This paper discusses four kinds of reasons for studying child language. The first of the four, biological reasons, includes the desire to understand our own species and its place among other living things in the universe. The common human faculty for communication, the variability in language building, and the similarity of human communication to…

A study examined use of passive and antipassive constructions in the spontaneous utterances and picture comprehension responses of young speakers of Quiche Mayan, aged 1-5. This usage was compared with use of similar constructions in English-speaking children. Quiche-speakers' usage was found to be precocious in comparison with English-speakers'…

A study investigated whether young children use sentence accent to mark new information as systematically as they have been shown to handle contrastive stress within naturally-occurring discourse. Data were drawn from the spontaneous conversations of a boy-and-girl twin pair with adults. The twins' speech was coded in carefully-defined categories…

Focusing on language development--from beginning speech to literacy--with particular attention paid to growth in writing, this paper identifies and describes: (1) links between speech and writing; and (2) features of children's written and spoken texts that indicate growth. The process of constructing "texts" is presented as the fabric…

The position this paper assumes views vocabulary not as single words but as phrases, sentences, and sometimes entire segments of discourse that act as single words. This view of vocabulary would be helpful in: (1) bringing the vocabulary aspect of instruction in English as a second language (ESL) closer to current research in language performance,…

These two studies, which were part of a cross-national project exploring the development of Italian and British children's understanding of sociolinguistic rules, investigated politeness in children's requests addressed to adults and children, and children's views on how requests addressed to persons differing in status and familiarity would be…

This paper attempts to integrate the results of the ethnographic and attitudinal components of a broader study into a specifically sociolinguistic analysis. While a variety of opinions can be found in the literature on code-switching, the contention here is that code-switching is a norm in specific speech situations that exist in stable bilingual…

The third progress report is presented on the evaluation of a bilingual kindergarten program and a social studies follow-up program in grades 1 and 2. The focus is on the first cohort, presently in grade 2, on a second cohort in grade 1, and on a third cohort in kindergarten. The purpose of the program was to initiate French instruction in…

A case study in second language learning was conducted by the researcher on herself in a specific sociolinguistic context, Trinidad, and with reference to a specific first and second language relationship, standard English and Trinidadian English Creole. The study attempted to: (1) demonstrate the complexity of social, cultural, psychological, and…

A bilingual education teacher training packet (student's edition) on theories and research concerning bilingual education, second language acquisition, and communicative competence is presented. A theoretical framework for integrating these theories and a theoretical rationale for bilingual education are also presented. In addition to…

A bilingual education teacher training packet (teacher's edition) on theories and research concerning bilingual education, second language acquisition, and communicative competence is presented. A theoretical framework for integrating these theories and a theoretical rationale for bilingual education are also presented. In addition to…

The acquisition of the metalinguistic abilities involved in ambiguity detection and resolution was studied with children. It is suggested that metalinguistic abilities may serve as potential test measures for facility in learning a second language. School children (ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13) were tested for their ability to detect ambiguous…

Six papers resulting from the fieldwork projects of members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics program at the University of North Dakota include: "A Relational Grammar Approach to Kera Syntax" (Janet K. Camburn), a syntactic study of an Afroasiatic language; "Clitic Doubling and M-Chains in Piraha" (Dan Everett), examining…

The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate that the fields of linguistics, dialectology, language education, and early reading would be well served by a word book of the Black English vernacular. Chapters are devoted to discussion of the social significance of a lexicon of Black English vernacular, the terminology of sex and lovemaking, religion…

In order to investigate the development of word-formation abilities, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds were asked to act out with toys, judge, and make up sentences containing instances of class extension. Some sample sentences are "Can you upside-down the clown?" and "Broom the spoon." Children dealt with such sentences in much the same…