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)

This experiment used two groups of preschoolers and one group of young grade-schoolers to test for their comprehension of presuppositions and negation in complex syntax. (NCR)

Compared with 30 normal and 30 language-deviant 3-year-old Spanish speaking Puerto Rican children were two measures of linguistic proficiency. (Author/MH)

This paper attempts to demonstrate that: (a) syntax is dependent on factors of cognitive and non-cognitive meaning; and (b) criteria for linguistic competence can only be fully met when full command of cognitive and non-cognitive meaning is present. Results have implications for future models of language and language acquisition. (CHK)

Includes facsimiles of paragraphs written by students in grades 1-6. (RD)

Concludes that, with the exception of number of adverb clauses per T-unit, the oral and written language of first grade children was similar in syntactic complexity. (FL)

If the basic operations hypothesis (EJ 184 227) is interpreted as a general principle governing acquisition of all movement rules, it may obscure the fact that children distinguish between unbounded and local rules. Error patterns support this distinction, lending credence to theories with separate status for the two rule types. (Author/RD)

Presents an outline for a theory of syntax acquisition, surveys other approaches to language acquisition, and addresses the following methodological issues: (1) the relevance of linguistic theory to the model; (2) how the model is tested; and (3) the domain of the theory. (Author/AM)

The present study is an attempt to apply a paradigm to the shift of verbal behavior before and after the age of seven in order to see if linguistic contexts affect verbal behavior differentially before seven or after seven. (Author/CFM)

The purpose of this study was to attempt to verify the theory of Taeschner and Volterra (1976) that bilingual children pass through three distinct phases while becoming perfectly bilingual. The 12 subjects were English-Italian bilingual children between the ages of 1.6 and 4.6. (CFM)

Article deals with the Osgood model of sign learning...and the Chomskian approach. Both...approaches are discussed in terms of their appropriateness with respect to teachers' questions about language development and language stimulation. (Author)