This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with the following topics: the role of crib talk in language acquisition; syntactic parsing strategies; a case study of the first use of words; how two modes of literature presentation affect oral language development; children's cognition and acquisition of selected syntactic structures; language use in constructing/testing social scientific theories; the functions of language in discussions; visual literacy as a factor in language development; form and function as a basis for referential development in children; discriminating synthetic speech sounds; assessing secondary school students' knowledge of prefixes; language within power relationships; a flexible child-talk code; developing spatial and syntactic transformations; the acquisition of five syntactic structures by elementary school children; the developmental relationship between comprehension and production of grammatical morphemes in preschool children; how preschool children sequence narrative events; classifying preschool children's uses of meaningful language on selected conceptual tasks; maternal self-repetition and child feedback; and the mastery of specific conjunctions by elementary school children. (RL)