Different experimental techniques for empirical assessment of children's linguistic ability have produced conflicting evidence. A number of such contradictions are discussed, in the context of an analysis of the potential weaknesses, and consequent requirements, of both comprehension and production tasks. (A commentary by P. L. Harris appears on…

A comprehension task employing English animate third person pronouns was run on 100 children from three to seven years of age. Results show that comphrehension of forms beyond chance level first appears at age five, with continuing improvement through ages six and seven. Mastery of gender distinction preceded number and case. (Author/PJM)

Analysis of the communicative skills of a nine-year-old deaf boy with minimal schooling showed pantomiming and gestures to be his major mode of communication. Certain semantic patterns prevailed. Use of left or right hand also had semantic correlates. Formal and idiosynacratic signs were discovered in the boy's vocabulary. (Author/PJM)

Investigates why young children become redundant and informative speakers after listening to nonredundant and informative speakers. The authors conclude that children confuse the length of a message with information. (Author/DB)

In a series of five experiments, young children (two- and three-year-olds) were presented with novel objects in which perceptual and functional features varied independently. Results indicate that early conceptualizations and word meanings are perceptually based when perceptual and functional features are independently available. (Author/RH)

Reports three studies concerning individual differences in children's use of consonants during early phonological development. The findings indicate that these differences fall within a predictable range, that the linguistic environment cannot account for several of them, and that they are partly due to variations in the choice of lexical items.…

The article examines normal language and communication development to provide insights into what parents of hearing impaired children can expect from and do for their children. Findings of particular importance for facilitating linguistic growth in hearing impaired children are discussed. (DLS)

Summarizes a model of phonology acquisition based on child speech development. Suggests that a categorization of the kinds of phonological changes which occur during the acquisition period leads to parallels between the mechanisms of phonological change in children and adults. (PMJ)

Investigates the use of clauses expressing relational processes by young children interacting in a free play situation and using English as a second language. Concludes that the use of language to explore and express relations in the environment is an important aspect of child-child interaction. (MES)

Analyzes in detail the expressions used by 39 grade school children explaining--in writing--the rules of a ball game. The analysis focuses on the linguistic strategies employed to define the actors and the actions of the game and establishes correlations between these strategies and the sociocultural background of the writers. (MES)

Gives a syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse structure analysis of mothers' speech to children of 1;0, 1;8, 2;3, and 5;0 years, showing that the age of the child to whom mothers were speaking could be predicted very accurately from her speech. The changes in mothers' speech are responses to concurrent changes in children's language…

Pronoun mastery demands a knowledge of speech roles and an ability to identify oneself and others in those roles. Twenty-one girls' knowledge of "my,""your," and "her" was assessed when they were speakers, addressees, and nonaddressed listeners. The children were aware of speech roles only when they themselves occupied these roles. (PJM)

Two investigations, one longitudinal/cross-sectional and naturalistic, and the other quasi-experimental, demonstrated that preschool-age children have the capacity for hypothetical reference but that this capacity operates within certain constraints. (Author/AM)

Investigates the functional nature of the communication process observed in interactions of English-speaking and Japanese-speaking children from the two-word stage onward, with special attention to the given/new contract and pragmatic factors. (Author/AM)

The development of communication ability between very young children is examined. (JD)