Children ages 1 1/2 to 3 years were tested to determine their comprehension of the terms "in,""on," and "under." It was found that children who listened to a pretest story involving the objects to be used in the study showed markedly better comprehension of the terms than children not exposed to the pretest activity.…

Investigates language-normal one-year-olds' (N=14) and language-impaired two- and three-year-olds' (N=10) acquisition of words referring to three types of action. Findings revealed that, although both groups produced few of the words, the language-normal subjects comprehended the different types of action, whereas the impaired subjects did not.…

Considers children's understanding and use of contrast in language, including discussion of the role contrast plays in adult speech, the kinds of contrast commonly exemplified, and possible tests for sameness or difference of meaning. (CB)

Analysis of a one-year-old's speech in two different speech contexts (dialogue vs. crib-monologue) yielded striking patterns of co-occurrences involving verb morphology and forms of self-reference. (Author/CB)

Examines the age at which and the form in which children produce speech acts which commit them to a future action. Results revealed that all of the four- to 11-year-olds produced directive speech acts, but only the older children used the explicit performative verb "promise" to reassure the hearer of their commitment. (Author/CB)

Examines the relationship between children's attribute saliency and metaphor interpretation. Findings indicate that attribute saliency for the individual perceiving the metaphor plays a key role in the interpretation process. (Author/CB)

Examines factors that contributed to unexpectedly large gains in verbal competence among a diverse and representative sample of urban first graders. Concludes that exceptionally high growth in the first grade is associated prominently with the characteristics of teachers and the maturity/personality and academic self-image of the students.…

The ISU/ChiLDES bibliographic database, a nonprofit computerized database dedicated to language acquisition, currently consists of nearly 1,900 annotated bibliographic references to journal articles dating back to 1972. (CB)

Two experiments test hypothesis that development of children's comprehension monitoring skills in the referential communication paradigm is based in part on ability to differentiate the literal sentence meaning of speaker's direction from the meaning or intention that speaker wished to convey. (Author/RWB)

Reports that four deaf children of hearing parents, who lacked usable conventional linguistic input, developed a gestural communication system that showed some of the structural regularities characteristic of early child language. Suggests that communication with a number of language-like properties can develop in an atypical language-learning…

Describes a study of the use of the terms "will" and "gonna" in the speech of two three-year-old girls. The results suggest that one of the functions of "will" and "gonna" is to impart different causal relations to the two practices of "undertaking" and "planning." (HTH)

Describes a study of four- to five-year-old children's interpretations of statements involving "know" (savoir) and "think" (croire). The study tried to ascertain the language operations that modify a proposition or a basic assertion and to show the speaker's attitude towards the event asserted in the statement. (SED)

Describes vocalizations of five 13-month-old infants. Data are reported on syllable shape, vowel-like and consonant-like production in context and time, periodic utterances, complex babbling sequences, recurrent phonetic forms, fundamental frequency, and intonation types. Results are consistent with data from other studies and support theory of…

Describes a study of children's production of locative prepositions in order to test H. Clark's hypotheses regarding the acquisition of spatial terms. Subjects were required to describe the spatial arrangement of two balls arranged in each of three spatial dimensions. (SED)

Presents results of a study indicating that constructive and dramatic play contexts affected language to the extent that children use more exophora in the constructive context and more linguistic verbs, third-person pronouns, and displaced reference tenses in the dramatic context. (HTH)