bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Discourse and the acquisition ofeat
Authors: Rispoli Matthew
Published: February 2009

English has several classes of transitive verbs which can optionally appear without an undergoer. Despite their similar syntactic sub-categorization, there are at least three different semantic subclasses that allow undergoer omission. Information sources based on surface structure, for example, syntactic bootstrapping, cannot inform the child of the semantic representation of these verbs. The focus of this paper is the acquisition of a single English verb,eat. The transcripts of 40 children, who were audiotaped monthly from 1;0 to 3;0, showed thateatwas the first member of this verb class to be acquired. Some 1276eatsentences were analysed for the presence of overt undergoer arguments across levels of cumulative verb lexicon (CVL) size, and two discourse conditions: (1) UNDERGOER ACCESSIBLE and (2) OPEN (to undergoer omission). Results indicate that undergoer omission became associated with discourse conditions when CVL size rose above 75 types, at MLU approximately 2·4 and age approximately 2;3. This suggests that two-year-old children are sensitive to a relationship between undergoer omission and discourse context.
Phonological characteristics of words young children try to say
Authors: Dobrich Wanda , Scarborough Hollis S.
Published: February 2009

To examine the possible 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. Except at the youngest ages, few developmental changes in target word characteristics were seen, and the observed differences were largely accounted for by syntactic, lexical, and pragmatic factors. The results suggest that selectional constraints persist only briefly in the course of language acquisition.
Mental terms in mothers' and children's speech: similarities and relationships
Authors: Furrow David , Moore Chris , Davidge Jane , Chiasson Lorraine
Published: February 2009

In this study, mental terms in mothers' and their children's speech at two and three years of age were studied in order to examine the relationships between maternal and child use. Nineteen mother and child dyads were videotaped for one hour on each of two days when the children were 2;0 and again for two one-hour sessions on separate days when they were 3;0, and mental terms were noted. The utterances in which mental terms were used were coded for function. Results supported the existing picture of children's mental term use. Few terms appeared at 2;0, but many were used at 3;0 with think and know predominating. Mental terms occurred more commonly in utterances used to regulate the interaction between the participants than in utterances referring to mental states. Children's mental term use mirrored that of their mothers. Further, mothers' use of mental terms for particular functions when their children were 2;0 predicted their children's use at 3;0. While allowing no conclusions about causation, our findings suggest that the development of mental state language, and thus presumably a theory of mind, is fostered by the linguistic environment. Specifically, it is argued that the tendency of mothers to focus their children's attention on mental processes by talking about them and, more importantly, by using utterance types which conceivably direct the children to reflect on their own mental states, is associated with children's use of mental terms.
Can bilingual two-year-olds code-switch?
Authors: Lanza Elizabeth
Published: February 2009

Sociolinguists have investigated language mixing as code-switching in the speech of bilingual children three years old and older. Language mixing by bilingual two-year-olds, however, has generally been interpreted in the child language literature as a sign of the child's lack of language differentiation. The present study applies perspectives from sociolinguistics to investigate the language mixing of a bilingual two-year-old acquiring Norwegian and English simultaneously in Norway. Monthly recordings of the child's spontaneous speech in interactions with her parents were made from the age of 2;0 to 2;7. An investigation into the formal aspects of the child's mixing and the context of the mixing reveals that she does differentiate her language use in con-textually sensitive ways, hence that she can code-switch. This investigation stresses the need to examine more carefully the roles of dominance and context in the language mixing of young bilingual children.
Morphosyntactic development in Italian and its relevance to parameter-setting models: comments on the paper by Pizzuto & Caselli
Authors: Hyams Nina
Published: February 2009

Pizzuto & Caselli (1992) claim that data from the morphosyntactic development of Italian-speaking children are inconsistent with nativist, parameter-setting models of language development. In the present Note it is argued that much of the data which Pizzuto & Caselli adduce is irrelevant to the specific hypotheses they are evaluating and that those data which are relevant fully support parameter-setting and linguistictheoretic models, contrary to their claims.
Infant vocalizations and changes in experience
Authors: Hilke D. D.
Published: February 2009

The possibility that infant vocalizations occur in conjunction with significant changes in experience was tested in a study of seven infants aged 0;8. Each infant was videotaped during an isolated freeplay session with each of three toys. Two indices of changing experience were used to identify portions of the tape where increased vocalizing was expected. The Place Index identified potentially significant changes in experience via major changes in locus of attention. The Reaction Index employed certain rapid changes in expression (e.g. smile, startle, browchange as indicators of corresponding changes in subjective experience. As predicted, periods of the tape encompassed by either or both of these indices evidenced significantly more vocalizations than remaining portions of the tape. Implications of these results for theories of infant communicative competence and for infant language development are discussed.
Between-word processes in child phonology
Authors: Stemberger Joseph Paul
Published: February 2009

