This study investigated the relationship between perception and production in children's phonological learning to determine whether perceptual confusions could account for the patterns of substitution and deletion found in 2-year-olds' speech. A total of 14 children were presented pairs of toy stimuli, with each pair composed of a familiar item…

A set of data collected by researchers at the University of California at Riverside and presented to the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) is described in this document. The data consist of 14 hours of recorded interviews of 60 Mexican-American children in Riverside in grades 1-3. Comments are directed at the linguistic characteristics of the…

This paper examines the acquisition of English fricatives and is a preliminary report on one aspect of the Child Phonology Project at Stanford University. A characterization of English fricatives is presented, followed by a summary of current information on their acquisition. Three sample hypotheses from the Stanford project are discussed in…

A study made to examine the development in production of the English verbal auxiliary and copula (VAC) "to be" compared a group of children with language dysfunction and a group of normal children. Two purposes were to see whether developmental differences are qualitative or quantitative and to calculate the importance of the VAC in language…

This paper, presented as part of a military lecture series given by the Division of Continuing Education and Community Service Speakers' Bureau of the University of Hawaii to military personnel at Schofield Barracks and Fort Shafter, investigates the origins and present status of Black English. A discussion of early studies in the Gullah dialect…

This paper takes issue with the position that children's phoneme acquisition schedule is dictated primarily by auditory perceptual factors and suggests the alternative position that ease of production accounts for age of acquisition. It is felt that perceptual theory cannot adequately explain phonological development, e.g. three-year-olds produce…

The purpose of this study was to discover: (1) whether or not adults can discriminate between the babbling of babies learning different languages, and (2) the approximate age at which discrimination is possible. There were two tests involved in the experiment. The identification test consisted of 20 babbling samples, each of which was 15 seconds…

The effect of grammatical phonological rules (those in English) and nongrammatical (those in other languages) on the learning and reproduction of morpheme-length utterances and the role of maturation on this effect were examined. Children preschool through second grade were the subjects. There were no significant differences at any grade level…

This paper will outline some of the ways in which the language of the test instrument can be a factor in affecting the performance of a given child or group of children on a test. In tests of quantitative intelligence, mathematical skills, conceptual knowledge, readiness and aptitude, it is not reasonable to think of the language of the test as a…

Piaget has suggested that a child's language reflects the degree to which he is able to take into account the point of view of his listener. His inability to do so results in what Piaget calls egocentric speech whereas what Piaget calls socialized speech indicates that the child actually adopts his listener's viewpoint and engages in an exchange…

The present volume reflects the proceedings of the fourth annual symposium at the Carnegie-Mellon University, which dealt with developmental linguistics in general and with child language acquisition in particular. Contents include an Introduction by John R. Hayes; "Derivational Complexity and Order of Acquisition in Child Speech," by R. Brown and…

Applications of research in psycholinguistics, particularly Noam Chomsky's research, have suggested some drastic innovations in the practices of both the classroom teacher and the child development researcher. For example, more emphasis is needed upon asking what a speaker knows about the grammar of the language with less concern about how…

Research has been conducted regarding the linguistic structure of children's language usage. There has not, however, been an attempt to relate children's knowledge of vocabulary to their teachers' use of vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the vocabulary used by teachers and the proportion of that…

Poetry is an important ingredient in the elementary school curriculum both for its intrinsic qualities and as a vehicle for other subject matter. Rhythm, rhyme, word choice and relationships are best seen and felt by children listening to poetry and, in later elementary school, reading poetry themselves. Children can be motivated to write too,…

Ludwig Wittgenstein's pragmatic conception of language, his theory on language learning, and his treatment of the function of language in the growth of the child are the focus of this book. Wiggenstein's study of language is compared with those made by linguists, psychologists, and sociologists, and accounts of language learning based on empirical…