Children with a mean age of 2;10 were presented with three tasks designed to evaluate their concept of front-back orientation. Two of the tasks were non-linguistic (a parade task and a canonical encounter task, involving nine toy objects). A third linguistic task assessed the child's knowledge of "front" and "back" by asking him/her to point to…

Seven children aged 21 to 33 months were taped while they interacted with adults. Transcripts of each session were examined for utterances containing "and,""because,""but,""then," and "so.""And" was the first conjunction produced by all children, followed by "because.""So" was the last conjunction produced, and was used to mean both "in order…

The meaning of children's lexical innovations is distinguished from the forms they rely on to convey meaning. Children require knowledge of the context in order to judge how the meaning of their innovation can be conveyed to the addressee. This contextualization is often achieved by default, since children tend to limit their early conversations…

The importance of metalinguistic awareness in early language learning and reading is stressed. It is reported that a number of studies support the contention that many children beginning first grade do not segment language into conventional words in either the auditory or the visual mode. Thus, it is suggested, instructional demands are often…

This paper concerns the acquisition of the English liquids 1 and r by one boy, Daniel, between August 1968 and March 1970, from the age of 1 year 6 months to 3 years 1 month. This study follows the model proposed in Stampe's "The Acquisition of Phonetic Representation," in which the child's pronunciation is derived from his mental representation…

Forty first-grade and 40 seventh-grade children were assigned at random to four groups of 20 each (two at each age level) and were administered four study-test trials involving oral presentation and oral recall of a list of four sentences of the form article-adjective-noun-verb-adverb. Half of the subjects at each level of age were given…

The National Spelling Bee, which is designed to help boys and girls improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, and develop correct English usage, began in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1925 with nine sponsoring newspapers and contestants. The contest is now sponsored by daily and Sunday newspapers throughout the United States. Newspapers pay…

To discover in explicit, definable terms just what characteristics distinguish the writing of older writers from that of younger ones would give teachers a better chance of teaching young children more successfully--of helping them mature. A passage was presented to hundreds of students in grades 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Fifty papers were chosen from…

This collection of papers concerns itself with language in a total situation. Specifically, there is a concern for linguistic capability, how it is to be defined, how it can be assessed, and how it is to be developed. Seven sections are included: (1) Introduction: Context of Situation; (2) Language in a Social Perspective; (3) Language and…

Emphasized is the need to establish the functional use of language symbols as the ultimate goal of teaching language to retarded children. Theoretical support for implementation of a conceptually based language teaching program is presented along with procedures for structuring the child's environment to ensur the attachment of conceptual symbols.…

Intended for parents, the manual provides information on speech and language development in young children. Sections cover factors related to delay in speech and language development (such as hearing defects, prolonged illness, and lack of motivation) and suggestions for stimulating language growth at home (such as praising the child and creating…

The child's development of productive control over the adults language system is seen as an outcome of the dynamic social discourse of parent and child. Traditional approaches to child language are reviewed and a dialectical analysis is developed using concepts from information theory and a general systems approach. (JMB)

Examines children's strategies in language production. Focuses on how children in early stages of language acquisition talk about objects, spatial relations, and actions, and the extent to which they rely on general purpose terms in all three domains. (JMB)

Twenty-three psychotic children, ranging in age from 5 to 16, were interviewed in half-hour play sessions designed to elicit statements using the pronouns "I,""you," and "he" to express the concepts of possession, action, and description. (Author/SBH)

Cites evidence showing that the "natural order" found using the Bilingual Syntax Measure to measure morpheme order is not an artifact of the test. (Author/AM)