Vocalizations of two female infants, recorded over a five-week period after the first emergence of cooing were studied. It was found that the features of the more primitive sound types regrouped themselves in comfort sounds. The implications for theories of prespeech development are discussed. (EJS)

On the basis of two experiments on comprehension, it is argued that children go through at least three stages in acquiring the deictic contrasts between "here and there," and between "this and that." Children follow different routes through these states, since they choose different starting points in mastering deitic contrasts.…

Reports on a study which sought to compare syntax acquisition in French by francophone and non-francophone children, in order to establish the order in which French grammatical elements are acquired, and in order to create a French version of the Bilingual Syntax Measure. (AM)

The development of plurals in two German-speaking children was analyzed, based on observational data. It was argued that the children were learning plurals by rote, conditioned by morphological complexity which cannot be subsumed under any general rule. (Author/NCR)

This article discusses the popular belief that girls are more advanced in language development than boys. (Author/NCR)

Four episodes are described to illustrate the language of elementary school children. Each episode supports a generalization characteristic of the language of children of elementary school age. (CM)

This paper describes a form of teacher-student interaction, incidental teaching, which works to elaborate oral language within everyday classroom activities. The research basis of the methodology, an overview of the method of incidental teaching, and examples of its applications for the classroom are given. (Author/AM)

Describes a tool for determining a student's level of language development through oral responses; indicates a positive correlation between achievement test scores and oral language production. (MAI)

Study data point to a significant difference between the ability of normal and language-disabled children at the holophrastic stage to use their lexicon to communicate to a listener in a context. (MP)

Children's imitations were analyzed as a function of parental speech acts for six children in early Stage I of language acquisition. The children imitated imitations far more frequently than non-imitative speech acts in the same category. (Author/SW)

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children, aged 2 to 13, and elicited passives from 262 college students were analyzed. The agentive non-reversible did not appear until after age 9; and until age 11 no child produced both reversible and non-reversible passives. (Author/SW)

Focus is one factor that may account for children's use of single-word utterances after they have acquired the use of multi-word utterances. The possible role that focus may play in children's use of single-word utterances in naturalistic settings, after the acquisition of syntax, was investigated. (SW)

This paper reviews evidence for and against imitation as a factor in the acquisition of syntax. It is concluded that the effects of imitation of children's speech are too pervasive to be dismissed as irrelevant. An important question is how a child extracts grammatical information from imitated sequences. (CHK)

Reports a survey of practices in reading readiness programs and concludes that in regard to reading readiness, the close relationship between speech and reading suggests that the use of language-based programs is more promising than the use of non-language-based programs. (JM)