The case report describes the speech and language charactersitics of a five-year-old girl with Prader-Willi syndrome, a congential disorder (characterized by mental retardation and specific physical characteristics), and the language therapy procedures used over a 10-month period. (Author/SW)

Considers the possibility that infants from different linguistic backgrounds babble similarly. Results of an experiment show that Spanish- and English-learning babies produce predominantly CV syllables with voiceless, unaspirated plosive consonants. Vowel production is also similar. (EKN)

The paper discusses some principles derived from the normal language development process that could be incorporated into a naturalistic approach for facilitating early language development in language delayed children. (SB)

The study compared training in two language systems for three severely handicapped, cerebral palsied, nonvocal adolescents: the Bliss symbol system and an iconic picture system. Results showed that students learned iconic symbols faster, maintained higher percentage of iconic pictures, gave more correct responses during generalization probes for…

Only one difference between the language patterns of four parents of autistic children (six to nine years old) and parents of normal children (one to two years old) emerged: the parents of the normal children engaged in a greater proportion of adult-directed language than did the parents of the autistic children. (Author)

Introduces American students to the Japanese language through everyday expressions and through basic vocabulary on topics including days of the week, dates, and time. A few basic grammar and pronunciation rules are also presented. (DB)

Children were asked to judge/correct sentences in which verb pairs, as predicates, could be associated with propositions or "arguments" which were obligatory for one verb and optional for the other. Results indicated gradual progression with age from initial ignorance to adultlike representation of obligatory and optional arguments for each verb.…

All preschool children (N=180) of the same age group in a small town were tested six months before kindergarten entry with the Holbrook Screening Battery which correctly identified 92 percent of Ss scoring as both good and poor readers four years later on the Stanford Achievement Test. (Author/CL)

Maternal language patterns appeared to be related more to language problems for nonretarded, language-delayed young children than for Down's syndrome young children. (Author)

In interviews, children understood past forms equally well in reference to immediate and remote past but future forms better in reference to the immediate future. Immediacy of action and certainty of occurrence are suggested as early meaning components of future verb forms. (Author)

Results demonstrated that when compared with normally developing children of the same mental age, the Down's syndrome Ss (6 to 12 years old) evidenced a more homogeneous pattern of syntactic usage and tended to acquire only low-level syntactic structures, as identified by the Developmental Sentence Scoring procedure. (Author)

Recounts an incident illustrating a child's development of communication skills and offers suggestions for parents to help facilitate that development. (HTH)

The results of the specific research which led up to the program of instruction are presented in detail in the research program; deaf children as young as 10 years of age were shown to be capable of understanding metaphorical language with regularity. (Author)

A reliable clinical taxonomy of illocutionary acts for young language learning children was determined and the distributions of those illocutionary acts in naturalistic play situations with 12 Down syndrome and nondelayed children (20 to 89 months) and their mothers were examined. (Author)

Reviews and compares the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky on the relationships between child language and thought, as presented in their respective works, "The Language and Thought of the Child" and "Thought and Language." (SJL)