This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 32 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the development of young children's metalinguistic understanding of "letter,""word," and "sentence"; (2) modifications in speech to elderly conversationalists; (3) temporal characteristics of speech among preschool children and the elderly; (4) person perception as expressed by young children; (5) an interdisciplinary basis for the investigation of language; (6) language acquisition; (7) the genetic basis of language; (8) syntactic reflection of semantic categorization in the English verbal system; (9) the effect of audience on the expressive language of working class children; (10) the social and situational conditioning of phonetic variation; (11) main-verb ellipsis in spoken English; (12) early thought and language; (13) children's referential communication skills; (14) the nonverbal and verbal communicative skills of language-impaired and normal speaking children; (15) the frequency and usage of the English passive; (16) discourse connectives in English; (17) kindergarten children's concepts about print; (18) J. Piaget's conservation and children's oral language production; and (19) side sequences and coherence in children's discourse. (FL)