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)

Although research on the language of the disadvantaged child is receiving much impetus, few extant studies have been helpful to the teacher. This article reexamines widely held misconceptions about disadvantaged child language in light of modern linguistic and psycholinguistic advances. (WY)

Results of four experiments suggest that two-year-olds may be capable of forming inclusion relations when they hear a novel word for an object that already has a familiar name. (PCB)

Tests the hypothesis that the extent to which the durations of pauses (silences within the utterances of a single speaker) and switching pauses (silences between the utterances of 2 speakers) in the speech of children in conversation become similar (i.e., exhibit conversational congruence) is positively related to age. (BRT)

Tests the hypothesis that mothers would label objects with adult-basic level terms when talking to other adults, but would label the same objects with child-basic terms when speaking to their young children who were just starting to talk, even though these labels may be very much "incorrect" by adult standards. (Author/RH)

Samples of spontaneous speech were collected from 20 English and 20 German preschool children and their mothers. The children's frequency of use of various tenses was compared at different age levels within each language, across languages, and with their mothers' frequency of tense usage in speech to the children. (Author/JMB)

Reveals that young children acquiring Mandarin Chinese differentiate subject from topic, even though Chinese is a "topic-prominent" language. Data are based on results of a standardized, elicited imitation test of 95 Chinese children in Taiwan. Subjects between 2 years, 6 months and 5 years of age responded to coordinate as well as…

Presents evidence for four major design features of serial organization of speech arising from comparison of babbling and early speech with patterns in ten languages. Maintains that no explanation for the design features is available from Universal Grammar; except for intercyclical consonant repetition development, perceptual-motor learning seems…