Reviewing the language instinct debate, this article identifies generativist views with the baby's proverbial bathwater. Suggests that instead of analyzing language into form-based units, it should be treated as an aspect of social life deriving from a capacity to contextualize experience. (Author/VWL)

Attempts to characterize the process of first language acquisition by children. Suggests that language learning involves the acquisition of both language knowledge and language behavior, hence of the internalized representations underlying linguistic competence and also the ability to deploy this knowledge in interpreting and speaking the language…

Three- and four-year-old children were asked to perform a judgement task in which they chose between incorrect English transitives and intransitives and their correct adult equivalents. Purely semantic or syntactic models fail to explain the findings as well as does a model based on semantic/syntactic transitivity. (SED)

A definition of bilingualism can include speakers of different languages as well as those who speak several dialects or several sub-varieties of dialects in the same language. Most speakers are able to practice code-switching, whether it is from language to language or dialect to dialect, and the processes involved in such a capability may be the…

The ability of children between the ages of two years and four years, eight months, to produce locative pre- or postpositions was investigated in English, Italian, Serbocroatian, and Turkish to discover universals of conceptual and communicative development. (Author/AM)

Some of the assertions made by Chomsky in "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax" are considered. In particular, the notion of a "competence" model in linguistics is criticized. Formal postulates for a conceptually-based linguistic theory are presented. (Author/JD)

If the question of what it is that is innate is simply left as some kind of human learning potential, this position, representative of the nativist philosophy, does not differ radically from that of behaviorists. The latter position holds that a human being starts out with a mind which is basically empty and receptive to, subject to, and the…

This study of the acquisition of kinship terms in English is a test of the hypothesis that lexical items are learned in their order of complexity and of the validity of relational analysis in predicting the order of the acquisition of kinship terms. Earlier studies of kinship terms, Piaget's in particular, are first discussed, as well as the…

Four conference papers on discourse are included. In "How Context Contributes to the Interpretation of Temporal Expressions," Carlota S. Smith provides a summary analysis of the temporal interpretation of English sentences. Many sentences are shown to be semantically incomplete; it is argued that information from neighboring sentences is…

While agreeing with psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic theories that suggest that innate language-related cognitive structures are the basis of language development, the author seeks to establish what it is that is innate and what is meant by innateness in the first place. The author considers the claims of psychological relevance made on behalf…

A study examined the development of discourse cohesion in first language acquisition within a functional and cross-linguistic perspective. The analyses focused on how children introduce new referents in discourse across four languages: English, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese. The data base consists of narratives produced by children between…

The prerequisites of language acquisition are cognitive and pragmatic. The child's conceptual development and social needs direct his attention to particular linguistic forms. These provide an efficient selection device enabling the child to match his language learning task with his abilities. The second language learner who is cognitively and…

This report contains 23 papers dealing with various aspects of bilingualism: E. Haugen, "Linguistics and Dialinguistics"; R.J. DiPietro, "The Discovery of Universals in Multilingualism"; J. Macnamara, "Bilingualism and Thought"; J. A. Fishman, "The Politics of Bilingual Education"; V. John, "Cognitive Development in the Bilingual Child"; D. Hymes,…

"How does a child come to be able to relate his own experience to the formal means of communicating about that experience in the language to which he is exposed?" The author maintains that the innate predispositions that underlie the development of the cognitive ability to organize and structure experience also underlie the acquisition of the…