Examines a song spontaneously created by a 44-month old. Finds that the relationship of the structure and functions of the song demonstrated the variation of egocentric speech connected to the child's thinking. Concludes that observation of form and content of such language use can provide information about language development, sense of self, and…

Surveyed groups of Chinese, Malay and Tamil families, their use of community languages or mother tongue, and their speaking, reading, and writing proficiency. Found that when parents' community language proficiency in speaking is lower they tend to choose English as preferred language. Children's language confidence affected their language choice.…

Discusses verbal strategies used by young children to express and construct a sense of togetherness. Presents the case study of one child, 3-5 years old, in his interactions with other children and teachers. Describes three general mechanisms for expressing togetherness: expression of common ground, of cooperation, and of care. (JPB)

This study investigated the contributions of four variables (children's expressive language scores at 30 months of age, mother's facilitation of child language, mother's education, and group assignment) to the prediction of IQ at age 3, verbal IQ at ages 5 and 8, and reading at age 8 for 571 children of low-birthweight. Four separate multiple…

This article presents a selective review of the work carried out recently in second language acquisition (SLA) research which makes use of oral learner corpora and computer technologies. In the first part, the reasons why the field of SLA needs corpora for addressing current theoretical issues are briefly reviewed. In the second part, recent…

The author discusses the benefits of applying cognitive linguistics, L1 acquisition, and neo-Vygotskian (Vygotsky) approaches to the teaching of a second language to young learners, using the example of teaching the preposition "on." The author briefly reviews how prepositions are taught to adult learners and the challenges of teaching…

There has been little research comparing the nature and contributions of language input of mothers and fathers to their young children. This study examined differences in mother and father talk to their 24 month-old children. This study also considered contributions of parent education, child care quality and mother and father language (output,…

Participants in this study were 66 British toddlers who were observed at home with familiar peers on two occasions, six months apart. The majority of toddlers spoke to their peers, with short sequences of conversation emerging after the age of 24 months. The use of possessive pronouns emerged between 18 and 24 months of age and consolidated over…

Purpose: The normative group of a norm-referenced test is intended to provide a basis for interpreting test scores. However, the composition of the normative group may facilitate or impede different types of diagnostic interpretations. This article considers who should be included in a normative sample and how this decision must be made relative…

The current study attempts to differentiate effects of phonotactic probability (i.e. the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence), neighbourhood density (i.e. the number of phonologically similar words), word frequency, and word length on expressive vocabulary development by young children. Naturalistic conversational samples for three…

We hypothesize that the conceptual relation between a verb and its direct object can make a sentence easier ("the cat is eating some food") or harder ("the cat is eating a sock") to parse and understand. If children's limited performance systems contribute to the ungrammatical brevity of their speech, they should perform better on sentences that…

The present research investigated whether children's referential choices for verb arguments are motivated by pragmatic features of discourse referents across different developmental stages, not only for children learning null argument languages but also for those learning overt argument languages. In Study 1, the form (null, pronominal, or…

Speech language pathologists have recently begun to provide community-based education programs to help prevent speech and language problems. These training opportunities can be particularly useful to programs that serve low income families. The authors describe Tips About Talk, a general education and prevention program designed to help caregivers…

Purpose: This study examined whether child speakers of Southern African American English (SAAE) and Southern White English (SWE) who were also perceived by some listeners to present a Cajun/Creole English (CE) influence within their dialects produced elevated rates of 6 phonological and 5 morphological patterns of vernacular relative to other…

Purpose: Vocalization development has not been studied thoroughly in infants with early-identified hearing loss who receive hearing aids in the 1st year of life. This study sought to evaluate the relationship between auditory sensitivity and prelinguistic vocalization patterns in infants during the babbling stage. Method: Spontaneous…