A study was conducted to examine the interrelationships between drawing, early writing, and the context of talk in which both phenomena occur. Participant observation methodology was used in a self-contained public school kindergarten in order to gather daily data during a 3-month period. Specifically, children freely drew and wrote in an…

This study examined the comprehension of Wh-questions in English in children between the ages of 5 and 9. The study showed that difficulties with Wh-questions are not overcome by the age of 9. (Author/RM)

Two children were observed for half a year and specific topics were examined in child communication: how much information is transmitted through various channels of verbal and nonverbal communication? Is specific information transmitted through specific channels? Can relationships between the channels be expressed through some type of formula?…

A study is made of ways in which three children forgot a foreign language in which they had been immersed. Specifically considered are whether the last things learned are the first things forgotten, and whether forgetting entails unlearning in reverse order from the original learning process. (Author/RM)

Tests to discover the nature of the second language learner's language are discussed. Such tests are based on the assumptions that the development of the system of the foreign language in the learner follows certain regular patterns, and that the learner's grammar is essentially systematic at any stage of his learning. (RM)

It is possible to construct a case for the child's interpretation of "of" in "must of been" as the preposition "of" in the process of language acquisition. Assuming the familiar concept that linguists should construct the simplest analysis compatible with a phenomenon, it is suggested that some children construct a…

Many researchers now believe that the representations and processes underlying syntactical development are specific to a "language faculty." If so, reference animacy would not be expected to influence acquisition of linguistic structures such as the passive sentence construction. Specifically, children should be comparably able to…

Research suggests that intuitive parental didactics related to infants' production of vocal sounds, vocal imitation, and vocal play are a prerequisite of human language acquisition. Microanalyses of videorecords of parent-infant interactions have revealed intuitive forms of parental behaviors that parents carry out unknowingly and can hardly…

An alternative to the standard theory that language learners always formulate the simplest rule to accommodate data is proposed. This new position states that the system of formulating rules and the generalizations made from it by children and adults in the stages of language learning needs to be more specific. The present theory excludes the use…

Two studies were performed to determine the process used by young children to figure out the meaning of a new word. It was hypothesized that the children would use one of two strategies: (1) ignore the word and wait for more information, or learn only what is unambiguous about it, or (2) make a reasonable but uncertain guess, quickly setting up…

In a study of very young children's pronunciation of nouns and verbs, ten children aged 20 to 25 months were exposed to experimental nouns and verbs, which had not yet been comprehended or produced by the children. Each of the objects and actions was given an experimental name based on phonemes in the children's speech. These objects and actions…

A study of Korean children's interpretation of the reflexive pronoun "caki" when it precedes a third person noun phrase, that is, in backward anaphora, had as subjects 4- to 11-year-old children living in Korea. Test sentences designed on the basis of two important syntactic aspects in Korean reflexive anaphora--relational hierarchy and…

A study of the time- and aspect-marking of 24-month-old native Mandarin-speaking children analyzed their language during free play, and matched fifty utterance samples containing active predicates with all utterances using the perfective suffix "-le." It was found that the children mentioned the future, particularly their immediate intentions,…

Intended for administrators and policymakers as well as teachers, this digest explores the nature of vocabulary and its implications for classroom instruction. After defining vocabulary and discussing some of the sources of English vocabulary, the digest examines how children's vocabularies develop. It then discusses the role of vocabulary…