Describes a tool for determining a student's level of language development through oral responses; indicates a positive correlation between achievement test scores and oral language production. (MAI)

Study data point to a significant difference between the ability of normal and language-disabled children at the holophrastic stage to use their lexicon to communicate to a listener in a context. (MP)

Children's imitations were analyzed as a function of parental speech acts for six children in early Stage I of language acquisition. The children imitated imitations far more frequently than non-imitative speech acts in the same category. (Author/SW)

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children, aged 2 to 13, and elicited passives from 262 college students were analyzed. The agentive non-reversible did not appear until after age 9; and until age 11 no child produced both reversible and non-reversible passives. (Author/SW)

Focus is one factor that may account for children's use of single-word utterances after they have acquired the use of multi-word utterances. The possible role that focus may play in children's use of single-word utterances in naturalistic settings, after the acquisition of syntax, was investigated. (SW)

This paper reviews evidence for and against imitation as a factor in the acquisition of syntax. It is concluded that the effects of imitation of children's speech are too pervasive to be dismissed as irrelevant. An important question is how a child extracts grammatical information from imitated sequences. (CHK)

Reports a survey of practices in reading readiness programs and concludes that in regard to reading readiness, the close relationship between speech and reading suggests that the use of language-based programs is more promising than the use of non-language-based programs. (JM)

Reviews evidence supporting the Contrastive Hypothesis, revealing little support for the hypothesis that young children automatically assume that every two words in their lexicons contrast. Theoretical problems with the positions that children assign words to semantic fields as they are acquiring them and that innovations are used to fill lexical…

Examination of the effect of two linguistic factors on kindergarten through fourth-grade students' understanding of idioms indicated that the younger subjects better understood syntactically frozen idioms than those presented in various syntactic forms, while older subjects comprehended both kinds. (Author/CB)

Discusses a study that examines which combination of animate and inanimate actors (anyone or anything performing an action) and patients (the thing that is the object of action) two-year-olds view as prototypical. Results suggest that the actor category is usually acquired first for prototypical sentences with animate actors and inanimate…

Describes a study that investigates the order of acquisition of case-marked pronouns in Hebrew among 105 children between two and five years of age. Results indicate that children begin using case-marked pronouns as early as age two and that the stage of morphological development parallels that of English-speaking children. (SED)

Discusses two studies that examine whether children are sensitive to the fact that adjectives and nouns differ in the contrast they imply. Results show that by age four, children are sensitive to this. Implications for children's use of referential language and word learning strategies are discussed. (SED)

Describes a study that analyzes the naturalistic productions of "because" and "so" by 96 children, aged three-and-a-half to nine-and-a-half years of age, while narrating personal events. Analyzes results in terms of such factors as: correctness, types of causality, nature of actor/recipient, time of causality, producer, and linguistic issues. (SED)

Examines how any utterance or activity can be opposed in order to better understand the origins of children's disputes. Shows that children analyze others' moves not only verbally but nonverbally as well. Thus, bodily action and presupposition are necessary components in the analysis of how arguments are started. (SED)

A diary study of the speech of a child acquiring English found eight between-word processes, all of which were optional and occurred in fairly restricted environments. Most of the processes were also of short duration. (Author/CB)