Most processes in child phonology have as their domain a single word or a smaller chunk of phonological material. Processes that involve the interaction of two or more words have never been examined. In a diary study of the speech of one child acquiring English, there were eight between-word processes. All were optional and occurred in fairly restricted environments. Most of the processes were of short duration. Consequences for the study of child phonology are discussed.
Overextensions in early language comprehension: evidence from a signal detection approach
Authors: Behrend Douglas A.
Published: February 2009

Two studies of children's early language comprehension were performed using the signal detection paradigm introduced by Thomas et al. (1981). Experiment 1 replicated the original findings of Thomas et al., demonstrating that 13-month-olds understand a word that a parent reported they would understand and did not understand a word that a parent reported they would not. In Experiment 2, the procedure was modified to test for overextensions in early language comprehension. On half of the trials, children saw an array of objects including a referent for a ‘known word’. On the other half, the array included an object perceptually similar to the referent of the known word, but which itself was not an appropriate referent (e.g. an apple instead of an orange). Though the children demonstrated an understanding of the known word, they also overextended that word to the inappropriate referent. Mechanisms for such overextensions are discussed, as is the general relationship between comprehension and production.
Linguistic input and early word meaning
Authors: Harris Margaret , Barrett Martyn , Jones David , Brookes Susan
Published: February 2009

Four mother–child dyads were videotaped in a longitudinal study of the relationship between linguistic input to children and early lexical development. Diary records were also kept by the mothers and, together with the videorecordings, were used to identify the contexts in which the children produced their first words. These were compared with the contexts in which the mothers used these same words. It was found that there was a strong relationship between the children's initial use of words and the most frequently occurring use of these words by the mothers. It was also found that although the majority of the children's first words were context-bound, a significant number were referential. The implications of these findings for current theoretical proposals concerning early lexical development are discussed.
Children learn from speech not addressed to them: the case of personal pronouns
Authors: Oshima-Takane Yuriko
Published: February 2009

A modelling experiment was conducted to determine if children would benefit from observing speech not addressed to them in discovering the correct use of first and second pronouns. Imitative behaviours of 18 English-speaking children who were about to learn personal pronouns were analysed under two modelling conditions. The non-addressee condition provided the child with systematic opportunities to observe the parents saying me/you with pointing actions directed towards each other as well as the parents saying me/you with pointing action directed towards the child. The addressee condition provided the child only with systematic opportunities to observe the parents saying me/you with pointing actions directed towards the child. Only children in the non-addressee condition imitated their parents' pointing actions and use of me/you without errors, suggesting that even children under two years old can attend to and can learn from speech not addressed to them.
Count/mass category acquisition: distributional distinctions in children's speech
Authors: Gordon Peter
Published: February 2009

The count/mass distinction represents a categorical differentiation of nouns into count nouns which can be individuated when quantified (e.g. a car, several tables) and mass nouns which may not (cf. *a water, *several sands). The emergence of this distinction was examined in the longitudinal speech data of two children. In the first analysis, use of count nouns and mass nouns was compared in noun phrase contexts that require count nouns (e.g. a X, another X). It was found that from the earliest samples children used more count nouns in these contexts, hence showing a distributional distinction of noun types. This result suggests very rapid acquisition of count/mass subcategories. A series of further analyses assessed the possibility that early differentiation of count and mass nouns may be due to rote learning. No evidence was found for this proposal. A final analysis examined the development of a rule that requires that singular count nouns must be modified by a determiner. Acquisition here was found to be more protracted in nature since determiners are not used consistently in ‘telegraphic’ speech. Problems concerning the learnability of the obligatory determiner rule are discussed along with some speculations concerning the role of semantics in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction.
Cue validity in Hebrew sentence comprehension
Authors: Sokolov Jeffrey L.
Published: February 2009

