The data for this study consisted of a longitudinal corpus of narratives from 17 English second language (L2) children, mean age of 5;4 years at the outset, with first languages (Lls) that do not have definite/indefinite articles (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) and Lls that do have article systems (Spanish, Romanian and Arabic). We examined these…

This article begins by identifying that children have a spontaneous predilection for playing with language, engaging in poetic discourse even before their first poetry lesson. Although children's language play is relatively unresearched in the classroom, in a case study of two groups of pupils aged between 10 and 11, it was observed that children…

Recent research indicates that the statistical properties of the input have an impact on the prosodic shape of young children's word production. However, it is still not clear whether the effects of input statistics emerge from the frequency of prosodic structures or the frequency of individual lexical items. This issue is investigated in this…

Viewing language acquisition as the product of a biased learner who takes advantage of the information available from a variety of sources in his or her environment, this book provides a new way of thinking about the process of language comprehension. The analysis in the book borrows insights from theories about the development of mental models,…

Children's friendships are currently understood from a psychological perspective that focuses on the child's internal concept of friendship and how it develops. Very few scholars have directly examined how children's talk in the relationship influences the friendship or the perceptions children have of the friendship. A communicative perspective…

Two experiments investigated 4- to 5-year olds' understanding of semantic relations and methods for incorporating new words into their lexicon. In one experiment, 24 children were shown a picture of a container and told that an object called "X" was hidden inside it. Children were asked questions about the object X and about…

Article focused on the acquisition of sign language by chimpanzees in comparison with the acquisition of spoken languages and sign languages by human children. (Editor/RK)

Results are described of a study of vocalizations of two female infants, classified as cry, discomfort, and vegetative sounds, recorded between one and eight weeks of age. The implications for later speech development are discussed. (Author/RM)

Theories about language functions, the ways in which language is used, are discussed. (Text is in French.) (PMP)

Research is reported in which children were tested for their comprehension of four types of sentences with relative clauses. The Parallel Function Hypothesis is proposed, and implications for adult grammar are discussed. (Author/RM)

A child's acquisition of language may be influenced by imitation, reinforcement, inheritance and the active involvement of the child himself. (JH)

An investigation of children's metalinguistic and metacognitive competencies examined children's sensitivity to the verbs of cognition in two related studies using a task designed to measure mastery of verbs of saying and meaning. In the task the children hear six short stories, each ending with a statement containing one of the verbs…

Two markedness hypotheses in current language acquisition theory are examined. One view of markedness, the developmental hypothesis, states that the unmarked case is the child's initial hypothesis, i.e., the hypothesis that is set in advance of linguistic data. The developmental hypothesis further predicts that children will proceed in a fixed…

A study examined repair sequences in talk between two German-English bilingual children and between parent and child within a nuclear family in which German is generally spoken. Data were drawn from tape recordings and developmental diaries kept on the two preschool children. Patterns of parent-child and child-child corrections were examined. In…

A study examined 12 preschool children's early use of "who,""what," and "which" questions in spontaneous speech. Results indicated that children began to ask object questions before they asked subject questions, and acquired argument questions before adjunct questions. It was suggested that the two results could…