Comments on the article by Jones and Smith in this issue. Describes a program of research that demonstrates the important influence of perception on the structure of concepts. Proposes that both perceptual and nonperceptual information are important to conceptual structure throughout the continuum of knowledge acquisition and that perception is a…

Comments on the article by Jones and Smith in this issue. Outlines different perspectives from which the issue of conceptual development is approached, elaborating on the functions concepts serve and variations in those functions. Notes points of agreement with the perceptual knowledge view and offers comments on the research supporting the…

A study of two year olds investigated the nature and development of children's early productivity with verb-argument structure and verb morphology. Results indicated that the children showed no signs of productive verb morphology, but they did use newly learned verbs in some creative ways involving nounlike uses and the appending of locatives.…

Bilingual case study of infant acquiring Spanish and English from birth to 1;10 is used to address whether young bilinguals differentiate between their languages based on language choice. Daily diary records and weekly video recordings in the two language contexts were used to construct the child's lexicon and establish that translation…

This article defines three types of directives (follow-in, redirectives, and introductions); describes their various uses in early language intervention; presents two conceptual models for the role of directives in facilitating or inhibiting language development; and discusses issues concerning use of directives in intervention. (Author/SW)

Provides an overview of current research on grammatical, phonological, semantic, and pragmatic development in African American English child language, as opposed to adult or adolescent language, and discusses the implications of these findings for professionals involved in second-dialect instruction, speech-language assessment, or intervention…

Features of mothers' and fathers' interaction with children who stutter are reviewed, along with results of intervention studies that have included children who stutter and their parents. Similarities and differences in the roles played by fathers and mothers in children's communicative development are discussed, as are implications for clinical…

Notes that jump rope rhymes and street chants are part of an oral tradition that links communication and play. Although rarely incorporated into the elementary curriculum, they expose children to rhyme, rhythm, humor, and poetry. Discusses opportunities for student involvement and integration of rhymes and chants across the curriculum, and…

Examines code-switching and code-mixing behavior of a child learning English and Cantonese simultaneously. The choice of code was dependant on socialization, and code-mixing was dependent on base language. (14 references) (LT)

To examine the persistence of phonological selectional constraints on young children's lexical choices, the words attempted in the conversational speech of a longitudinal sample of 12 normally developing preschoolers from age 2;0 to 5;0 were scored for syllabic length, presence of consonant clusters, and distribution of constituent phonemes. (29…

This study applies perspectives from sociolinguistics to investigate the language mixing of a bilingual two year old acquiring Norwegian and English simultaneously in Norway. The investigation stresses the need to examine more carefully the roles of dominance and context in the language mixing of young bilingual children. (40 references) (JL)

Discusses the language development in individuals with Down's syndrome in both early childhood and adulthood, and outlines intervention programs to assist language development in these individuals not only in their early years but throughout their lives. (71 references) (CFM)

Discusses research that gathered language samples via videotape recordings from 2 Italian children (one upper class, the other lower class) from the age of 18 months to 36 months, and then analyzes the data to determine the development of morphology and syntax in these children. (19 references) (CFM)

Fourteen matched pairs of German-speaking and English-speaking children were tested for their knowledge of grammatical morphology and expressive vocabulary. The finding that the German-speaking children earned higher scores than did the English-speaking children adds to the literature that documents language-specific sensitivity to particular…

Investigates the utterances of 1 French and 1 U.S. infant at 0; 5,0; 8,0; 11, and 12 by transcribing and acoustically analyzing them for syllable duration and vowel format values. The French-learning infant tended to produce more regularly timed nonfinal syllables and showed significantly more final-syllable lengthening than the English-learning…