This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: children's sociolinguistics skills, ability to sequence verbal expressions, analogical abilities, and learning and application of the principle for nouns; Basil Bernstein's sociolinguistic theories; a method for studying adolescent language; the effects of content and structure on oral narratives; frequency adverbial terms, verbal productive humor, egocentric speech, and the imitation and production of locatives in the speech of young children; the relationship between sexual identity and the use of sexually identified language; communication performance in young children; aspects of turn-taking in conversation; a grammar of narrative; linguistic environments of young children; early contributions made by pragmatics toward the differentiation of the verbs "ask" and "tell"; folklore of Anglo children; relationships between first-grade children's conservation of substance and their performance on a test of pronoun antecedents; and linguistic and conversational patterns of adults with differing reading and writing proficiencies. (GW)