Children (2;10 to 4;7 years) taught passive sentences with forms employing animate patients could produce and comprehend passives better than children taught with forms employing inanimate patients. This indicates that "perspective" is the cognitive counterpart to the formal category of subject and that language acquisition is connected…

The transition from slow to rapid word-learning was examined in a longitudinal study of 18 children. Results revealed that most children evidenced a prolonged period during which rate of acquisition increased, with most of the acquired words being nouns, while those who demonstrated gradual word-learning acquired a balance of nouns and other word…

In 3 experiments, 2 year olds imitated sentences that contained English or non-English functors (articles and verb inflections), and were controlled for suprasegmental and segmental factors. Children omitted English functors more often than non-English functors, thus indicating perceptual sensitivity to familiar elements. (RH)

Examines data on homonymy and reduplication from a longitudinal study. Results show that such strategies can appear later in the child's linguistic development than has been proposed, and that the lexical item has to be considered a central unit, beyond the earliest stages, in the acquisition of phonology. (GLR)

The study examined adult-child interactions during conversation with respect to the effects of adult paralinguistic speech variations on the speech production of four four-year-old children. Analysis indicated that each child's response time latency (RTL) was significantly longer when the experimenter's RTL was longer. (Author/DB)

An investigation looked at the relationship between control and coreference in three- to eight-year-olds' (N=81) performance of an act-out task. Results replicated previous findings that demonstrated five developmental stages (involving subject-oriented, object-oriented, mixed subject-object, and adult approaches) in chidren's interpretation of…

Examines the understanding of the pragmatic function of mental terms ("think,""know,""guess") to express the relative certainty of 69 children aged 3-11. Results showed an improvement with age for the "know-think" and "know-guess" contrasts, but no improvement with age for the…

Demonstrates the important need for language researchers to fill in the considerable theory data gap regarding the primary acquisition of Spanish by pointing out that theory development could be distorted if cross-linguistic comparisons of acquisition evidence draw on a faulty, incomplete data base. (CB)

Results of four experiments suggest that two-year-olds may be capable of forming inclusion relations when they hear a novel word for an object that already has a familiar name. (PCB)

Studied 16 six-month-old infants to determine whether they organized speech categories around prototypes. Infants correctly sorted novel stimuli over 90 percent of the time. Generalization to novel members of the category was significantly greater after exposure to the prototypical exemplar. (RJC)

Offers a general review of applications of psycholinguistic theory, focusing on applications in the field of education. Studies already undertaken and future areas for study are discussed, and guidelines for conducting psycholinguistic research in the classroom are proposed. (CFM)

Recent work in Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) has focused on syntactic structure, but little consideration has been given to matters beyond computational efficiency. This paper argues for choosing a formalism that meshes with second-language acquisition work, especially grammar frameworks with a Universal Grammar emphasis,…

Introduces the time window, a construct that characterizes when and how the integration of knowledge occurs, which is fundamental to the development of cognition. Describes the characteristics of time windows, evidence supporting them, factors that affect them, research illustrating their generality, and theoretical and applied implications. (ET)

Examined maternal talk about events regarding hidden, missing, or absent persons or objects, and the relationship of maternal language to children's acquisition of words for disappearance, among 12 mother-infant pairs. Results found that infants who had acquired "gone" and similar terms experienced more disappearance events than children…

Responds to L. Eubank and K. R. Gregg article (this issue), suggesting they have misinterpreted and misrepresented claims made by B. Jacobs and J. Schumann. Claims discussed include the micro- and macro-organization of neurobiology and language, the Explananda, Jacobs and Schumann's acquisition mechanism, and reductionism. The single acquisition…