The spontaneous speech of two Zulu girls was monitored for use of nominals. The data for one girl, 23 months, are reported in detail. Analysis of prefixed and prefixless nouns in isolated citation forms and in syntactic construction revealed that the child perceived the internal structure of nouns before the age of two, although the prefix often…

Children ranging in age from 1;1 to 1;3 were presented with 16 contrived lexical concepts, each consisting of a nonsense word (eight object words and eight action words) and four unfamiliar exemplars that served as the referents for that word. Overall, the children used 65% of the experimental words one or more times to refer to at least one of…

SUBJECTS OF AGES 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, AND 20 RETOLD STORIES PRESENTED IN FULL PASSIVE SENTENCES (WITH MENTION OF ACTOR) AND TRUNCATED PASSIVES (WITHOUT MENTION OF ACTOR). WHILE THERE WAS A GENERAL TENDENCY TO RETELL STORIES IN THE ACTIVE VOICE, THIS TENDENCY WAS MUCH MORE EVIDENT IN THE CASE OF FULL THAN TRUNCATED PASSIVES. IT IS PROPOSED THAT THE…

This report comprises a description of the linguistic research carried out at the University of Arizona in 1967 on the subject of language rules. The approach originally envisaged was to consider the possibility that rules of language are informed and supported by, take their existence only within, and are thus virtually inseparabl" from, the…

This paper develops criteria for the segmentation of vowels on duplex oscillograms. Previous vowel duration studies have primarily used sound spectrograms. The use of duplex oscillograms, rather than sound spectrograms, permits faster production (real time) at less expense (adding machine paper may be used). The speech signal can be more spread…

In order to assess the need and status of sources of multi-lingual rehabilitation terminology references, a questionnaire was sent to 96 related national and international organizations and selected individuals inquiring about the existance of present or developing terminology references. Results of the questionnaires indicated the availability of…

Memory and storage for base and surface sentence forms were compared by examining memory for these kinds of sentences. It was hypothesized that a subject hearing a sentence transforms it to its base form, stores it in this form, and recalls it, again transforming it, in its surface form. Thirty undergraduate educational psychology students,…

Language acquisition is a quantifiable system with the sum total of verbal inputs and outputs increasing with the age of the subject. Increases in vocabulary are positively accelerated during developmental years and become negatively accelerated or zero during adult years. Thus, older people have available a larger active and passive vocabulary.…

The speech of two male Taiwanese speakers was analyzed to determine whether fundamental frequency (Fo) is correlated with both duration and intensity; five conclusions are drawn. The results are discussed in terms of theories of pitch production and speed of pitch change. (EJS)

Answering the preceding article by Schank and Wilensky, the authors state that their previous article (EJ 161 384, Cognition, December 1976), suggested that the goals of artificial intelligence research are technological, not scientific. They also claim that the existence of a moderately successful program does not constitute a test of its…

A contextual history of the early word use of 2 children during the first year of language was compiled from 28 hours of videotaped mother-child interaction. (Author/JMB)

A wide variety of linguistic parameters designed to reflect verbal productivity and grammatical complexity were analyzed for 12 handicapped and 8 nonhandicapped preschool children. (Author/JMB)

Findings from studies exploring role of joint attentional focus in children's acquisition of language indicated that language of 24 mothers and their 15- to 21-month-olds inside episodes of joint attentional focus involved more utterances, shorter sentences, more comments, and longer conversations than outside of episodes. Also, object references…

Reports on four Australian experiments using Lambert's Matched Guise Technique for obtaining sociolinguistic attitudes. The accents studied include Australian; Received Pronunciation English, Liverpool, Glasgow Scots, East Coast U.S.A., French, German, and Italian. (EKN)