A study of children's language use in narratives given during play examined the longitudinal development of different linguistic systems of narrative structure: pronominal, clausal, and temporal. The narrative and dialogue in play with small toy figures was observed in eight children between the ages of 2 and 7. The findings suggest certain…

A study looks at young children's responses to tough movement structures, focusing on complements to "easy." The study examines the development of the two major types of rule usage: primitive and adult, and focuses on the inconsistent fluctuations between the primitive and adult levels. It is proposed that the source of complexity in…

Observational records presented in this report demonstrate the powerful influence that adults have on the developing literacy of young children. The report reveals the role that language plays in contextually providing adults' expectations for the extent of children's participation in written language events. Observations of 4-year-old fraternal…

The final report documents a 2-year project which trained volunteers to help preschool disabled and non-disabled children work together as part of a transitioning and mainstreaming effort. The report describes project development, implementation, and dissemination. Specific objectives included the following: form an advisory council; orient staff,…

The paper explores the role of parents and the nuclear family in optimal development of gifted preschool children. The family helps the child accomplish basic developmental tasks by adapting to the child's critical needs and interests in appropriate ways. While stimulating academic skills is important, affective education to aid the acquisition of…

A cross-linguistic study of negation in English, French, and Korean examined the relationship of transparency and position of marker to acquisition of negation. Data were drawn from a longitudinal study of nine children: two native Korean-speakers, two American speakers of English, and five speakers of French. Five of the children were studied for…

The concern of this book is to examine written language and its relation to what is ordinarily understood by the term oral language, the process of its acquisition, and the place of written language in the process of mental development. The eight chapters (1) examine the relation of written language to oral language and trace the phonocentric…

Scholars and consultants have offered a multitude of definitions of listening. One group defines listening as an ongoing, nonstatic process by which spoken language is converted into meanings in the mind. The other group, the sequentialists, view listening as a linear sequence of events in which one aspect is dependent upon a preceding aspect.…

Two experiments investigated preschoolers' acquisition of spatial words in Mandarin Chinese. In one experiment, 5 groups of 10 children at 34, 39, 46, 52, and 57 months were tested for comprehension and production of 14 pairs of Chinese spatial words. In the comprehension test the children were asked to point to pictures corresponding to the words…

The study compared linguistic analyses of 27 language disabled and 30 normal language children in grades 1-6. The first procedure, cohesive tie analysis, examined surface characteristics of a text for connections between lingustic components that contribute to coherence; the second procedure, story grammar, examined underlying story organization…

A life-course perspective of the diagnostic histories of 75 autistic individuals (ages 4-25) was obtained through the use of parent surveys and a review of their charts. The study was made to understand better how children who presented with uneven or unusual behavioral development are identified as developmentally multihandicapped. Areas examined…

A study was undertaken to evaluate the child's capacity to judge the acceptability of French interrogative utterances on three levels--familiar, standard, and educated. A second objective was to consider the resulting observations in the light of certain sociocultural parameters. The test, one that had been used for adults in French second…

Noam Chomsky's theory of grammar, or more specifically his theory of syntax, proposes to describe all possible English sentences through an explanation of how the native speaker generates sentences. It is the study of one's competence that offers insights into how language is acquired and how the rules and generalizations of that language are…

Studies that attempt to clarify and test the Whorfian hypothesis, which states that the structure of one's language influences understanding of reality and behavior, are summarized. Both first language and second language behaviors were investigated in order to determine interactions between language behavior and personality development. Ability…

A model of early phonotactic and prosodic development in Swedish children is described. Although the model is based on data about the phonology of language disordered children, it is valid for normal development and useful for diagnosis of phonological impairment. Data included a cross-sectional study of 31 language disordered children aged 4 to 8…