This study investigated the degree to which cue validity, as estimated from textual analyses, predicts the actual strength of grammatical cues as they are used by speakers of Hebrew. An experiment was conducted to determine the differential strengths of the linguistic cues employed by Hebrew speakers when assigning the role of patient in sentences. Monolingual Hebrew-speaking subjects 4, 5, 7, and 9 years old, as well as adults, were tested using a sentence-picture verification task. Six cues were included in the study: word order, the accusative object marker, the reflexive noun phrase and three verbal derivations. By presenting subjects with sentences which set these cues in competition with one another, a measure of the strength of each cue was obtained. The results of a regression analysis revealed strong positive correlations between estimated cue validities and actual cue strengths for all but the youngest age groups. These results were interpreted as suggesting that cue validity is highly predictive of actual cue strengths. In addition, the strengths of the six cues varied as a function of the subject's age. Two additional factors were hypothesized to account for the performance of the older subjects: increased sensitivity to the reliability of cues and discourse-based constraints.
Maternal speech to prelingual infants in Japan and the United States: relationships among functions, forms and referents
Authors: Morikawa Hiromi , Shand Nancy , Kosawa Yorio
Published: February 2009

Maternal speech to 3-month-old infants was compared for American and Japanese mother-infant dyads. Utterances were analysed at the levels of function, form and referent, and in relation to infant gaze direction. Loglinear categorical analysis revealed that infant gaze affected the intended functions of maternal speech differently for the two cultural groups. Cultural differences were also seen in the nature of function-form, and function-referent relationships. The differences seem to be consistent with culture-characteristic profiles of maternal behaviour towards older infants and children. It is suggested that transmission of culture through maternal speech starts at the earliest stage of infant development.
Early talk about the past: the origins of conversational stories of personal experience
Authors: Miller Peggy J. , Sperry Linda L.
Published: February 2009

This paper explores children's early talk about specific distant past events and its development into conversational stories of personal experience, with special focus on its evaluative function. The data consist of longitudinal home observations of five working-class children and their mothers from ages 2; 0 to 2; 6. Results indicate that during this period the children talked primarily about negative past events, especially events of physical harm; the rate of talk about specific past events doubled; temporally-ordered sequences increased dramatically; and the children became better able to accomplish such talk independently. In addition, one of the most striking findings is the extent to which these 2–year-olds were able to communicate their attitude toward the past event, with speech about the past containing five times more evaluative devices than other speech. These results suggest that (1) by age 2; 6 stories of personal experience emerged in incipient form, and (2) the roots of this genre lie not only in cognitive skills and social interactional support but in the emotional significance of the depicted event.
Vocabulary simplification for children: a special case of ‘motherese’?
Authors: Hayes Donald P. , Ahrens Margaret G.
Published: February 2009

A new corpus of spontaneous conversations between adults and children is examined for evidence that adults simplify their vocabulary choices when speaking with young children. If these simplifications are found to be age-dependent, then they would broaden the pattern of simplifications characteristic of ‘motherese’ to include lexical choice as well. For the age-range newborns to 12 years, the results are both consistent with and contrary to the attested set of grammatical simplifications. In this corpus, MLU and TTR are strongly age-dependent, but adults do not choose their words from the 10,000 most common word-types in English in an age-dependent manner. Rather, the additional types for school-aged children come from the same part of the vocabulary and share the same-shaped distributions as in adult speech with preschool children and infants. This absence of an age-dependent accommodation in word choice has implications for models of child lexical acquisition which assume adult language accommodation.
Children's production of commissive speech acts
Authors: Astington Janet W.
Published: February 2009

This study determined at what age and in what form children (aged 4;5 to 11;11) produce speech acts which commit them to some future action, by having them speak a doll's part in dialogues with the experimenter, who spoke for another doll. All children produced directive speech acts, indicating that the task was not too difficult for them, but only the commissive speech acts were analysed in detail. A majority of children at all ages produced at least one commissive speech act, but only the older children used the explicit performative verb promise to reassure the hearer of their commitment.
The acquisition of the meanings of modality in children aged eight and twelve
Authors: Coates Jennifer
Published: February 2009

Little is known about children's acquisition of modality. It seems clear that at the age of five, when they are said to be linguistically competent, children have not mastered the adult system of modal meaning. This paper describes research which tests children's understanding of modal meaning at the ages of eight and twelve. The results of these tests are compared with the results of the same test on adult informants. The research uses the card-sorting method devised by Miller (1971) to investigate semantic similarities and dissimilarities; cluster analysis of the data reveals the underlying patterns. My tests revealed that eight-year-old children have only a rudimentary system of modal meaning, and even by the age of twelve a child's system will not be isomorphic with the adult system.
Attribute saliency and metaphor interpretation in school-age children
Authors: Evans Mary Ann , Gamble Dianna Lynn
Published: February 2009

