The first phase of an ongoing study of communication in a naturalistic situation in which children talked to familiar children is described in this paper. The situation was one that encouraged pretend (or dramatic) play. Research was focused on (1) the amount of pretend play; (2) the amount of speech used for planning or managing the play; and (3)…

Argues that knowing how infants process speech is a prerequisite to any definition of linguistic experience and therefore, the discrimination paradigm does not provide a test for the effect of experience on infants' speech discrimination. Outlines conditions to be met in order to conclude an effect of experience. (EKN)

A study of the phonetic changes occurring when a speaker attempts to revise an unclear word for a listener focuses on changes made in the sound segment duration to maximize differences between phonemes. In the study, five-year-olds were asked by adults to revise words differing in voicing of initial and final stop consonants; a control group of…

Data on four infants between the ages of 12 and 20 months were collected to answer two questions about children's communication behavior. (1) Is there a correspondence between communicative intentions expressed in gestures and vocal utterances? If both spring from common organismic tendencies, it should be possible to discern an "indicating"…

Piaget has suggested that a child's language reflects the degree to which he is able to take into account the point of view of his listener. His inability to do so results in what Piaget calls egocentric speech whereas what Piaget calls socialized speech indicates that the child actually adopts his listener's viewpoint and engages in an exchange…

The acquisition of morpheme-structure constraints by children is discussed. The focus is a subset of verbs in modern Hebrew and the language-specific knowledge that children acquire of what constitutes a possible verb in their language, from the point of view of both internal form and of categorical appropriateness for naming a certain semantic…

A study was conducted of the development of consonant clusters in the phonology of a native English-speaking child. His progress was studied over a year and a half period, in three one-month segments. His speech was recorded by tape and transcribed. Techniques used to elicit consonant clusters included real word imitation, imitation of nonsense…

Although intonation has been said to be one of the first meaningful units of language that a child acquires, it is difficult to say just what this really means. How does the child learn to distinguish the various grammatical meanings that an intonation can have? It was hypothesized that the child first acquires question and request forms on the…

This paper discusses the role of attention to uncertainty in mediating the transition from sensorimotor activity to language. It is proposed that language from the very beginning is used to resolve uncertainty by selectively marking points of change, deviation from the familiar or choice from among alternatives. Several research findings are…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of deictic reference in the speech of 19 three-year-old Black children. The deictic verbs of motion are examined with reference to other aspects of the deictic system. The data for this study are approximately eight hours of spontaneous speech collected in a pre-school classroom. The hypothesis to…

This paper is a report of two studies of the relationship between intonation and syntax. An analysis of intonation was used to decide whether the pivot-like two-morpheme constructions of a one- and one-half-year-old girl were single lexical items or two separate lexical items. Further, the intonation contours connected with her linguistically…

Research and theory on language acquisition and language socialization are examined and compared. The language acquisition perspective is that the central question is how children acquire forms and patterns of language, with syntax at the core, so early and so rapidly. From the viewpoint of language socialization, the issue is not only of…

Outside the core grammar, the set of "peripheral" or marked properties of a language include exceptions or relaxations of the settings of core grammar and the idiosyncratic features of the language governed by particular lexical items. The core/peripheral distinction has direct implications for grammatical development in children. The…

A study examined the consistency of consonant use in the infant's transition period from babbling to early words. Phonetic data were collected from the speech of 10 infants aged 9 to 15 months. Analysis of consonant distribution patterns indicate striking segmental preferences in all 10 children, with some segments more prominent for the sample as…

This paper examines aspects of variation in child language, and specifically how children express causal relations in complex sentences. Four particular types of variation were observed: (1) the order of clauses and the connectives used to link clauses; (2) mothers' causal statements; (3) interaction of language form and content, in the form of…