The basis for acquisition of categories in child language was investigated. The early encoding of the distinction between mass and count nouns was examined to determine whether children categorize them on the basis of semantic type or syntactic regularities. An experiment was designed in which semantic and syntactic cues were in competition:…

Two experiments examined preschoolers' and adults' relative reliance on visual and verbal information in identification of animals and machines. Findings include both children and adults can use either visual or verbal cues in categorization, and a stricter definition is used in identifying animals. Results suggest that a perceptual to conceptual…

This study investigated the role of gesture in communication development. Gestural categories, based on communicative function, were identified from longitudinal videotapes of one mother-child pair. The videotapes were made weekly or bi-weekly from the time the child was 13 months of age until she was 42 months of age. The results of the study…

This paper explores the relation between the communicative and categorical functions of language and the acquisition of language production. Three major factors in language acquisition are communication, ability for representation and the process of categorization. This paper offers evidence that a sudden and dramatic increase in lexical skill…