The present investigation examined the relationship between attribute saliency and metaphor interpretation in school children. Ortony's theory that metaphors entail salience imbalance prompted the generation of two types of metaphors, PREDICATE-PROMOTING (PP) and PREDICATE-INTRODUCING (PI) metaphors. An adult sample was used to select metaphors of each type which were then presented to 24 children in each of grades three, five, and seven (mean ages 8; 5, 10; 6 and 12; 8). The children were asked to generate attribute lists for TOPIC and VEHICLE terms and, six weeks later, to verbally explain metaphors containing those terms. Older children correctly interpreted more metaphors than younger children, and at each grade level no difference was observed between the number of correct interpretations of PP and PI metaphors. In addition, at all grade levels the incorrect ground of each child's interpretation errors most often had been listed in his/her attribute lists. This suggests that attribute saliency for the individual perceiving the metaphor plays a key role in the interpretation process.
Quality of adult vocalizations affects the quality of infant vocalizations
Authors: Bloom Kathleen
Published: February 2009

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the VERBAL component of babytalk affected the vocal quality of infants. Two groups of 20 0;3 infants experienced either conversational turn taking or random responsiveness of an adult. Adult responsiveness consisted of a smile, light touch to the abdomen, and a NONVERBAL ‘tsk, tsk, tsk’ sound (instead of speech). All infant vocalizations were counted and then coded as ‘syllabic’ or ‘vocalic’ sounds. The results of the study demonstrated that TURN TAKING facilitated a speak-listen pattern of vocalizing by the infant, but in the absence of the VERBAL component of the adult's response, turn taking had no special facilitative effect on syllabic sounds. It was concluded that what adults say to 3-month-old infants influences what infants ‘say’ in return. Possible mechanisms underlying the infant's vocal response to verbal input were reviewed. It was suggested that the more mature sounds (syllabic) may proportionally increase as a result of the combined effects of turn-taking and verbal stimulation on the motor control of respiration and phonation.
Role of adult input in young children's category evolution: II an experimental study
Authors: Banigan Rae L. , Mervis Carolyn B.
Published: February 2009

Young children's initial categories often are not identical to the adult category labelled by the same word. Eventually, children's categories must evolve to correspond to the adult standard. The purpose of this study was to consider the relative effectiveness of four input strategies in inducing the child to learn the adult-appropriate label and begin to form a new category. Fifty-six children aged 2;0 were taught new labels for objects that they included in categories labelled by different names. Comprehension and production post-tests were then administered. As expected, the most effective strategy involved labelling an object and providing both a physical demonstration and a verbal description of important attributes that made the object a member of the adult-appropriate category. The label plus physical demonstration strategy was next most effective. Neither the label plus verbal description strategy nor the label only strategy was effective for children of this age. Results also indicated that these 24 month olds did not yet honour the convention of mutual exclusivity of basic level categories.
The effect of previously learned words on the child's acquisition of words for similar referents
Authors: Tomasello Michael , Mannle Sara , Werdenschlag Lori
Published: February 2009

The current study assessed the child's learning of an object label in two conditions: when its referent was highly similar and when its referent was highly dissimilar to the referent of a known child word. Twenty-two 2-year-old children were taught the name for an object. In a session several days subsequent, they were taught names for two new objects: one which was highly similar and one which was highly dissimilar to the referent of the word learned in the first session (two stimulus sets assured counterbalancing). In this second session, children produced the word with the similar referent more often than the word with the dissimilar referent. In third and fourth sessions (several days later), children continued to show better performance with the similar word in comprehension. These results were interpreted as evidence that young children find it easier to learn a new word when they are able to contrast its referent with that of a word they already know.
Development of forms and functions of interrogatives in children: a longitudinal study in Tamil
Authors: Vaidyanathan R.
Published: February 2009

The development of the forms and functions of interrogatives in parent-child interaction in the early stages of language acquisition is discussed with illustrative examples from data relating to two Tamil-speaking children and their parents. The analysis of the data reveals that children first acquire and use intonation questions followed byenga‘where’,enna‘what’ andyaari‘who’. Yes/no questions using the interrogative marker-aaare acquired in the next stage when the children are able to use verb endings. Similarly question words that take case markers are acquired in the next stage. It is emphasized that interrogatives serve a multiplicity of communicative functions and are not restricted to the information-seeking role. Children, when they begin to use interrogatives, model their usage of them on the adult behaviour patterns to which they have been exposed, both in terms of form and function.
Private speech: evidence for second language learning strategies during the ‘silent’ period
Authors: Saville-Troike Muriel
Published: February 2009

