Children's acquisition of agent nouns within a framework of morphological structural principles is explored. Language acquisition has been conceptualized as a process of parameter setting in which the learner is richly endowed with a vocabulary of primitives and rule schemata. Exposure to the primary data will be filled in from the range of…

Three experiments on the comprehension and acquisition of temporal terms are described. Methodological innovations were applied to control for possible methodological effects on children's performance. Each experiment involved 24 children aged 3 to 5. In the first experiment, subjects manipulated toys in response to instructions containing the…

Each of the three chapters in this dissertation is a separate consideration of one aspect of language acquisition by Tenejapa Tzeltal children. Chapter I places the specification of input sources and contexts in a matrix of the ethnographic description of the childhood portion of the life cycle in Tenejapa. Beliefs and practices that have a direct…

Describes a study to determine: (1) the relationship between age and mean length of utterance measured in morphemes (MLU) in a group of normally developing two- and three-year-old chidren; (2) the standard error of MLU; (3) the relationship between MLU and age; and, (4) the ability of MLU to predict children's grammatical development. (SED)

The study summarized in this paper deals with the grammatical analysis of the spontaneous speech of approximately 150 children who are classified as mentally disabled; educable (I.Q. range 50-80). The performance of these mentally disadvantaged children is compared with the performance of 200 normally developing children by using a clinical…

This document reports on three years of clinical research involving the development of effective clinical intervention procedures for children with slow language development. The assessment and treatment approaches discussed in the report are based upon the developmental model of grammar described in Developmental Sentence Analysis (DSA), a…

The research reported is part of an investigation into the acquisition of grammar, using nonlinguistic information from situational and behavioral context to analyze the development of linguistic expression. Three children were seen for approximately 8 hours, every 6 weeks, in their homes, from the age of 19 months--soon after the earliest…

Universal trends and individual variations in the language development process of the child are described and their relationships to beginning reading instruction are discussed. Child language begins with single word utterances to name things or to express needs and feelings. With a two-word utterance, the child can describe relationships more…

Comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences was studied with 48 Japanese children between the ages of two and six. Four types of sentences were constructed using passive and active structures and two word orders: subject-object-verb (SOV) and object-subject-verb (OSV). The basic order of elements in a simple sentence in Japanese is…

The syndrome of childhood autism is typified by major abnormalities in language development, yet there are few systematic descriptions of autistic children's linguistic systems. This paper represents the beginning of a comprehensive investigation of the language of verbal autistic children and concentrates on comparing the syntax used by ten…

This paper is concerned with the Aristotelian notion of "universal" as applied to phonological phenomena. It is claimed that speech production in children and adults, in normal and deviant speakers, and in a variety of languages, can all be described according to the same universal phonological rules which constitute the universal process of…

Examines children's variation in rate, style, and sequence of grammatical development, within and across natural languages. Using a sample of English and Italian infants, concludes that while there are structural differences between English and Italian that could affect the order in which nouns and verbs are acquired, no differences were observed…

A common assumption underlying cross-linquistic studies in child language is that the comparison of any feature in unrelated languages may simplify semantic-grammatical complexities in a way that studies on a single language cannot. This paper begins by discussing the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in Spanish by four…

Since speech pathologists are interested in the role nonfluent behavior may play in the onset or development of stuttering, this study compared the linguistic behavior of 17 fluent four-year-old children to that of 17 nonfluent children similar in age, intelligence, sex, sibling status, race, socioeconomic status, and education. The aspects of…