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)

Investigates the processes by which children develop basic morphological categories of plants and learn to relate such categories to one another by inclusion and contrast. Suggests that the parallel thought sequences observed in random subjects engaged in this task may reflect universals of perception and cognition. (PMJ)

An investigation was made of the episodic structure of maternal speech to young children during a free-play session. Findings indicate that maternal speech was organized so as to provide a high degree of redundancy, suggesting that the organization of maternal speech increases predictability in the child's language environment. (Author/AM)

Reports on a longitudinal study of the acquisition of the voicing contrast in American English word-initial stop consonants as measured by voice-onset time. The rate and nature of the developmental process are discussed in relation to two competing models of phonological acquisition and two hypotheses regarding the skills being learned. (Author/AM)

This study is an attempt to investigate the efficacy of using existing semantic relations categories for understanding how children comprehend the verb "with" + noun construction. (Author)

This article discusses a study designed to determine the order of acquisition of the two expressions "in front of" and "behind," using two featureless objects. (CFM)

Reports on research into the early semantic-syntactic utterances of deaf children as compared to those of learning children. It is suggested that differences in acquisition patterns may be attributable to the pedagogical nature of deaf language acquisition. (Author/AM)

Analyzes the order in which selected structures of English are acquired by young speakers of English vs speakers of Cantonese, Spanish, Tagalog, and Ilokano and draws implications for instruction. (MKM)