A distributional analysis of parent-child conversational interactions for three large longitudinal corpora is reported. First, the potential role of conversational interaction in language learning is examined, and it is argued that certain sources of conversational input provide children with excellent opportunities to advance their linguistic…

A fundamental problem in language acquisition is determining how children learn the formal vocabulary of the adult grammar. A proposed solution is the Semantic Bootstrapping Hypothesis (SBH), which states that children infer the identity of syntactic entities such as "subject" in input based on the presence of semantic entities such as…

The study compared play among five groups of children (ages 3-7 years): normal children (N=41); those diagnosed with language delays (N=241), those with autism but normal intelligence (N=71), those with autism and mental retardation (N=97), and those with nonautistic mental deficiency (N=86). Each child was evaluated using a 25 minute structured…

This text is designed to assist in the replication of a successful classroom-home language intervention program for mildly to moderately language impaired preschool children. The first portion of the manual discusses the rationale and operation of the program. Provided in the second part are sample lesson plans which provide specific examples of…

A 5-year followup study was conducted of Spanish/English bilingual children and their families who had participated in a previous study of early bilingual acquisition when the children were 3 to 4 years old. Language use and interaction patterns by parents, children, and siblings were observed at home. School achievement information and interview…

The report presents findings of a 3-year investigation of a language intervention program for young children (3-6 years old) with serious language disabilities. The model features a communication game approach to teach linguistic elements through stress on meaningful conversation. An initial chapter describes project aims and accomplishments and…

Despite considerable work concerning relationships between cognition and language in the second year of life, these relationships remain obscure. Clarification depends on resolution in at least three major areas. First, studies should be expanded beyond the scope of cognitive prerequisite models that have been difficult to conceptualize and that…

Designed to reveal children's awareness of print and use of contextual clues and to discover their metalinguistic awareness, language use, and attitudes toward reading and writing, this instrument consists of six tasks. The first three, print awareness tasks, present familiar labels and signs with different degrees of contextuality. The fourth and…

Designed to accompany a slide and tape package, this booklet outlines the role parents can take in children's language development. Following an introduction which familiarizes parents with the concepts of receptive language (comprehension of spoken language) and expressive language (the information a person is trying to communicate and the form…

This study describes a language intervention approach using telephones in a classroom to motivate and facilitate spontaneous oral language in a group of language-delayed kindergarten children. Specific purposes of the investigation were (1) to determine what effect the availability of telephones had on the spontaneous oral language of…

Offers some conversational suggestions (modeled on a typical day in the life of the preschool) intended to motivate children to communicate and to build a better relationship between pupil and teacher. (Author/ED)

This article summarizes early work on child language learning and reviews more recent work. It appears that recent research shows that children's linguistic cues, spoken by adults, are slower, less varied and more concrete than adult-adult speech. (Available from North-Holland Publishing Co., P. O. Box 211, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.) (CHK)

Interference between languages such as Spanish and English has a number of aspects, and one of the factors may be socioeconomic. (RB)

This article compares first and second language acquisition and applies conclusions pertaining to first language acquisition to second language learning, specifically that a command of grammar is essential and this grammar is independent of that associated with the written language. (CLK)

The mother of a hearing impaired child explains how the use of simple drawings helped her son to develop spoken language and thereby cope with both common and complex events. (Author/LS)