bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Developmental production of utterances from a series of lexemes
Authors: Kail Michèle , Segui Juan
Published: September 2008

51 children from 4; 11 to 8; 2 were given three words (a triplet made up of two nouns and one verb) and asked to produce an utterance with them. Words in the triplet were presented in every possible order. At all ages, the dominant responses to non-reversible triplets were utterances in which the animate noun served as the subject of the verb and the inanimate noun as its object, whatever the order of words within the triplet. Production of utterances in response to reversible triplets showed a clear differentiation with age (with the exception of responses to symmetrical triplets NVN for which the SVO structure is dominant at all ages). With non-symmetrical triplets (NNV or VNN), the strategy that assigns the function of subject to the first noun becomes progressively established. In the youngest children, a significant number of responses that preserve the order of stimulus elements is observed. This strategy results in attributing an identical grammatical function to the two nouns. As anticipated, isomorphism between stimulus structure and response structure diminishes with age.
Syntactic and semantic factors in the acquisition of before and after
Authors: Coker Pamela L.
Published: September 2008

Sixty kindergartners and sixty first graders were given three tasks to test their comprehension of the terms before and after. The results show that when temporal terms are acquired, they are first used as prepositions and then as subordinating conjunctions. When the child does not know the meaning of a temporal term, he frequently interprets it as meaning the next-event-in-time. There are two strategies (main-clause-first and order-of-mention) that the child may adopt when interpreting temporal terms used as subordinating conjunctions. The use of these strategies appears to be independent of the child's knowledge of the meanings of the terms. Contrary to previous research, it was found that before does not seem to be learned before after nor does there appear to be any stage where after is treated to mean before.
The development of vague modifiers in the language of pre-school children
Authors: Berndt Rita Sloan , Caramazza Alfonso
Published: September 2008

Pre-school children's comprehension of the adverbial modifiers very and sort of, when combined with two pairs of polar dimensional adjectives (big/little and tall/short) was experimentally investigated in 64 children (three, four and five years of age). The task involved the choice of an item from a graduated array of nine objects in response to questions combining the modifiers and adjectives. Results suggested that comprehension of very begins in the third year and is understood consistently by the four- and five-year-olds in combination with all four adjectives. Sort of is not understood by the three-year-olds, but appears to be available to the four- and five-year-olds. Results are interpreted as a reflection of an early appreciation that linguistic categories are not well bounded.
A developmental study of factivity and negation in complex syntax
Authors: Hopmann Marita R. , Maratsos Michael P.
Published: September 2008

Two groups of preschoolers and one group of young grade-schoolers were tested for their comprehension of presuppositions and negation in complex syntax. Four types of sentences were presented to each child: affirmative and negative versions of sentences with factive main predicates, which presuppose the truth of the proposition of the complement clause, and nonfactive main predicates, which do not. A forced-choice design was used: the children chose the agent subject mentioned in the complement clause, thus affirming the complement; or the unmentioned agent, thus denying the complement. Five factive predicates and five non-factive predicates were used so as to permit a comparison within each group. Competence increased into the early school years: the oldest group of participants showed a fair mastery of the syntax-semantics of the predicates of the study. The younger children showed errors of two different kinds, described as the Overextended Negation Tendency and the Overextended Affirmation Tendency. Both of these errors decreased markedly in the oldest group. The non-unitary nature of the acquired competence is discussed. In particular, it is pointed out that (1) factivity is not a grammatically marked operation and as such leads to what appears to be a gradual acquisition pattern; (2) the test of factivity comprehension employed here demanded a competence beyond that of normal use.
The acquisition and development of language by bilingual children
Authors: Volterra Virginia , Taeschner Traute
Published: September 2008

