A phonological and syntactic study of a small important group of nonarbitrary terms in Pomo baby talk that are concerned with elemental body needs. A progression is shown from sound images closely associated with the action state or object denoted to the phonological patterns of adult languages. (SCC)

Using Locke's 1983 model, analyzes one tendency, consonant use in babbling and early words, and phonological word-selection patterns in 10 children, aged 8 to 16 months. Individual differences were found in all three domains analyzed, with some increase in uniformity across subjects with increasing knowledge of language. (Author/SED)

Two transitional phases in the child's early language development are described; the first occurs between prelinguistic vocalization and one-word speech and the second between one-word and patterned speech. Cognitive, linguistic and affective inputs to the acquisition of reference and syntax are discussed in the light of the transitional…

This paper represents an effort to explain the language development of the child within the analytic frame of overtly observable data and without recourse either to mathematical models or to postulating hypothetical underlying forms. From longitudinal studies of two-year old children conducted by the author as well as from similar data reported in…

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.…

Examination of a two-year-old's early determiner-noun combinations suggested that early article use can be distributed across a variety of nouns, and that such usage does not seem appropriately characterized as a pattern of limited semantic scope. (CB)

A study was undertaken to determine whether children in early periods of language development use stress with any regular patterns, and if so, on what the patterns are based. The subjects were five children aged 21-29 months, MLU between 1.3 and 2.4. Tape recordings were made during play sessions with each child. Two-word utterances that could be…

Universal trends and individual variations in the language development process of the child are described and their relationships to beginning reading instruction are discussed. Child language begins with single word utterances to name things or to express needs and feelings. With a two-word utterance, the child can describe relationships more…

A study of overregularized use of verbs by two children over a period when they were 2 1/2 to 5 years of age shows overregularizations in two directions: non-causative verbs were used as causatives; and causative verbs were used non-causatively. According to terminology from logic, predicates were classified according to the number of noun-phrase…

A study was conducted to compare the relative performance on yes-no questions of bilingual and monolingual children and to discuss the relationship of semantic development and linguistic development, both in the bilinguals and monolinguals. Eighteen English monolingual, eighteen Japanese monolingual, and eighteen Japanese-English bilingual…

This paper describes the linguistic development of two hearing sons of deaf parents. Both were exposed to an early language environment different from that of the average hearing child. At the start of the study, the boys were aged 3 years, 9 months, and 1 year, 8 months, respectively. When first observed, the older child performed well below age…

A common assumption underlying cross-linquistic studies in child language is that the comparison of any feature in unrelated languages may simplify semantic-grammatical complexities in a way that studies on a single language cannot. This paper begins by discussing the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in Spanish by four…

This investigation studied the development of the form and function of negative sentences, and how it relates to the input on negation that children receive from their parents. The data came from three children: two from a previous study (Bellugi) and one the son of the investigators. A detailed analysis was carried out of the syntactic form and…

This study considers the interaction of syntactic and pragmatic factors (social and cognitive) in children's production of coordinate structures involving conjunction reduction. Two aspects of pragmatic context were considered: (1) the pattern of uncertainty or redundancy in a complex action sequence, and (2) the perceptual grouping of objects…

An analysis of part-of-speech membership was made utilizing certain mechanisms that have been proposed to explain the nature of word classes. It was proposed that words of the same form class constitute "verbal habit families" on the basis of either a common grammatical meaning response, a common affix, or a common label (e.g., "verb"). One…