Keeping vocabulary and content constant, it was determined whether syntactically more complex structures increase reading difficulty or whether all students, regardless of grade level, have the same syntactic skills and thus read with equal facility materials written at different syntactic maturity levels. One hundred and twenty randomly selected…

Data are presented to show that reinforcement and exact repetition of adult speech are beneficial but not necessary components of a modeling procedure which results in production of novel linguistic forms by children. Laboratory studies suggest the need for a re-evaluation of current hypotheses about the limited role of imitation in language…

Five experiments were performed in which nursery school children were taught to identify persons, animals, or objects in pictures that took the nominative, objective, or locative case in sentences about the pictures. Inferences are made about categories in children's thinking including animate, and actor and agent. (CTM)

Examines the sound-to-letter patterns of misspelling in a Danish child at ages seven and eight by comparing his misspellings with transcriptions of his pronunciation. (MSE)

Tests the prediction that children acquiring left-branching languages will exhibit a preference for backward patterns of anaphora by presenting data from Japanese and Korean which show the prediction to be false. Findings support the view that any directionality preference for anaphora is the same for all languages. (Author/SED)

There are clear differences in acquisition and developmental patterns between conversational language and academic language, or BICS (basic interpersonal communicative skills) and CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency). The conceptual distinction between these two levels highlights misconceptions about the nature of language proficiency…

Reviews research using sentence length as a factor in predicting readability and discusses the possibility of sentence complexity as a more accurate variable. (TO)

The article discusses how semantic variations in the speech of lower socioeconomic children reflects the deprivations in their lives. (MF)

Paper read at the National Council of Teachers of English meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 28, 1970. (DS)

Discusses current research in child language to help teachers understand how young children acquire language skills. (DR)

Describes a study designed to test if, when children describe actions, they consider the role an entity plays in an action, independent of the animateness of the entity. Results indicate that young children have relational intentions which are independent of animateness. (EKN)

Focusing on the question, "Can chimpanzees produce new sentences or merely sequences?" Terrace describes his efforts to teach the chimpanzee Nim to communicate through sign language. From his results, and the Gardners' experiments with Washoe, he concludes that no proof yet exists that chimpanzees can use language as humans do. (SJL)

The pragmatic and semantic categories used by Ss varied across age groups. Results are discussed with regard to age, expressive modality, mean length of utterances, and hearing loss. There was much variation among these parameters in communicative development across Ss. (Author/DLS)

Surveys recent research in language acquisition, emphasizing the views of M. A. K. Halliday. (RL)

The magnitudes and patterns of two-point difference limens (DL) of the tongue were studied in children with and without articulation errors. Many children with misarticulation of /r/ had DLs that differed in magnitude and pattern from those of children with normal articulation and those with misarticulations of /s/. (NCR)