Children exhibiting a referential orientation seem more likely to acquire new object names than nonreferentially oriented children. Also, children's selection of words may be influenced by the phonological structure of the words. (Author/RH)

Describes an unusual phonological pattern exhibited by a child aged two years that involves the production of word-final strident continuants in words whose adult forms contain these features in initial, rather than final, position (e.g., ops for soap). (13 references) (GLR)

Describes a study done to determine whether the degree of children's familiarity with component words was related to (1) their ability to produce productive patterns as opposed to associative and grouping patterns, and (2) their ability to use broader scope rather than lexically based patterns. (SED)

Examines within an experimental paradigm phonological selection and avoidance patterns of infants and discusses the role of these patterns in early lexical acquisition. (EKN)

Examination of a two-year-old's early determiner-noun combinations suggested that early article use can be distributed across a variety of nouns, and that such usage does not seem appropriately characterized as a pattern of limited semantic scope. (CB)

Children with specific language impairments (eight learning Italian, eight learning English as a first language) were studied for grammatical deficits. Italian-speakers used noun inflections, verb inflections, copula forms more than English-speaking counterparts, matched by utterance length. Articles were used similarly. Results were consistent…