Relationships between "combinatorial" abilities in language, symbolic play, blockbuilding, and non-semantic action sequences were explored in a study of 30 infants between 82 and 91 weeks of age. Subjects were observed in a laboratory playroom setting for approximately 45 minutes. During this time, a number of tasks were administered…

Three experiments on the comprehension and acquisition of temporal terms are described. Methodological innovations were applied to control for possible methodological effects on children's performance. Each experiment involved 24 children aged 3 to 5. In the first experiment, subjects manipulated toys in response to instructions containing the…

The emergence of the ability to maintain and develop a topic of conversation is examined. The production of a competently structured topic involves utterances that are both propositionally contingent on previous utterances and related to the global concern of the topic. Children under 2 years of age can only product utterances that are…

The use of imitation as a language learning strategy was explored in a case study of a child in a Mandarin-speaking family. Recordings were made over the course of 3 months, from the ages of 2 years 10 months to 3 years 1 month. It is argued that restrictive criteria regarding identity of form and temporal proximity of utterances have severely…

The acoustic features and functions of accentuation in French are discussed, and features of accentuation in the speech of French 2-year-olds are explored. The four major acoustic features used to signal accentual distinctions are fundamental frequency of voicing, duration of segments and syllables, intensity of segments and syllables, and…

A study of the late acquisition of the passive in Zulu used data from transcripts of naturalistic speech gathered in a longitudinal study of several children's speech development between 1.10 and 3.6 years of age. It was hypothesized that the productivity of the passive construction in Zulu is a factor facilitating acquisition. A range of…

Two studies examined the development of major properties of reflexives and pronouns in English language acquisition by applying the theory of binding of reflexives and pronouns to potential antecedents in the sentence. The children ranged in age from 2.6 to 6.6 years. In the first experiment, the children were presented with two pictures and were…

An experiment was undertaken with young children to look at the relative contribution of discourse constraints, subject anaphors, and the semantics of verbs to the integration of an utterance into its discourse representation. Children aged 5, 7, and 10 years heard a series of short stories, each consisting of three sentences and an incomplete…

A study of the acquisition of time-related grammatical forms in Hebrew-speaking children looked at three kinds of information: (1) relative frequency of occurrence of different verb forms at different ages; (2) the relationship between tense-marking on verbs and the semantics of verbs used at different ages, and (3) the use of time adverbs…

Challenges the claim that adult second language acquisition is characteristically different, cognitively, from that of child first or second language acquisition. (PMP)

Discusses the role of the home and the school in remedying language problems of the culturally disadvantaged. (RB)

A very basic feature of learning is the translation of what is heard or seen into a form that can be sotred in memore. This process of translation will be considered in relation to reception and as a possible cause of differences in learning performance. (Author)

Discusses the relationship between psycholinguistics and the teaching of French and offers suggestions for improving teaching methods. (PM)