Study of the use of baby talk in parental speech can illuminate the parent-child relationship, acquisition of adult language, the permissible modifications to language structure without diminishing meaning, and code-switching. This is illustrated in the baby talk embedded in adult-child conversation in the context of family and household in three…

Research findings on auditory sequencing and auditory blending and fusion, auditory-visual integration, and language patterns are presented in support of the Linguistic Auditory Memory Patterns (LAMP) program. LAMP consists of 100 developmental lessons for young students with learning disabilities or language problems. The lessons are included in…

The paper describes methods of natural language enhancement which both teachers and parents can use with young children who have language delays. The importance of connecting language to meaningful, functional communication is stressed. The reinforcement for the child becomes the adult's natural and spontaneous response. Adults, then, must prove…

This position paper was written to assist teachers and administrators in Oregon in preparing curriculum and setting priorities for kindergarten programs. It begins by asserting that the focus of kindergarten instruction should be on the total development of the child: socioemotional, physical, and intellectual. The need for concrete learning…

The intricate quilt pattern of child language development can be pieced together from the numerous swatches of each child's language fabric which have been gathered by watching, looking, and listening when young children write. The necessity of watching, looking, and listening is demonstrated by the example of a preschooler's verbal protocol which…

The focus assigned to sentential negatives is investigated in 7- and 10-year-olds and adults. Two cues are considered as pragmatic indicators of the sentence component(s) to which the negative operator is applied. One is the articles: it is proposed that an indefinite noun phrase is taken within the scope of a negative and a definite noun phrase…

Activities to Facilitate Nonvocal Language-Communication Boards, an activity guide providing augmentative communication systems to children who cannot effectively speak, was field tested with 51 severely handicapped children (6 months to 4 years old). All had a poor prognosis for developing speech. Language development scores from standard…

Intended for those who want to know more about reading and how it is taught, but who will themselves probably not specialize in the teaching of reading, this book addresses such questions as (1) Why read? (2) What motivation does one have for reading? and (3) What does reading provide as a means of communication that cannot just as easily be…

The guide describes teaching strategies, approaches to language remediation, and the selection and use of materials. Five strategies for language teaching (drill, interactive methods, informational drill, barrier games, and experience) are briefly considered, followed by 12 formats for language materials (including "analogy" cards, i.e., cards…

A study investigated how children report epistemic modality and focused on two main questions: (1) How do children reproduce modal devices that are present in the original (to-be-reported) discourse? and (2) How do children use different linguistic means of quotation--direct, indirect, or other--in this situation? Sixty monolingual French-speaking…

Outside the core grammar, the set of "peripheral" or marked properties of a language include exceptions or relaxations of the settings of core grammar and the idiosyncratic features of the language governed by particular lexical items. The core/peripheral distinction has direct implications for grammatical development in children. The…

It is useful to stress the similarity of the linguistic system that underlies oral and written language, but the whole language approach fails to take into account the real and significant differences that exist between oral and written language and the different purposes for which they are used. Children need explicit guidance and support in…

Two studies examined children's perceptual biases in extracting or identifying words from the stream of speech. In one study, evidence for the salience of stressed and final syllables was found. Young children less frequently omitted those syllables from their productions and produced unstressed and nonfinal syllables less accurately. A second…

A study investigated Japanese children's acquisition of the syntactical subcategorization of action verbs. Aspects of caregiver language that provide children with information about the characteristics of an action verb are detailed, and the utterances of four Japanese toddlers are analyzed for their usage characteristics. Caregiver sentences are…

Three experiments investigated the development in young children of two concepts: the antecedent possibilities for reflexives (e.g., himself or herself) and pronouns (e.g., him or her). In the first experiment, 156 English-speaking children aged 2;6 to 6;6 and 21 adults were tested for their understanding of antecedents within reflexive sentences,…