Although Mandarin Chinese is a topic-prominent language, it is shown that young children acquiring Chinese as their first language access the concept of grammatical subject as well as that of topic. A total of 95 children aged 2-5 years acquiring Mandarin Chinese as their first language were tested on sentences involving equi-constructions. It was…

The transition from pre-linguistic to linguistic communication was investigated in the acquisition of pronouns in American Sign Language (ASL). Data were obtained from a congenitally deaf child learning ASL as a first language from deaf parents. Longitudinal data from the age of 6 months to 2 years and pronoun elicitation task data were analyzed.…

The progression through the developmental stages of the acquisition of interrogatives was analyzed. Data on use of the "what" interrogative were collected during play sessions from eight children at six-month intervals from the ages of 1;6 to 3 years. More than 2,400 children's interrogatives were recorded. It was demonstrated that…

The purposes of this study were to investigate (1) the level of development of four target vocal and gestural symbols (Doggie, Cup, Car, and Fiffin, a novel concept), and (2) the relationship of symbolic maturity to the use of symbols in combinations. Thirty infants (15 boys and 15 girls), between 82 and 91 weeks of age, were observed for…

Discoveries about the acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) by deaf children are reviewed. Current research shows that ASL has developed as a fully autonomous language with complex organizational properties not derived from spoken language. Like spoken languages, ASL exhibits formal structuring at two levels and similar organizational…

The development of devices used to coin agent and instrument nouns in Hebrew was investigated among 60 children aged 3, 4, 5, 7, and 11. The prevalent word-formation device in Hebrew is the triconsonantal root combined with vowel patterns. Other available devices include suffixation, conversion, and compounding. Questions designed to elicit…

The basis for acquisition of categories in child language was investigated. The early encoding of the distinction between mass and count nouns was examined to determine whether children categorize them on the basis of semantic type or syntactic regularities. An experiment was designed in which semantic and syntactic cues were in competition:…

Children's acquisition of agent nouns within a framework of morphological structural principles is explored. Language acquisition has been conceptualized as a process of parameter setting in which the learner is richly endowed with a vocabulary of primitives and rule schemata. Exposure to the primary data will be filled in from the range of…

The evidence on the acquisition of intonation by children is reviewed. Reports on the early use of pitch contours fall into two categories, imitational and differential intonation. While imitational intonation is based on mimicry of adults, differential intonation involves the acquisition of two or three tunes that contrast in meaning from an…

Informal language learning is defined as learning assimilated without the pupil's awareness. (LG)

This article focuses on three aspects of language instruction in early childhood education: a) educational and sociological events which prompt concern over language behavior, b) results of research of the last 10 years, and c) suggestions for curriculum and instruction. (HMD)

Language samples were gathered from two children, from several weeks after the first birthday of each child to the beginning of the child's two-word period (approximately 10 months). The children were observed and videotaped every two weeks, to obtain 33 continuous minutes of tape. Analyses focused on the question of whether or not the child uses…

To assess children's capacities to effect appropriate "metaphoric links" and to discriminate among metaphors of varying appropriateness, a task probing verbal metaphoric skill was administered to subjects ranging in age from 4 to 19 years. (Author/RM)

This study explored the relationships between several aspects of maternal language and measures of the psycholinguistic abilities of 26 Mexican-American mothers and their children enrolled in Head Start. Several significant relationships were obtained including a significant correlation between mothers' and childrens' total language scores.…