Two experiments related to the development of verbal self-control in children were conducted. In the first experiment, 36 adults and 36 four year olds were administered a vocal alone, a motor alone, and a combined-reaction-time task. In the second experiment, 54 kindergarten subjects and 60 fifth-grade subjects were each administered a double…

The thesis of the paper is that the process of learning a second language, if successful, is the same as that of learning a first one. The paper discusses various objections that have been raised against this thesis, and it discusses the considerable body of research which explores it. It examines the appropriateness of the research data for…

A framework which considers speech and language as separate entities in a symbiotic relationship is presented, and basic questions are raised concerning how speech and language function together and what their reciprocal effects are. Based on the notion that speech and language are independent, various examples of speech without language and of…

This paper examines the validity of diagnostic categories frequently used to classify children with severe language disorders by determining the relationship of the categories to independently derived developmental, psychological, and medical variables. It is argued that the classification systems currently available too often fail to achieve the…

The Entry Survey is a 22-item, individually administered test assessing kindergarten children's language skills. Sixteen of the items address the semantic development of the following pairs of polar opposites: before-after, large-small, tall-short, and thick-thin. The remaining six items address letter identification ("c,""m,"…

The major purpose of this paper is to initiate discussion on the validity of systematic phonemics in the area of language acquisition. This is not an attempt to write a phonology, but rather an outline of some theoretical and formal devices that may be used for gaining insight into the phonological system of the child. An evaluation procedure…

Since the 1950's there has been a tremendous shift in the way language and language behavior is viewed. The shift is characterized as a general movement away from surface observation and analysis to attempts at the description and analysis of underlying linguistic forms. The interest in underlying linguistic forms has, in a rather natural way, led…

This paper, based on Rosenbaum's (1967) grammar of adult English, attempts to apply ideas of deep structure and transformations to child grammar. The main rules predicated include phrase structure rules, segment structure rules, contextual features, and transformational rules. In this approach, the role of transformations is to segment and place…

The monograph under review is a study of the acquisition of certain complex linguistic structures by children over the age of five. After a short introduction, Chomsky describes in chapter 2 the linguistic properties of four types of constructions: (1) John is eager to see; John is easy to see; (2) John promised Bill to shovel the driveway; John…

The purpose of this study was to investigate children's acquisition of the non-comparative forms of spatial adjectives and to specifically test the following experimental questions: (1) Are positive-pole terms, or those such as "big," which indicate extent along a dimension, acquired earlier than negative-pole terms? (2) Does…

Six papers dealing with crosslinguistic generalizations are summarized and discussed here. Two of them were about question structure: "Language Universals and Sociocultural Implications in Deviant Usage: Personal Questions in Swedish" by C. Paulston and "Valley Zapotec: Identical Rule for Both wh Question Movement and Relative Clause Constituent…

The distinctive attributes of human beings, their culture, environment, and the language by which they give meaning to that environment are explored in this book. It also considers the relationship of the school to the community and to language, as well as how human beings accommodate to change, specifically that encountered by children in the new…

The author discusses "the parallels between learning English as a foreign language and learning English as a native language and their relevance for the construction of appropriate teaching materials." Four postulates or language universals are presented about the order in which children learn the phonological features of their native language…

Verbs (4800) from 1200 compositions written by Nebraska students (grades 3-6) were examined using the most sophisticated grammatical analysis available to determine children's use of the English verb system and to compare their use to recent studies of the verb in adult writing. Information obtained included the following items: Children used…

Since pronunciations of vowel clusters are among the most unpredictable letter-sound correspondences in English and therefore children learning to read must often rely on something other than spelling as a clue to pronunciation of vowel cluster words, data relating to pronunciation frequencies of certain vowel clusters were gathered for this…