Analysing the gradual learning process through which a child becomes bilingual from early infancy, three stages can be distinguished: (1) the child has one lexical system which includes words from both languages; (2) the child distinguishes two different lexicons but applies the same syntactic rules to both languages; (3) the child has two linguistic codes, differentiated both in lexicon and in syntax, but each language is exclusively associated with the person using that language. Only at the end of this stage, when the tendency to categorize people in terms of their language decreases, can one say that a child is truly bilingual.
Speech discrimination in the language-innocent and the language-wise: a study in the perception of voice onset time
Authors: Eilers Rebecca E. , Wilson Wesley R. , Moore John M.
Published: September 2008

Discrimination of synthetically produced stimuli differing along the voice onset time continuum was assessed for infants and adults within the context of the Visually Reinforced Infant Speech Discrimination (VRISD) paradigm. English-learning infants' discrimination abilities were compared with two groups of English-speaking adults (a phonetically naive and a phonetically sophisticated group). Contrary to the predictions of the innateness hypothesis, English-learning infants showed evidence of discrimination only across the English phoneme boundary. Adults, on the other hand, were very successful in discriminating both across and within a range of phoneme boundaries. These results are discussed in terms of the presumed relationship between categorical perception and linguistic processing and in terms of synthetic speech continua.
Morphological development in Italian: connotation and denotation
Authors: Bates Elizabeth , Rankin Jane
Published: September 2008

Both longitudinal and experimental evidence were used in an examination of the development of adjectives vs. inflections for the expression of size and value concepts in Italian children. The longitudinal speech production records for two Italian children suggest that the concepts of size and value are understood and expressed linguistically by 2 years. One child acquired both adjectival and inflectional expressions for size simultaneously, while the other used adjectives for size and value several months prior to the acquisition of corresponding inflections. However, both children demonstrated productive use of size inflections at around MLU 3·0. A subsequent experiment with 84 children, ranging from 2 to 6 years, suggests that comprehension of size and value inflections is restricted to a narrow, denotative set of meanings based predominately on a strict interpretation in terms of size. This pattern stands in marked contrast to adult patterns on the same experiment, in which size inflections are interpreted connotatively as well, with meanings based on positive and negative affect as well as size. The relative contribution of Connotative vs. denotative factors in the development of reference is discussed.
The acquisition of inflections in Portuguese: a study of the development of person markers on verbs
Authors: Simões Maria Cecilia Perroni , Stoel-Gammon Carol
Published: September 2008

Longitudinal data on the development of personal inflections in Portuguese are presented. Analysis of the data reveals that, initially, the subjects used a single inflection for all verbs, regardless of the intended subject. The first formal distinction to appear was between verbs bearing the unmarked ending and those inflected for first person singular. Analyses of the acquisition of the standard first person inflections are presented in the form of rules; overgeneralization of these rules is evident, especially in perfect tense verbs. Possible explanations for the use of the third person singular verb form as the unmarked form are discussed.
The comprehension of ‘here’ and ‘there’
Authors: Charney Rosalind
Published: September 2008

Comprehension of words like here and there demands an ability to take the speaker as reference point whether or not his position agrees with one's own. Because children are known to have difficulty taking another person's viewpoint into account, it was hypothesized that children would be able to understand here and there with the speaker as reference point only after they were able to understand the terms with self as reference point. Fifty children age 2;6–3;6 were presented with two toys spaced a few feet apart and asked ‘Which one is over here/there?’ There were three conditions: E and S both sat next to (1) the same toy; (2) a different toy; and (3) E sat next to one toy while the other toy was near no-one. Contrary to the hypothesis, it was found that children did not comprehend the words with self as reference point first. Instead, the words appear to be understood first I with respect to an inconsistent reference point before children learn that the reference point is always the speaker.
Knowing what to say and wanting to say it: some communicative and structural aspects of single-word responses to questions
Authors: Rodgon Maris Monitz
Published: September 2008

