This study examines whether children's decontextualized talk--talk about nonpresent events, explanations, or pretend--at 30 months predicts seventh-grade academic language proficiency (age 12). Academic language (AL) refers to the language of school texts. AL proficiency has been identified as an important predictor of adolescent text…

Describes a study which examined the relationship between mother's speech and the rate of child syntax growth for 22 two-and-a-half-year-old children. Results suggest that linguistic experience does contribute to syntax development but that the relation between linguistic input and language growth is different for different domains of language and…

Reports on a study investigating the relationship between children's linguistic environment and language acquisition. In particular, the study examined the effect of mothers' speech on subsequent child speech. (Author/AM)

Presents data from 4 Inuit children ages 2;0 to 3;6 that shows relatively early acquisition of both simple and complex forms of the passive. Within this age range, children are productively producing truncated, full, action, and experiential passive. Reasons for this precociousness, including adult input and language structure, are explored. (56…

The project described in this report examines the development of Swedish-speaking children's syntax from the appearance of the first two-work sentences until all the basic syntactical rules are mastered. The procedures and techniques for the experiment are described and preliminary findings are discussed. Children practice language by repeating an…

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…

Models the spread of linguistic change by taking account of the ages of the acquirers and transmitters of change. The article focuses on three interlocutor combinations: parent-infant/young child, peer group-preadolescent and older adolescent/adult-adolescent. Findings suggest that borrowings are the easiest to acquire, while lexically…

Previous research has shown how macro-structures can affect children's verbalizations. This study focuses on whether conversational contexts of forms are learned along with syntax, on what makes syntax, and on how to predict speech. Transcripts of videotapes of young children provided a matrix of function or act against actual utterance, wherein…