It was determined that suprasegmental features effect the ability of very young children (3 years) to decide whether strings of words are to be treated as sentences or nonsentences, whereas for adults and older children grammatical cues alone suffice. (FWB)

Outlines work suggesting that research into children's learning of linguistic structure has progressed little in the last decade or so, identifying attitudinal and methodological difficulties, and suggesting a comparative method for identifying learning strategies as developed by individual children. (MP)

Discusses children's comprehension of complex sentences as measured by a picture selection test. Concludes that the interplay of both syntactic factors, such as active vs. passive, and nonsyntactic factors, such as expectation, must be considered in any characterization of children's sentence comprehension ability. (EKN)

Discusses spontaneous conversational situation in which a child recognizes the difference between his/her output and the adult model and his/her ensuing struggle in arriving at a new phonological rule to correct his/her utterances. (EKN)

Questions Piaget's theory that young children's speech is primarily egocentric. Suggests their speech can be highly socialized or sociocentric as early as age two. Examines the relationship between egocentric and sociocentric speech within the context of the social theory of language acquisition and provides conclusions and implications for the…

Research with 24 infants revealed that reduplication is a general pattern during the earliest stages of phonological development, used most frequently by children who follow a multisyllabic rather than monosyllabic course of development. (Author)

A survey of the literature on children's language and reading, divided into three major areas: the child, the instructional materials, and the teacher. (DD)

Preschoolers interpreted mental verbs with respect to their mental state in contrast to external state. These children were nontheless ignorant of definitive distinctions between the mental verbs, completely confusing cases of remembering, knowing, and guessing. (Author/RH)

Presents experimental evidence supporting the assertion that successive single-word utterances share certain suprasegmental characteristics with multiple-word utterances and that they are therefore not single words but the first manifestation of syntax in speech. (AM)

In an experiment investigating aspects of children's comprehension of sentences containing the connective "if," young children judged correct and reversed "Y if X" and "If X, Y" sentences as "sensible" or "silly." The comprehension of the role of "if" in sentences appears to be a…

Three experiments investigated the role of oppositional predicate dimensionally in 4- and 5-year-old children's processing of negation. Children often recalled negated items as affirmations, which suggests that children's use of predicate dimensionally contributes to non-classical processing. (Author/VWL)

Sought to verify research findings that suggest there may be a U-shaped developmental trajectory for final syllable lengthening (FSL). Attempted to determine whether vocal maturity and deafness influence FSL . Eight normally hearing infants and eight deaf infants were examined at three levels of prelinguistic vocal development. (Author/VWL)

Suggests that the systematic omission of functional material by young children, contrary to current beliefs, argues for the presence of functional structure,because in the absence of such structure what is expected is not a systematic omission of functional material but rather its random use. (Author/VWL)

Reviews research examining whether children can use information in the Chinese writing system to pronounce characters. Argues that the overarching graphophonological insight in reading Chinese characters is the phonetic principle --the principle that the phonetic components of compound characters provide information about character pronunciation.…

The transition from slow to rapid word-learning was examined in a longitudinal study of 18 children. Results revealed that most children evidenced a prolonged period during which rate of acquisition increased, with most of the acquired words being nouns, while those who demonstrated gradual word-learning acquired a balance of nouns and other word…