The interrelation of semantic and communicative factors was considered in three children's single-word responses to adult questions. Parents asked more yes/no than naming questions. Children were able to use yes and no appropriately, but did not always do so. The children seemed to have related the form of yes/no questions to the use of yes/no answers, but communicatively were not always willing or able to produce yes/no answers when required. Naming questions were more often followed by appropriate than by inappropriate utterances. The relation of these findings to the importance of naming in early language acquisition, and to the findings of Horgan (1977) and Steffensen (1977) was considered.
Maternal speech: strategy or response?
Authors: Smolak Linda , Weinraub Marsha
Published: September 2008

The existing data concerning the effects of maternal speech on child language development are so conflicting that it is difficult to draw even tentative conclusions about this relationship. One potential contributor to this problem is our lack of information concerning the determinants of maternal speech. The present study was designed to separate those elements of maternal speech which are heavily influenced by child language levels from those that seem to represent the mother's consistent style or strategy for ‘teaching’ language. Syntactic, discourse, and communicative functions of mothers' speech were examined. Mothers of high-and low-level language children were compared when talking to their daughters and to another girl the same age as their daughter. Analysis indicated a striking amount of similarity and consistency in high vs. low mothers' speech to both their daughters and the other child. Those elements of maternal speech that did show differences tended to be features that are fairly easily monitored by mothers or are directly tied to child utterances.
Formation of internal structure in a lexical category
Authors: Bernstein Mark E.
Published: September 2008

What does the word chair mean? How does the category of objects bearing this name differ between adults and pre-school children? And how does the knowledge of a possible function of an object affect subjects' judgements? Answers to these questions were sought by means of sorting and rank ordering tasks. Subjects were shown drawings of a variety of objects on which one could sit, and were asked to indicate which ones they would call chairs. Those objects so judged to be category members were rank ordered for degree of typicality (or ‘best example’) by a paired-comparisons procedure. Half the subjects saw drawings of the objects alone, while the others saw a person sitting on each object. The results revealed that adults consistently judged some objects to be better examples than others, and that the provision of function information affected the judgements in a characteristic way. A different, less stable typicality structure was found in the children's category. Function cues caused the children's rank order judgements to change greatly. These findings are discussed within the framework of some recent theories of lexical concept formation in young children, and in relation to recent work on the nature of internal representations.
Basic level categorization in seven- and nine-month-old infants
Authors: Roberts Kenneth , Horowitz Frances Degen
Published: September 2008

The current reliance on linguistic data for inferences about the concept–word relationship has led to serious questions being raised regarding the existence and facilitative role of prelinguistic categories in early word learning. In three experiments a multiple habituation paradigm was used to examine the ability of 7- and 9-month-old prelinguistic infants to form a natural, basic-level object category. In Experiment 1, 9-month-old infants appeared to form a category of bird, but only when habituated to prototypical exemplars as opposed to poor exemplars. Discriminability between prototypical habituation exemplars and test stimuli was demonstrated in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, 7-month-olds did not form a category of bird when habituated to prototypes. These findings constitute independent evidence for the existence of a linguistically relevant nonlinguistic category prior to the onset of word comprehension. Moreover, formation of prelinguistic categories appears to be facilitated by exposure to prototypes. Such goodness-of-exemplar effects suggest a structural similarity between infants' prelinguistic categories and early semantic categories. Finally, nonlinguistic categorization of natural basic-level objects, as represented in line drawings, appears to emerge between 0;7 and 0;9.
Lexical influences on children's early positional patterns
Authors: Brown Barbara L. , Leonard Laurence B.
Published: September 2008

Two young children were studied from the period when their expressive lexicons were approximately 30 words until they showed productive two-word positional patterns in their speech. Word combinations meeting the criteria for positional productive, positional associative and groping patterns were identified and the period during which the words appearing in these patterns were acquired was then determined. Words used in positional productive patterns had generally emerged in the children's speech before those used in associative or groping patterns. When several words that could play a particular semantic role (e.g. actor) were already well established in the child's lexicon, positional productive patterns that were somewhat broader in scope appeared as early as lexically based patterns.
Learning discourse topic management in the preschool years
Authors: Foster Susan H.
Published: September 2008

