Three questions were asked that explored the linguistic fine-tuning hypothesis and how parents might model language: (i) do parents significantly tune to their children's productive language or non-verbal cognition during play? (ii) is the level of the linguistic tuning different in the Down syndrome (DS) population compared to a typically…

Concepts of containment, support, and degree of fit were investigated using nonverbal, preferential-looking tasks with 9- to 14-month-old infants and adults who were fluent in either English or Korean. Two contrasts were tested: tight containment vs. loose support (grammaticized as "in" and "on" in English by spatial prepositions and "kkita" and…

This paper, based on naturalistic data, describes the acquisitional course and use of the articles "a" and "the" in young English-speaking children (18-61 months), with special emphasis on the role of individual variation. A growth modeling approach to the data reveals that children's individual acquisition schedules are similar in trend, but vary…

Recurrence analysis is introduced as a means to investigate syntactic coordination between child and caregiver. Three CHILDES ( MacWhinney, 2000) corpora are analyzed and demonstrate coordination between children and their caregivers in terms of word-class n-gram sequences. Results further indicate that trade-offs in leading or following this…

This study investigated the impact of a short-term interaction-focused parenting curriculum on maternal behaviors and child development outcomes. Participants were 94 teen-mother-child dyads; 48 in the intervention group received a relationship-focused curriculum offered in 24, 1-hour sessions. Maternal behaviors during play were videotaped and…

Designed as a resource for parents, this book provides them with the information and advice they need to make informed decisions about what language "policy" to adopt with their children. The authors, professional applied linguists, draw on their own experience as parents of successfully bilingual children and on interviews with other bilingual…

The phonological rhythm of French is characterized by a tendency to syllabic isochrony within an utterance and a clear final lengthening, whereas the rhythm of English is stress-timed. A study of babbling at a turning period of the child's development has shown that the French child acquires adult phonological rhythm quite early in interactive…

Research and theory on language acquisition and language socialization are examined and compared. The language acquisition perspective is that the central question is how children acquire forms and patterns of language, with syntax at the core, so early and so rapidly. From the viewpoint of language socialization, the issue is not only of…

An often-noted contrast between child and adult language is that young children produce sentences both with and without lexical subjects even if subjects are obligatory in the adult system. However, in Dutch, there is no such structural difference between the earliest stages of Dutch child grammar and the adult stage where subjects are concerned.…

The vocabulary development in the first 11 weeks of English acquisition by a 5-year-old Japanese girl was studied. The girl and her mother (a linguistic researcher) arrived in the United States at the start of the study. Lexical data from a language diary kept by the mother and from adult and peer sessions were pooled to produce a chronological…

The relationship between language and symbolic play was studied in a sample of children identified as referential in style (multiple noun utterances exceeded pronoun or no-noun utterances), as compared with a sample identified as expressive in style (pronoun utterances or no-noun utterances exceeded multiple noun utterances). Children were…

A major purpose of the research reported here is to determine whether or not children of minority backgrounds possess the ability to tell stories and verbalize in narrative form at age 3 and 4. Narratives and speech play were collected over a 9-month period in two Headstart classes in Honolulu (Hawaii). The children, most of mixed backgrounds,…

Suggests that a survey of ESL programs all across the country narrows the approach to the subject of the role of the Canadian schools in the development and education of non-English speaking immigrant children. (Author/AM)

The early acquisition of the interrogative system, with data from Serbo-Croatian, is investigated. The subject is approached from the angle of adult-child interaction. A first-born pair of dizygotic twins were observed, beginning a month prior to the time when they first began to produce questions. (Author/RM)

The treatment of a 10-year-old elective mute boy is reported in detail. A learning principles based approach was used in a one-to-one therapeutic setting. Relatively normal speaking patterns were established after 15 months of treatment. (Author)