This paper explores the questions of how and why children learn names for things. The acquisition of reference is set within a broader discussion of linguistic representation, which defines language as a system functioning in a three-way relationship among the individual language user, the world of experience, and the social community. It is…

The properties of written, textual language with which children deal in school can be distinguished from those of oral language by examining the manner in which interpersonal and logical functions are stressed and by assessing the degree to which interpretation is confined by meaning explicitly stated in textual matter. The developmental process…

The nature of nonstandard dialects and the ways they may contribute to reading failure in the children who speak them are the focal points around which the books and articles in this annotated bibliography were compiled. Part one, "The Linguistically Different Learner," contains abstracts of items which deal primarily with language…

A general model of the uses of symbolic systems is defined in terms of the use of two techniques of symbolization: transactional and presentational. These techniques in turn are shown to relate to underlying modes of experience, which Susanne Langer has discussed as objective and subjective feeling, respectively. The second half of the paper…

This paper reports on a study of the acquisition of subject and object relative clauses by monolingual French speaking children aged 4-10 years, in Rimouski, Quebec. The children were tested for their comprehension of six types of relative sentences. A coordinate sentence control test was administered. An adult control group was also tested on the…

The diagnostic problem presented by children without obvious neurological, cognitive, genetic, emotional or environmental basis for their atypical or delayed language development is discussed. One unresolved issue is whether the deficits of such dysphasic children are linguistic or are more fundamental cognitive or perceptuomotor deficits. A…

As part of a review of emphases in high school and college language-arts curricula, the American College Testing Program sponsored an invitational language-arts conference at its national office, in February 1976. The eight conference participants were selected to represent various fields of specialization and several institutional affiliations.…

In dealing with children's language, this document provides a picture of how language is considered in child development, how children differ in their use of language, and how attitudes about children's language tend to be developed. The document may be used for any inservice program on children's speech (directly observable vocal behaviors),…

This paper outlines the syntactic structures which represent a stage in the cognitive development of children, and focusses on an aspect of cognitive development known as conservation. The cognitive components of conservation are presented as the primordial base for the set of syntactic structures which map or mirror them. Piaget proposed four…

In this study wordless picture books were used to assess cultural differences in three groups of children. (MKM)

Parent support teams can provide help to parents during the crucial early years of children's language development. (MKM)

The author presents characteristics of the spatially competent learning disabled (SCLD) child and reviews research on the topic. (PHR)

Based on a study of 50 children between the ages of 3;0 and 5;6, the reasons for the differential difficulty of various forms of "who,""why,""when," and "how" questions are postulated. (EJS)