Basal readers are supposed to be easy for children to read, but sometimes their language is so unnatural that it's more confusing than helpful. (MKM)

Results confirm the value of play activities for language development, and illustrate the nature of linguistic interaction among groups of five-year-olds. (RL)

Selected phonological, morphological, and syntactic evidence from two hours of tape recordings of conversations of a four-year-old Native American New Mexican was examined to determine its value in assessing the child's bidialectalism. (Author/SW)

A discussion of the child's language acquisition including examples of syntactic development. This analysis is introduced by references to various language theories, particularly the generative and psycholinguistic theories, and to various systems of syntactic description. The examples given raise questions on the theoretic and ideological levels.…

When vocalizations of three-month-olds (N=40), experiencing either conversational turn-taking or random responsiveness of an adult, were counted and categorized, results indicated that turn-taking caused changes in the quality of vocal sounds. When the adult maintained a give-and-take pattern, the infants produced a higher ratio of…

Reports results of a longitudinal study of the acquisition of first words by 18 infants. Strategies used in word acquisition and environmental variables related to language development were investigated. Results were analyzed in terms of an interaction model of the language-learning process. (DP)

Examines children's attraction to rhythm and rhyme of nursery rhymes and how these factors affect literacy. Discusses the connection between rhyme and reading and spelling acquisition. (HTH)

Children aged six and eight were required to recall transitive sentences, some with an animate actor and inanimate acted-upon element, and some with these reversed. It appeared that children prefer to put the animate noun first and this affects their choice of active or passive sentence voice. (Author/SJL)

Reports on research on the acquisition of adjectives vs inflectional endings in Italian children. Patterns resulting from a longitudinal study involving two children and an experiment involving 84 children are compared to patterns of adults participating in the latter experiment. (Author/AM)

Examines a corpus of narratives produced by preschool children, and focuses on differences among the three age groups with respect to: (1) complexity, (2) the relationship between story elements and the discursive context, (3) relationship between story elements and extralinguistic context, and (4) shaping of the narrative as story and as part of…

This paper outlines a proposal to cover four very early stages for the acquisition of negation systems in natural languages. It emphasizes the formal linguistic devices as the major variables that determine the various language-specific developmental sequences. (CHK)

Reports on the continuing study of a congenitally acochlear child using an analytical focus on the prelinguistic vocalizations involving the description of syllable groupings within a prosodic hierarchy. Results indicate that audition is not necessary for the formation of prelinguistic phrasing, but hearing does influence certain aspects of…

Examined how Italian day-care teachers (N=5) spoke to young children and adjusted their language according to age and size of groups. It was found that teachers made both structural and functional modifications of language according to childrens' ages and the size of groups, with group size exerting a greater influence on the features of the…

Analysis of longitudinal data on the phonetic development of Swedish infants (N=4) from 1 through 17 months of age showed five distinct stages in early vocalization development: glottal; velar/uvular; vocalic; reduplicated consonant babbling; and variegated consonant babbling. Comparison with infants of differing linguistic backgrounds indicated…