This study focuses on children who go through a ‘silent’ period early in the course of second language development, during which they largely cease verbal communication with speakers of the second language (English). Video recordings with radio microphones under natural conditions revealed that most of these children engaged in extensive private speech, which they were found to use for a variety of intrapersonal learning strategies, including (1) repetition of others' utterances, (2) recall and practice, (3) creation of new linguistic forms, (4) paradigmatic substitution and syntagmatic expansion, and (5) rehearsal for overt social performance. Quantity and quality of private speech was related not only to the children's level of cognitive development and the difficulty of the learning task (confirming previous research), but also to the children's social orientation and learning style, and to the domain of knowledge (language) that was being acquired.
New names from old words: related aspects of children's metaphors and word compounds
Authors: Elbers Loekie
Published: February 2009

Language has two mechanisms for creating new names from old words; combining morphemes and changing word meaning. Word compounds are clear cases of ‘combining’, metaphors of ‘changing’. A categorial framework for relating compounds and metaphors is presented and used in discussing aspects of their development. compelled and preferred compounds and metaphors are distinguished. Preferred compounds tend to serve the function of being conceptually precise, whereas preferred metaphors tend to serve ‘suggestive’ functions. Metaphoric compounds, which may integrate both functions, seem to be characteristic of middle childhood. Metaphors then may also acquire a language-learning function. It is suggested that the so-called literal stage, does not exist, but that the forms and functions of metaphor change in the course of development.
Cognitive and linguistic factors in the development of word definitions
Authors: Benelli Beatrice , Arcuri Luciano , Marchesini Gianni
Published: February 2009

Three studies were carried out in order to account for development of word definitions. Study i was aimed at analysing the role of class inclusion skills and age (5– and 7–year-olds and adults) in production of definitions containing superordinate categorical terms. No differences were found between 7-year-olds who had passed a class inclusion task and those who had not passed it as regards number of definitions containing superordinates, while differences were found between younger and older children and between children and adults. Study 2 was aimed at obtaining some normative criteria on the ‘goodness’ of definitions provided in Study 1, by using adult judges. It was found that the best definitions are those which contain both categorical terms and specific information about the to-be-defined object. It was also found that adults may adjust their standard definitional criteria to the kind of interlocutor (i.e. a child or a Martian). Study 3 confirms that younger children's definitions fall far short of the adult informativeness and completeness criteria while, by the age of ten, such criteria are met. Overall results were interpreted as conforming to a progressive conventionalization of children's strategies for defining objects.
Phonological development of two-year-old monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking children
Authors: Anderson Raquel , Smith Bruce L.
Published: February 2009

Phonetic and phonological analyses were performed on spontaneous speech samples of six 2–year–old monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-learning children. The analyses showed a number of patterns of sound usage similar to those found in English-learning children of the same age, as well as children from other linguistic backgrounds. These findings add support to the claim that certain universal patterns exist in phonological development. However, a number of patterns were also observed which seemed to be accounted for by the target language being acquired. Similarities and differences among the individual children are also discussed.
Learning to use prepositions: a case study
Authors: Tomasello Michael
Published: February 2009

The current study documented one child's earliest use of prepositions during her second year of life. The spatial oppositions up-down, on-off, in—out and over—under were first to be learned. These words were all used initially in non-prepositional senses (mostly as holophrastic, verb-like requests for activities) prior to prepositional usage. They were seldom omitted or misused. The prepositions with, by, to, for, at and of were learned later. Four of these were used to express at least two distinct case relationships, and some case relationships (instrumental and dative) were indicated by more than one of these words. These later learned prepositions were not used by adults or learned by the child as holophrases, but rather they were acquired as distinct lexical items by means of analytic learning strategies that employed some form of ‘extraction’ from adult phrases. These words were omitted and misused much more often than the spatial oppositions. Differences in the acquisition pattern of these two groups of prepositions were attributed to linguistic rather than to cognitive factors.
Performance factors in subject-auxiliary inversion by children
Authors: Nakayama Mineharu
Published: February 2009

Children's reported copying-without-deletion errors, like ‘Whose is that is?’, have often been interpreted as the result of a non-adult rule of subject–aux inversion. By contrast, this study presents a performance account of these errors and supports this account by investigating what factors impede children's performance. Using an elicitation task, 16 test sentences were evoked from 16 3- to 5-year-old children. In particular, errors appeared (1) when the subject NP contained a relative clause, (2) when the relative clause had an object gap, and (3) when the relative clause was long. Since errors occurred in response to some sentence types and not others, and the children who made copying-without-deletion errors produced at least four correct responses, these results were interpreted as support for the performance account.
Writing in four- to six-year-olds: representation of semantic and phonetic similarities and differences
Authors: Landsmann Liliana Tolchinsky , Levin Iris
Published: February 2009

