Examines the status of the functional categories in child second language (L2) acquisition of English. Results from longitudinally-collected data are reported, presenting counterevidence for recent hypotheses on early L2 acquisition that assume the following: (1) structure building approach according to which the acquisition of functional…

Studies of (TD) and (ING) in King of Prussia (Pennsylvania) families show that children have matched their parents' patterns of variation by age seven, before many categorical phonological and grammatical rules can be established. Some dialect-specific and socially marked constraints are acquired before constraints with general articulatory…

Refutes the reanalysis of a phonologically disordered child's use of fricatives as developed by Fey (1989) within a relational framework. Evidence in the form of nonsystematic correspondence between the child's substitution patterns and the target sound system is used to further establish accuracy of the original independent generative analysis…

Examines the phonetic patterns and linguistic development of an infant who was tracheostomized during the period that infants normally begin to produce syllabic vocalization. It was found that the infant had developed only a tenth of the canonical syllables expected in normally developing infants, a small inventory of consonant-like segments, and…

Analysis of a complete set of word-forms produced by a one-year-old at the one-word stage found that the data showed little phonetic variability and that phonological development during the period studied (about one year) was qualitatively continuous with subsequent development. (Author/CB)

A longitudinal study examined two-year-olds' acquisition of the English auxiliary system after a six-week exposure to additional auxiliary input in varying sentence contexts. Results indicated that subjects did not significantly differ from a baseline group that did not receive additional input. (Author/CB)

Available evidence suggests that early language intervention is effective when designed to meet the needs of the individual child. Intervention should begin when risk or predisposing factors so indicate or when significant delays are present. Intervention should respect the child's developmental level in relevant areas and should address…

Three experiments gauging 7- to 10-year-old children's ability to interpret and comprehend figurative language indicated that informative contexts could improve subjects' abilities to perceive idiomatic meanings. Subjects were less able to produce idioms than to comprehend them, but were able to perceive that language can be both figurative and…

Offers an interpretive frame for viewing children's growth as creators of imaginative worlds. Suggests that writing development depends not only on children's discovery of cognitive and linguistic strategies but on children's discovery that writing can help authors create coherence in their worlds beyond texts. (MS)

Applies a categorical framework for relating compounds and metaphors to a discussion of the aspects of children's development of preferred and metaphoric compounds. Results indicate that preferred compounds serve the function of being conceptually precise, while preferred metaphors serve "suggestive" functions. (Author/CB)

Evaluates the effects of presenting verbal models following the initiations or expressions of interest of 16 children aged 28 to 34 months on both production and comprehension abilities measures. Results suggest that the timing of exposure to language models plays a critical role in language acquisition. (RJC)

Discusses the concepts of linguistic awareness and metalinguistic consciousness and their development in individuals, and shows how making a distinction between the two concepts can be useful to linguists, particularly in the areas of first and second language learning. (CFM)

Argues that the purpose of school--of language and the language arts--is to empower children as public individuals, to give them tools to express their own visions of the world in the public arena. (RAE)

The use of deictic words from 5 classes by 4 preschool teachers and 12 children with hearing losses was examined. Teachers used a total of 648 deictic words versus the children's 172 examples. Personal pronouns were the most frequently used class, followed by demonstrative pronouns, adverbs of location, shifting reference verbs, and adverbs of…

In a study of event knowledge, 13 2-year-olds were observed interacting with their mothers over a 5-month period. Results indicated that children's increasing event knowledge facilitated their language development (e.g., lexical type use, action verb use) and their lexical token use. (Contains 33 references.) (Author/LB)