The ability of children aged 0;1 to 2;6 to initiate and maintain topics of conversation is explored using videotaped data of mother–child interaction collected at home. An analysis of both verbal and non-verbal behaviours suggests that initially children attract attention exclusively to themselves as topics of conversation. The emergence of manipulative skills from 0; 5 and the development of deictic gestures from around the end of the first year facilitate the initiation of topics concerned with items in the physical environment. Finally, with the development of language, reference to intangibles becomes possible. In maintaining topics, children are initially capable of extended sequences only within the context of routines, but by 2;6 are able to maintain coherent topics independently. The implications of the analysis presented for understanding the role of prelinguistic communication in language development are discussed against the background of a modular framework.
Television as a talking picture book: a prop for language acquisition
Authors: Lemish Dafna , Rice Mabel L.
Published: September 2008

This study provides longitudinal observations of young children's behaviours while viewing television in their own homes, over a time when the children were actively involved in the process of language acquisition. Sixteen children were observed for a period ranging from 0; 6 to 0;8. At the beginning, their ages ranged from 0; 6.15 to 5.15; at the end, from 1; 2.15 to 3;0. The observations yielded documentation of an overwhelming and consistent occurrence of language-related behaviours among children and parents in the viewing situation. The categories of child and adult talk are reported, with description and examples of each category. The categories are compared with those reported for parent–child interactions outside the viewing experience, – in particular joint book-reading. A model of television as a talking picture book is proposed. It is argued that television has the potential to serve as a facilitator of children's language acquisition.
Cohesion and predication in child narrative
Authors: Bennett-Kastor Tina L.
Published: September 2008

This study traces the development of predicate use for genre and cohesion in the narratives of children aged 2 to 5, examining predicate structures and types and their linkages via three types of parallelism and by means of explicit connectives. After age 2, bivalent (transitive) active verbs were dominant; semantically, verbs of the DO and then GO categories dominated until age 5, when BE verbs ranked second. The dominant type of parallelism was reiteration of grammatical structure alone; reiteration of both predicate structure and lexical content decreased with age. Concerning connectives, 2-year-olds used the smallest number – primarily ‘and’ – while 5-year-olds used the greatest variety. However, by age 5, children used parallelism as the second most common connective device after ‘and’.
Language-specific and language-general in developing syntax
Authors: Dromi Esther , Berman Ruth A.
Published: September 2008

The distribution of a number of syntactic structures in the speech output of 102 Israeli preschoolers was examined. Findings on the proportion of grammatically analysable clauses, the patterning of word order in Hebrew child language, and the emergence of syntactic connectedness through coordination and subordination of clauses are reported. Our analysis reveals that while in some areas there are clearly age-related differences among preschool children, other types of syntactic patternings exhibit a stable behaviour. We refer to the importance of integrating findings for a wide variety of seemingly unrelated syntactic constructions across different discourse modes. We also claim that complex interactions between structural, semantic and pragmatic factors underlie the child's acquisition of syntax.
Environmental correlates of child copula verb growth
Authors: Richards Brian , Robinson Peter
Published: September 2008

A recurring result from studies which relate the frequency of input variables to rate of language development, is the link between auxiliary verb growth and yes—no questions addressed to children. Explanations for this relationship usually concentrate on the advantages of hearing stressed and non-contracted auxiliary forms in sentence-initial position over hearing unstressed, contracted forms in medial position in declaratives. If such accounts are correct, then it can be predicted that yes—no questions which place forms of COPULA be in initial position will also increase the rate of growth of children's COPULA verb development. This prediction was tested using a sample of 33 children, carefully matched for stage of language development at 1;9 and 2;0 years; rate of copula verb growth was then measured over the succeeding nine months. Analyses include an examination of the contribution of sub-categories of yes—no question, tag questions, and utterances containing sentence-final copulas to the growth of contracted and full copulas. Results confirm that the frequency of inverted copulas in yes—no questions predicts children's copula development. Nevertheless, caution is urged before interpreting the relationship in terms of a direct causal model.
Toward mastery of Italian morphology: a cross-sectional study
Authors: Caselli M. Cristina , Leonard Laurence B. , Volterra Virginia , Campagnoli M. Grazia
Published: September 2008