When asked to write an utterance, nursery children and kindergartners often produce strings of unrelated characters. We analysed whether these invented writings reflect similarities and differences in the phonetic and semantic aspects of the utterance. One hundred and twenty Israeli children were asked to write pairs of nouns that share a syllable (e.g. pe ‘mouth’ and perach ‘flower’) and series of sentences that share either mainly nouns or mainly verbs. The older the children, the more their invented writing reflected common linguistic elements and length of utterance. Similarities and differences on the word level were represented at a younger age than those on the syllabic level. Nouns were represented in children's written productions earlier than verbs and adverbs. Invented writing was interpreted as a linguistic act, drawing on the semantic, syntactic and phonological levels of language.
Prosody and the development of comprehension
Authors: Cutler Anne , Swinney David A.
Published: February 2009

Four studies are reported in which young children's response time to detect word targets was measured. Children under about six years of age did not show the response time advantage for accented target words which adult listeners show. When semantic focus of the target word was manipulated independently of accent, children of about five years of age showed an adult-like response time advantage for focussed targets, but children younger than five did not. It is argued that the processing advantage for accented words reflects the semantic role of accent as an expression of sentence focus. Processing advantages for accented words depend on the prior development of representations of sentence semantic structure, including the concept of focus. The previous literature on the development of prosodic competence shows an apparent anomaly in that young children's productive skills appear to outstrip their receptive skills; however, this anomaly disappears if very young children's prosody is assumed to be produced without an underlying representation of the relationship between prosody and semantics.
Turn taking affects the quality of infant vocalizations
Authors: Bloom Kathleen , Russell Ann , Wassenberg Karen
Published: February 2009

Two groups of 20 infants aged 0; 3 experienced either conversational turn taking or random responsiveness of an adult. All infant vocalizations were counted and then each was categorized as a speech-like (syllabic) sound or a nonspeech-like (vocalic) sound. The results of this experiment indicated that turn taking caused changes in the quality of infant vocal sounds. When the adult maintained a give-and-take pattern, the infant produced a higher ratio of syllabic/vocalic sounds. The effect of turn taking on infant vocalizations was discussed in terms of its possible adaptive value for adult responsiveness.
Sound-meaning correspondences in babbling
Authors: Blake Joanna , Fink Robert
Published: February 2009

The hypothesis that prelinguistic vocalizations contain extensive and systematic sound-meaning correspondences was examined through an exhaustive analysis of the babbling of five infants in their second year. These infants were videotaped over a period of three to six months at home and at a day-care centre. Their babbled utterances were transcribed phonetically and categorized according to consonant-type and vowel-type. Contexts for each utterance were also categorized, primarily according to the infant's simultaneous action. A quantitative analysis of co-occurrences between phonetic and contextual categories determined that across infants between 14 and 40% of utterances recurred in particular contexts with a greater than expected frequency. These findings support Halliday's (1975a) notion that babbling is not entirely random but contains consistent sound-meaning relations that are not adult-modelled. They also extend the notions of continuity between prelinguistic and linguistic stages of development to the semantic domain.
Communicative functions of pitch range and pitch direction in infants
Authors: Marcos Haydée
Published: February 2009

The communicative functions of pitch direction and pitch range during the second year were investigated. The research focusses on initial plus repeated requests, either for objects or for co-operation, which were contrasted against giving, showing and labelling. Infants aged 1; 2 to 1;10 were observed in interaction with their mothers in a semistructured situation. Vocalizations were coded separately for communicative function and for prosodic features. Results show that pitch range is consistently higher (1) for repeated requests than for initial requests for objects and (2) for initial requests for objects and for co-operation than for labelling. Giving and showing have an intermediate rank between requests and labelling. Trends in prosodic contours were observed in both requests and labelling: rising tones were more frequently associated with requests whereas falling tones appeared more often in conjunction with labelling.
Concept formation and its relation to word learning and use in the second year
Authors: Lucariello Joan
Published: February 2009

Developmental differences in object word learning and use were investigated. Two groups of infant speakers: Beginner (vocabularies under 50 words) and Advanced (vocabularies over 50 words), participated in a concept formation and word learning and generalization experiment. Results indicated that both speaker groups formed concepts of and learned words for the to-be-learned objects, and generalized these words. However, Advanced speakers learned more concepts and words, and engaged in broader generalization than Beginner speakers. The following variables did not account for these developmental differences: child age, object permanence development, maternal speech, child action on objects. These findings can be explained by developmental differences in both the number and kind of object concepts formed in the second year. Words were primarily acquired for object concepts by both speaker groups. However, Beginner speakers formed fewer concepts, thus having a less extensive conceptual base supporting word learning. This may account for their lower levels of vocabulary acquisition. Additionally, Beginner speakers appear to form prototype/exemplar-based object concepts, leading to limited word extension, while Advanced speakers form featurally based object concepts, leading to broader extension.
Acquisition strategies in a first and second language: are they the same?
Authors: Cain Jacquelin , Weber-Olsen Marcia , Smith Rosslyn
Published: February 2009

