One hundred short test items representing the style and grammatical usage of ten preschool age children were selected from large samples of their narrative and directive speech. Three groups of adults predicted successive words in an effort to reconstruct the actual vocabularies and grammatical forms of the utterances. The predictors' correct…

The author proposes his theory on language learning: "...children learn pitch, stress, and juncture along with the more individual voice patterns which we might call tone, much earlier and more easily than they learn segmental phonemes and morphemes." This theory, which the author feels gains some confirmation from the learning processes of…

A distinction is drawn between pragmatic and semantic meaning and a supporting discussion is presented. The hypothesis is then stated, that there are cases where semantic meaning of an utterance is learned as an abstraction from pragmatic meaning. Data from two experiments on a group of 63 preschool children are presented which provide empirical…

This paper reviews the biological origins of the critical period hypothesis and the neurophysiological evidence which was initially supplied in support of a critical period for the acquisition of language. Noting the inconclusive nature of neurophysiological evidence, the author suggests that we look to the interplay of affective and cognitive…

This study examined variation in transcriber disagreement as a function of transcriber's linguistic background, the transcription task, and the nature of judgment involved. Three linguistics students trained in phonetic transcription listened to the same tapes of Midwestern kindergarteners pronouncing lists of common words. Transcription task…

Acoustic studies have shown that phonetic context can have substantial effects on the cues associated with a given speech sound. The present study investigates whether or not modifications in the acoustic correlates of initial stops and fricatives due to the following vowel can affect phonemic decision processes. In the first of two experiments,…

This is a bilingual book about language development of the young child. It is written for parents, with the objective of providing them with skills to help their children learn to talk. Emphasis is on maintaining communication between parent and child from infancy in a non-pressured, accepting, and positive environment. Developmental (normative)…

Numerous studies have been devoted to determining the interrelationships of listening to other language arts. Most of these studies have been focused on the effects of listening on reading; most also assume that listening ability can be measured and that effective measurement instruments exist. Even though the listening component of the language…

The purpose of the study was to provide a rating scale for the evaluation of children's fiction writing; to determine whether teachers could use the scale with valid and reliable results; and to determine whether inter-rater agreement among teachers could be increased by training in the use of the scale. The study also investigated the question as…

Do children integrate pronoun sentences in memory as adults seem to do, i.e., processing anaphoric reference between two propositions into a form in which their common element is represented only once (jointly) for the two propositions? Data from two experiments involving third and fourth grade students revealed that a few very vivid sentences…

Children should be exposed to a rich linguistic environment, but language learning tasks cannot and should not be optimally ordered. (DD)

Two stages in the vocabulary development of two-year-olds are reported. In the earlier Receptive stage, the child says many fewer nouns than he understands and says no verbs at all although he understands many. The child then enters a Productive stage in which he says virtually all the nouns he understands plus his first verbs. (Author/DEP)

Young children's comprehension and overdiscrimination of natural language concepts were examined by asking 2- and 4-year-old children to select pictorial instances of five concrete semantic concepts. Results suggest that young children initially tend to use concept labels in a very restricted manner. (JMB)

Examines preschool children's comprehension of the differing implications of the verbs "think" and "know". Results indicated that 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understood the differences between the terms. (JMB)

Story retelling is suggested as a method to evaluate children's ability to comprehend, organize, and express language. (MKM)