Analyzes dialogs between mothers and their deaf or hearing children, while controlling for child age and linguistic ability. Results showed that the conversational interaction in mother-child dyads with deaf children was more restricted than that with hearing children. This seemed to be related to the linguistic ability of the deaf children. (SED)

Describes a study of young children's production of novel words serving as names of objects and actions, which were matched according to consonant and syllable structure. On each measure, accuarate production of new consonants was greater for the object words, possibly because action words have greater semantic complexity than object words. (SED)

Compares and analyzes speech samples of Mayan and American mothers addressing their infant children. Results indicate that although higher pitch has been described as a universal feature of baby talk registers worldwide, the Mayan mothers do not utilize this feature. It is suggested that pitch-raising strategies may be sociolinguistically…

Reports on a study of mothers' uses of nouns and pronouns and their references to objects and persons as environmental variables which might relate to children's nominal preferences. Findings suggest that environmental factors do contribute to stylistic differences in language acquisition and that the communicative functions of language are an…

Describes a study of spontaneous speech from two young children and their mothers to examine how children learn some of the inflectional/syntactic possibilities for individual verbs. Multiple regression analyses were used. Maternal variety of use was a highly significant predictor of the children's use of the same verbs. (Author/SED)

Describes a part of a study on children's acquisition of Warlpiri, an aboriginal language spoken in central Australia, which aimed to find out at what age the children respond consistently to particular word orders and case frames for simple transitive sentences. Makes comparisons with the acquisition of Turkish transitive clauses. (SED)

Relates a preschool child's experiences with product labels to show how teachers can use such language stories to promote early reading and writing. (FL)

Describes the growing autonomy of three young siblings as they wrote in the poetic function over a five-year period. Includes samples of the children's poetry. (HTH)

Discusses research with children with learning problems to discover, through their narratives, in what ways they were disabled and what ways they were competent with language and to test the narrative mind theory to see if their stories could be interpretive metaphors for their lives. (HTH)

Poses and answers several questions parents and teachers have about the value of invented spelling. (FL)

Describes the structure and emergence of extended argument sequences produced by preschool children. Provides a system for analyzing turns that initiate, elaborate, and terminate argument sequences. Draws conclusions regarding the development of proficiency in producing argument and interaction. (PD)

Touches on the cognitive and self-discovery processes and imagination and creativity children experience before their verbal skills are fully developed. (HTH)

Discusses the interacitonal function of language. (FL)

The behavior of a preverbal infant was analyzed in a search for orderly and systematic patterns. Basic elements of the infant's repertoire were distinguished. A comparison was made between the nonverbal and those verbal structures which appear early. (Author/RM)

This issue addresses the linguistic equalization of men and women in Switzerland. It features articles in four languages (French, German, Italian, and Raeto-Roman), providing an overview over Switzerland's four linguistic regions, new perspectives, and work in progress. The articles include issues such as the "masculinization of the German…