Will adults whose native language is English and children whose native language is Spanish follow the same strategies in acquiring the category of noun gender and its functions in Spanish? This investigation shows that there are significant differences in first- and second-language acquisition. Performance on five tasks eliciting responses containing gender agreement was measured for two groups. Results suggest that there is a developmental progression in acquisition of noun gender for both groups. Nevertheless, on tasks containing grammatical and/or semantic conflict, even the linguistically least-experienced adults reflected correct, adult-like strategies for Spanish gender agreement, whereas only the oldest children performed in this manner.
Linguistic significance of babbling: evidence from a tracheostomized infant
Authors: Locke John L. , Pearson Dawn M.
Published: February 2009

The role of babbling in language development is not well understood. One source of evidence is the utterances of infants who were tracheostomized during the period in which they would normally have produced syllabic vocalization. We describe here the phonetic patterns and linguistic development of a girl called Jenny. She was tracheostomized and generally aphonic from 0;5–1;8 but cognitively and socially normal, with near-normal comprehension of language. Acoustic analyses of Jenny's utterances following decannulation revealed a tenth of the canonical syllables which might be expected in normally developing infants, an extremely small inventory of consonant-like segments, and a marked preference for labial obstruents. In these ways, she resembled a group of infants of the same age who also cannot hear their oral-motor movements, the congenitally deaf, suggesting that the audibility of babbling contributes to its onset. Two months following decannulation, when Jenny was 1;10, she produced only a handful of different words. We think this is because aphonia prevented her from discovering the referential value of vocal expression and discouraged the formation of a phonetic repertoire that could be appropriated for lexical service. This unusual case suggests that babbling normally facilitates the development of language and speech.
The acquisition of Irish: a study of word order development
Authors: Hickey Tina
Published: February 2009

This study examines the development of word order patterns in Irish, a strict VSO language. It was found that the three children studied used subject-initial utterances considerably more frequently than adults in input, and that in both adult and child the elision of the verb ‘to be’ played a significant role. Another significant factor was found to be the different restrictions on main verbs and verbal nouns with regard to the subject: in neutral sentences the main verb always precedes the subject, while the verbal noun always follows it. The Bates & MacWhinney (1979). hypothesis that early verb initialization results from a tendency to place new information before given information was also investigated.
Subject, topic and Sesotho passive
Authors: Demuth Katherine
Published: February 2009

Counter to findings in English, German and Hebrew, recent acquisition studies have shown that the passive is acquired early in several non-Indo-European languages. In an attempt to explain this phenomenon, this paper addresses certain typological phenomena which influence the early acquisition of passives in Sesotho, a southern Bantu language. After outlining the structure of the Sesotho passive and its syntactic and discourse functions, I examine Sesotho-speaking children's spontaneous use of passives, showing that the acquisition of passives in Sesotho is closely linked to the fact that Sesotho subjects must be discourse topics. I conclude that a detailed examination of how passive constructions interact with other components of a given linguistic system is critical for developing a coherent and universally applicable theory of how passives are acquired.
Structure and function of baby talk in a day-care centre
Authors: Morra Pellegrino Maria Luisa , Scopesi Alda
Published: February 2009

The aim of this study is to examine how caretakers speak to young children in a day-care centre and particularly to investigate how they adjust their language, according to children's age and to size of groups. Five Italian teachers were observed, each one during six different sessions. Children's ages were 0;10–1;2 and 2;6–3;0. The number of children varied from a rather large group (seven children) to a small group (three children) to a single child. Language was taperecorded during free-play sessions of ten minutes. Context was noted by two observers. Transcripts were analysed according to structural features (syntactical complexity, redundancy, type-token ratio, speed) and functional features (proportion of utterances with different purpose: control and organization of child behaviour, empathy, conversation and teaching). Results show some significant differences in structure and function according to children's age and group size.
Young children's conversations with their mothers and fathers: differences in breakdown and repair
Authors: Tomasello Michael , Conti-Ramsden Gina , Ewert Barbara
Published: February 2009

