Discusses the inadequacies of the linguistic development theory called cognitive determinism and suggests instead the linguistic input hypothesis. Concludes that it is not either cognitive development or linguistic input that determines linguistic growth, but an interaction between them. (RM)

Two studies were conducted to discover possible patterns in question acquisition. For the production study, questions were collected from 22 children aged two to eleven. In the comprehension study, 100 children, aged three to five, were tested. The test controlled syntax and vocabulary and varied specific "wh-" question-words. (Author/RM)

Speech samples were elicited by means of the Bilingual Syntax Measure from eleven children ages 27-48 months, covering a wide span of linguistic development. Presence or absence of eleven functors was scored in obligatory occasions and an acquisition sequence determined using three methods of speech analysis. (CHK)

A study of a comprehensive work by Bronckart on Piaget and his theories regarding child language. The strengths and weaknesses of the "young school at Geneva" are analyzed. Questions with implications for further research are raised. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A report on a study in progress of the acquisition of a syntax rule: inversion in questions beginning with "Wh..". Its purpose is to show how certain modifications of linguistic theory and practice can contribute to this study and to psychology of language in general. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Investigation of the communicative functions of pitch direction and range in one-year-olds (N=2) indicated that use of pitch among infants may be related to a period where communicative intentions are clearly defined, but language is not yet available. A higher pitch was observed among infants who made repeated requests for objects as opposed to…

Discusses the kinds of things teachers can learn from children if they allow their students the freedom to use their language and their imaginations creatively. (HTH)

One-year-olds (N=11) showed no differences in comprehension of words containing consonants that they had never successfully produced (attempted), words with consonants easily produced (in), and words with consonants never before produced or attempted (out). Attempted and out words were less likely to be acquired in production than in words.…

Describes a study that examines the effect of an adult-child discourse structure on the word combination produced by 17 children at the single-word utterance level. There was a significant difference between pretest and posttest multiword production for the experimental group of six children, but no difference for the control group. (SED)

Describes a study of 40 monolingual Spanish-speaking Peruvian children in which comprehension of six locative phrases was tested. Results are analyzed in terms of developmental sequence, locative acquisition, the effects of intrinsic label on projective locative comprehension, the effects of linguistic form, and the effects of context. (SED)

The study of relationships among maternal behavior, child language, and location of congenital structural anomalies with 24-month-old children (21 with speech related anomalies (SRA), 45 normal controls, and 13 with non-speech-related anomalies. Mothers of SRA children showed more physical teaching, initiating, and attention management behaviors…

Probes the relation between speech perception and reading ability of children who were good or poor readers. Results indicate that reading-related perception differences were especially marked in a comparison of actual and predicted discrimination scores. Identification slope and phoneme boundary differences between reader groups were found as…

Observation of adult response to children's initial overextensions (use of the correct label, correction of error, and demonstration of object attributes) revealed that demonstrations were the most important factor in inducing toddlers to assign an object to its adult category. (Author/CB)

Analysis of longitudinal data from four Mexican-American children to explore two aspects of the acquisition of Spanish word stress indicates that children approach such learning unbiased toward any particular stress type. Children's attention to phonetic or semantic aspects of normatively unstressed syllables leads them to shift stress to that…

Relationships between syntactic and semantic aspects of mothers' speech and infants' word acquisition was examined in 27 mother-infant dyads. Results indicated that the more the mother differentiated the complexity of her speech to child and adult, the earlier the child attained 20 words. The more the mother used adult-basic labels in her speech,…