The acquisition order of four Japanese verbs for the act of clothing was investigated. Each of the verbs investigated corresponds to the act of clothing different body parts. There are two theories for the prediction of acquisition order: the checklist and the prototype theories of word meaning. According to the checklist view, word meanings…

A study was made to determine the relationship of the words in each spelling series studied to the frequency of word usage as found in recognized studies of adult and child vocabularies, and other factors of interest to a textbook committee. The spelling list, for grades 2-8 inclusive, in the eight series of spellers approved for use in the Idaho…

Data from four recent language studies are examined to explore issues in concept-word relationships. Issues considered include: lexical development, bases of application, single-word functions, semantic domains, categorizing through naming, and concept matching as a model of word learning. (JMB)

Argues that inferring the intension (meaning) of children's words solely from the words' extension (referential scope) is problematic and describes two studies of the intension of children's words which involve a different approach. (JMB)

Relates the experiences of a tenth grader as she has grown up keeping a journal and what purposes the journal has served. (SRT)

Discusses relevance of language acquisition and use to educational practice and the student's school performance. (GB)

Explores the importance of encouraging children to play with language, to use it as an art medium, to experiment with sounds and words, and to extend meanings. (Author/AJ)

McCaig's article, "How Not To Analyze the Syntax of Children," appears in this issue, pp. 612-18. (SW)

Reviews some of the principal phenomena that have been found to characterize the acquisition of word meaning during the first two years of life, and proposes a theoretical framework which can be used to interpret these phenomena. (MP)

A brief history of the study of language acquisition is followed by a detailed discussion of two subareas: metalinguistic thinking and the development of literacy. (MP)

Two experiments were conducted to test Chinese children's comprehension of count-and mass-classifiers. Participants were Chinese-speaking children ages 3 thru 8, plus 16 adults. Results cohere with the linguistic analysis that the count-mass distinction is relevant in Chinese grammar. Results also cohere with the current theory in cognitive…

Reports on experiments investigating children's knowledge of the constraints on ellipsis constructions in English, focusing on subtle contrasts between verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) and VP-anaphora (VPA). Results from parallel experiments employing the same stimuli but with different methodologies show that young children can correctly distinguish…

A review of studies on children's syntactic development in Spanish focused on their use of subordinate clauses within complex sentences. Results suggested that, although they made some developmental gains from 2 years of age, 10-year-olds had not acquired the full range of semantic and syntactic expression characteristic of adult use of…

Examines phonetic variation in multisyllable babbling of infants from 7 to 11 months of age. The investigation was to verify assumptions that, in infant vocal development, there is a systematic increase in the phonetic variation of these babbles, and separate stages of repetitive and nonrepetitive babbling are posited. (22 references) (GLR)