In this study we compared the conversations of mothers and fathers with their children at 1;3 and 159, with special attention to breakdown-repair sequences. We found that, overall, children and secondary caregiver fathers experienced more communicative breakdowns than did children and primary caregiver mothers. More specifically, fathers requested clarification of their children more often than did mothers, and they most often used a non-specific query (e.g. What?). Mothers used more specific queries (e.g. Put it where?) and were involved in more ‘looped’ sequences involving multiple requests for clarification. Fathers also failed to acknowledge child utterances more often than did mothers. After a father non-acknowledgement, children tended not to persist and when they did they often received further non-acknowledgements; the dyad did not often return to the child's original topic. After a maternal non-acknowledgement, on the other hand, children persisted and the dyad more often returned to its previous topic. The results are interpreted as support for the Bridge Hypothesis which claims that fathers present children with communicative challenges that help prepare them for communication with less familiar adults.
Conversational or communicative skill? A reassessment of two-year-olds' behaviour in miscommunication episodes
Authors: Shatz Marilyn , O'Reilly Anne Watson
Published: February 2009

Young children's competence in using and responding to clarification requests may reflect their desire to achieve goals through the direction of others rather than knowledge that messages must be understood by another mind. This possibility was addressed by examining miscommunication episodes between children aged 2;6 and their parents in videotaped free play sessions. Although the children generally responded appropriately in form to parental clarification requests, they responded more often to and resolved successfully more of those following their own requests than those following their assertions. Thus, the results support the idea that young children are frequently motivated to repair their utterances when they have not achieved some overt behaviour desired from others. These findings are discussed in the light of the conversational experience two-year-olds bring to clarification situations.
Relations between prosodic variables and communicative functions
Authors: Flax Judy , Lahey Margaret , Harris Katherine , Boothroyd Arthur
Published: February 2009

Three children were observed interacting with their mothers at three different times: before the onset of single words, when vocabulary consisted of 10 words, and when vocabulary consisted of 50 words. Relations between communicative functions and acoustic analyses of prosodie variables (i.e. rise vs. nonrise of terminal contours) were studied. Considerable variability was found among the children in the number of rises produced overall and those produced for any function. Each child's use of rise was fairly constant over time and rises were produced RELATIVELY more frequently than nonrises with functions requiring a response from the listener. Factors affecting similarities and differences are discussed.
Early lexical development and maternal speech: a comparison of children's initial and subsequent uses of words
Authors: Barrett Martyn , Harris Margaret , Chasin Joan
Published: February 2009

In Harris, Barrett, Jones & Brookes (1988), we reported the results of a detailed analysis of the initial uses of the first 10 words which were produced by four children. The present paper reports the results of an analysis of the subsequent uses of these 40 words. This analysis reveals that seven qualitatively different patterns of change occurred between the children's initial and subsequent uses of these words; the particular patterns of change which occurred support Barrett's (1986) model of early lexical development. In addition, it was found that, although there was a strong relationship between maternal speech and the children's initial word uses, the relationship between maternal speech and the children's subsequent word uses was very much weaker. These findings indicate that the role of linguistic input in early lexical development may decline quite sharply once the child has established initial uses for words.
Directive interactions and early vocabulary development: the role of joint attentional focus
Authors: Akhtar Nameera , Dunham Frances , Dunham Philip J.
Published: February 2009

Maternal directiveness, assessed by the mother's use of prescriptives, is correlated with slow vocabulary development. As prescriptives are most often used to redirect a child's attention to a different object or activity, it is hypothesized that attentional regulation underlies this negative relationship. In the present study, twelve mothers were videotaped interacting with their children aged 1;1, and 100 maternal utterances were coded for pragmatic intent. Prescriptives were coded as either changing (LEADING) or FOLLOWING the child's focus of attention. Only the frequency of mothers' FOLLOW-prescriptives correlated significantly with a productive vocabulary measure taken at 1;10. This correlation was high and positive, indicating that, given joint focus, directing a 13-month-old's behaviour can have beneficial effects on subsequent vocabulary development.
Later rather than sooner: extralinguistic categories in the acquisition of Thai classifiers
Authors: Carpenter Kathie
Published: February 2009

An experimental elicitation task with children between the ages of 1;8 and 11;3 shows that children learning Thai numeral classifiers begin with purely distributional information: specifically, (1) that classifiers must appear in the post-numeral position, and (2) that classifiers comprise a conventional, closed set of words. Semantic organizing features, such as salient features of the head noun's referent, appear later than these syntagmatic organizing features. Use of such semantic information is not an immature ‘first guess’ at grammatical categories, but rather, a necessary component of adult linguistic competence, because the categories are productive both for older children and for adults.