Based on a portion of author's Ph.D. dissertation, Communicative Development and Children's Answers to Questions," University of Wisconsin, 1970. (Author/RD)

In dealing with the differences between the school and non-school language of Black children, the author uses a contingency grammar," which considers all speakers of a language to have the identical linguistics competence but includes a level of systematic performance" to account for dialectal and other systematic differences. (FB)

This article discusses the now established" fact that one aspect of language development in native English speakers is the increasing ability to embed larger and larger numbers of sentence consituents and considers its implications for second language acquisition. (FB)

The McCaig article appears in this issue, pp. 612-18. (RD)

Reviews research on contributions of the child's environment to the development of syntax and semantics. Current theoretical proposals for internal and external constraints are discussed, and the implications of the research for the theoretical descriptions of the child's contribution to development are considered. (RH)

Two aspects of elicited imitation procedures, the relationship between imitation and spontaneous performance and the effect of nonlinguistic context, were examined using seven normal preschoolers. Elicited imitation performance did not accurately predict spontaneous speech performance, and the addition of nonlinguistic context cues did not…

Evidence supporting two roles of imitation in language acquisition was found in a single child's speech studied at ages 2.8 and 3.0. Imitation can serve to limit the language environment's complexity, and forms may appear in imitations before appearing in spontaneous speech. Use of "what?" is given as an example. (MSE)

Case studies of a few naturally bilingual children are reported in the context of a larger research project with bilingual children living in Rome. Studies focused on personality traits present from birth and concomitant with bilingual development. Data confirm full psychological normality on the part of bilingual children. (Author/AMH)

Examines children's errors in interpreting 'ask' as 'tell' in the framework of pragmatic development. Results indicate that if the children do not know the information, they relay the question, i.e., 'ask.' If they do know the answer, they supply it, i.e., 'tell.' (EKN)

Existing data on metalinguistic skills are reviewed and then grouped according to the cognitive strategies children appear to employ in resolving metalinguistic tasks. (Author/MP)

Examines trends in reading instruction, suggesting that some approaches are responsible for children's reading difficulties. Looks at research suggesting ways to bridge the gap between reading experiences that take place in the home and those that occur in school. (HTH)

Research results show that it may be possible, within limitations, to facilitate discrimination by infants of inappropriate from appropriate verbal descriptions of a visual event, by emphasizing the agent component in a simple sentence. (Author/JB)

Young children were found to overextend and underextend newly uttered but previously understood words. The data are discussed in terms of differences between children's and adult's word meanings and between comprehension and production. (Author)

Research with young Hebrew-speaking children revealed a development in linguistic control of the system of verb-pattern alternation from nonalternation to near mastery, with the concepts of causativity and distinctions in transitivity being lexicalized earlier than others. (Author)