The study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative-absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in…

Similarity neighborhoods for words in young children's lexicons were investigated using three computerized databases. Results revealed that words in five- and seven-year-olds' lexicons have many fewer similar neighbors. (Author/CB)

Tests the universality hypothesis of language acquisition by asking young monolingual English and Japanese children to verify true affirmatives, false affirmatives, false negatives, and true negatives. The hypothesis was not supported in the case of Japanese-speaking children. A theory of cross-linguistic language acquisition is proposed.…

This book is designed to provide practical advice to parents and educators on the language acquisition process. Citing numerous case studies and anecdotal examples, it explains how children learn to talk and acquire language. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to language acquisition, explaining the components, forms, and structure of language.…

Analysis of data from the first six months of acquisition of English as a second language by a Japanese five-year-old illustrated the role of modular "chunking" and coupling in the second language acquisition process, apparent in the child's pre-copula and copula referential utterances. (Author/CB)

Examined associations between parent language complexity and conversational style and child language use. Contrasted parents' story reading language style with their style for free play with toys and joint remembering of an event. Findings underscore the extent to which children's conversational ability is shaped by the demands of the social and…

Intended for teachers and others having responsibility for shaping language policy in the schools, this collection of invited, original articles is based on the belief that a teacher's task is not to "teach" children language but, rather, to create an environment that will allow language learning to occur naturally. The book is divided into four…

Certain proposed theories on second language acquisition, their justifications, and their predictions about English are examined in this paper. The first section discusses the process of second language acquisition; the stages and strategies learners use and progress through on their way to mastery are described. The second section discusses the…