This paper outlines the degree to which age and verb vocabulary size are predictive of changes in the reported usage of English verbs that are irregular in their past tense form in a sample of more than 1,000 children. (Contains 40 references.) (JL)

Infants were followed longitudinally from 1;2 to 1;10. Parents maintained a journal of child's spoken words and, at 2-month intervals, completed representative checklist of words produced. Results suggest that the diary method is more effective during early emergence of language, and the representative checklist method is more effective late in…

The relationship between different measures of maternal directiveness and different measures of referential style were investigated in the same group of eight mother-infant dyads. Findings suggest that the attentional regulation hypothesis may be less valuable as a means of explaining stylistic variation in early vocabulary composition. (15…

Presents analyses of the use of the essential connectives "so,""because,""then," and "but" in narratives of children aged three to nine years. Connectives were used semantically, pragmatically, or, rarely, in error. Age changes were minimal. Structural complexity and elaboration improved throughout the…

The role that talk plays in socialization, social development, and possibly cognitive development is described. Research on talk is categorized as follows: studies that consider talk as a tool for investigation; studies that focus on development of grammar or language acquisition; and studies that fall between those extremes. (LB)

Attempts to define children's (age 8-10) linguistic needs and interests to provide a basis for foreign language syllabus planning. A questionnaire administered to 637 children determined the social and psychological roles children like to play; the topics they prefer to discuss; the functions they most frequently use; and the notions children are…

Examines the relationship between sign language and gesture in language acquisition. Specifically, the question is asked, are sign language and nonlinguistic gestures treated differently by infants acquiring a sign language? The answer is found in reexamining data concerning two deaf children learning American Sign Language (ASL). The data…

Three mother-child dyads were videotaped in a free play setting when children were two- and three-years old. Children's spontaneous comprehensible utterances were rated for grammaticality and ambiguity of function, and mothers' responses were noted. (Contains 14 references.) (Author)

Reviews caregiver communication behaviors that have been described in the child language literature as facilitating language learning and use. Strategies for engaging and sustaining interactions with young children are presented. Accompanying scripts provide examples of early childhood educators interacting with children during play and daily…

Drawing on archival data on the sound systems of five children ages 3 to 4 with normal development and 47 children ages 3 to 6 with phonological delay, one chain shift (interaction of phonological substitution errors) was identified in the speech of six children. Different derivational and constraint-based accounts of the chain shift were…

Examined the role of animacy and pronouns as children ages 2 to 3 years acquired transitive construction. Participants learned two nonce verbs, one of which was modeled in several transitive sentence frames and the other in neutral sentence frames. Many children produced transitive sentences with the first verb, but only children near age 3…

Two studies explored the relationship between young children's pragmatic skills and their grammatical development. The studies involved videotaping children with and without autism interacting with their parents at age 1;2 and 2;7. In both studies, pragmatic accomplishments of mutual attention, as well as mother's conversational style, explained…

Compared the effects of negative evidence versus positive input on the acquisition of irregular past-tense verb forms. Young children from two London nursery schools participated in a within-subjects design over five weeks. Results indicated that improvements in the grammaticality of child speech were considerably greater in cases where negative…

Two experiments examined infants' reliance on object shape versus color for word generalization to animate and inanimate objects. Infants were taught labels for either novel vehicles or novel animals using preferential-looking procedure or an interactive procedure. Results of both experiments indicated that infants limited their word…

Three studies tested the hypothesis that children's difficulty acquiring dimensional adjectives, such as big and little, is a consequence of how these words are used by adults. Findings indicated that children easily acquired novel dimension words when such words were used in a strictly comparative fashion, but had difficulty when also exposed to…