Studied the word as a unit in second-language speech acquisition. Spanish and English monolinguals' renditions of "taco" differed systematically. Bilinguals' accuracy in producing the various segments of a second-language word may be interrelated. In judging second-language speech, listeners respond to phonetic errors distributed over the entire…

Comparison of 28 young children with autism, 29 children with other developmental disabilities, and 28 typical children found that autistic children were significantly less compliant with parental prohibitions than were control groups. This behavior correlated with chronological age, not with mental age, language development, or parental behavior.…

Personal event and fictional narratives are compared across 36 normal children in 2 language-ability (one high, one low) groups using episodic analysis. Findings suggest that narrative structures for personal event narratives and fictional stories may follow different developmental paths, and that differences in productive language abilities…

Notes the difficulty caregivers sometimes have identifying communication disorders in bilingual children. Offers advice on identification of such problems, bilingual development, effective observation of children in seven areas of communication, ways to encourage bilingualism in preschool children, and experts who can help diagnose speech-language…

Discusses a study of conversational dyadic interaction between children aged 1.5 to 3 years; their 4-, 5-, 7-, or 8-year-old siblings; and their mothers. Mothers were more supportive conversational partners and adapted their level of speech more than siblings. (GH)

An auditory comprehension task was used to determine the ways in which first and fifth graders and adults use topic continuity and contrastive emphasis in the assignment of referents for pronouns in sentences. The finding of significant differences in performance for emphasized and unemphasized pronouns suggests that subjects use constrastive…

This article presents an overview of the literature on the cognitive hypothesis, which sees cognitive development as prerequisite to language development. It suggests that the cognitive hypothesis has had a significant influence on limiting eligibility of students with mental retardation for speech-language pathology services in schools.…

Ways in which studies in second-language acquisition research can illuminate first-language acquisition research are explored. Emphasis is on issues of learner strategies, individual variation, acquisition of late learned structures, bilingualism, Universal Grammar, and the fate of obsolete knowledge in acquisition. (64 references) (Author/LB)

An examination of approaches to analyzing speech reporting, found that the various approaches fall into two broad categories: traditional, emphasizing the syntactic dimension; and discourse pragmatic, emphasizing the interaction of syntactic, pragmatic, and stylistic factors. A model is proposed and applied to learner varieties of English and…

It is suggested that the long-term effects of early education are mediated by enhanced educational aspiration and motivation, not cognitive skills per se. This model is discussed with reference to the Plan, Do, Review Cycle in the High/Scope curriculum and the experimental work of Dweck and Legett on the development of mastery orientation. (14…

Offers an alternative approach to spelling instruction as exemplified in a fourth-grade teacher's spelling program. The program emphasizes learning how to spell as opposed to learning spellings and considers students' individual needs. Discusses the program's classroom orientation, weekly spelling timetable, and general underlying principles. (SM)

A two-year-old child and an eight-year-old bonobo exposed to spoken English and lexigrams from infancy were asked to respond to novel sentences. Both subjects comprehended novel requests and simple syntactic devices. The bonobo decoded the syntactic device of word recursion more accurately than the child; the child performed better than the bonobo…

This paper reviews research findings on the structural properties of deaf childrens' gestural communication systems and evaluates those properties in the context of data gained from other approaches to the question of the young child's language-making capacity. (over 100 references) (JL)

Data from 34 children suggest that a range of Italian grammatical morphemes reach the level of mastery by age 3;6-4;0. In the period between 2;6 and 3;0, as use and comprehension of morphemes are being consolidated, homonymy and informativeness seem not to play a role, though number continues to exert an influence. Some form classes of Italian are…

Suggests that a properly conceived British National Curriculum for English has advantages. Points to English teachers who already emphasize the power of language to express thought and feeling. Notes that the achievement of attainment targets could be offset by reduced confidence, good will, creativity, and professional involvement. Discusses…