The use of Italian morphology was examined in 34 children ranging in age from 2;6 to 5;0. By the age of 3;6–4;0, high percentages of use in obligatory contexts were seen for a number of grammatical morphemes. Children age 2;6–3;0 showed percentages of use that were somewhat lower than those seen for the older children. In this age range, singular forms were used with higher percentages in obligatory contexts than plural forms, for several different types of grammatical morphemes. Greater control over singular forms in these younger children was corroborated by data from a comprehension task. Even at the younger ages studied, use of grammatical morphemes did not seem influenced by whether phonological eues to agreement were present, or whether the grammatical morphemes were homonymous. Percentages for grammatical morphemes in the form of free-standing morphemes were somewhat lower than percentages for morphemes taking the form of inflections, suggesting that the obligatory nature of inflections in Italian may be a more influential factor than the amount of morphological information contained in a grammatical morpheme.
Naming as a function of linguistic form-class and object categories
Authors: Akiyama M. Michael , Wilcox Sharon A.
Published: September 2008

We examined whether children rely on linguistic information (i.e. mass vs. count nouns) or object category information (i.e. objects vs. substances) when they name things. A grinder test was used, in which substances (e.g. water) maintain identity through transformation but objects (e.g. a cup) do not. Thirty children aged three through six were asked if the same name could be used for the same item after transformation. The items included pairs of amorphous substances and discrete objects (e.g. water – a cup), perceptually similar discrete objects (e.g. chalk – a crayon), and food items (e.g. corn – a bean). Children accepted the same name for food, ignoring linguistic information, and for objects, relying on linguistic information. In Experiment 2, 32 children aged five through eight were asked if the same name could be used for unfamiliar hardware and food items after transformation when they were labelled by nonsense mass and count nouns. Children tended to use the same name for food, relying on perceptual information. These results are discussed in terms of the active conceptualization about names of objects in relation to object characteristics.
Pronoun reversals: who, when, and why?
Authors: Dale Philip S. , Crain-Thoreson Catherine
Published: September 2008

Seventeen of a sample of 30 precocious talkers aged 1;8 produced at least one pronoun reversal (I/you) during unstructured play. This finding led to an examination of the role of cognitive and linguistic individual differences as well as contextual factors and processing complexity as determinants of pronoun reversal. Contrary to predictions derived from previous hypotheses, there were few differences between reversers and non-reversers, other than higher use of second person forms by reversers. Reversals were more likely to occur in certain contexts: semantically reversible predicates with two noun phrases, and in imitations (though the rate of imitation was lower overall in reversers). We propose that pronoun reversals commonly result from a failure to perform a deictic shift, which is especially likely when children's psycholinguistic processing resources are taxed. Children who did not produce any pronoun reversals tended to avoid pronoun use, especially second person forms. Overt reversal may thus reflect a risk-taking approach to language acquisition, which may be particularly characteristic of precocious children.
Is nativism sufficient?
Authors: Braine Martin D. S.
Published: September 2008

The past and present state of the empiricism–nativism issue is analysed. Empiricist philosophical doctrine (‘no innate ideas’) distinguished idea from structure or mechanism. However, Chomsky's conception of innate linguistic universals erased this distinction. The elimination left would-be empiricists without a coherent and defensible position. I argue that the issue remains alive primarily because of tension between two scientific tasks that face students of development. One is to discover what is cognitively and linguistically primitive, a task that encourages nativism. However, nativism is ultimately unsatisfactory because it systematically neglects the other task, which is to account for development, including the emergence of postulated innate primitives. To account for such primitives, it is necessary to relate them to particular central nervous System structures in such a way as to explain how the structure has the particular cognitive effects that define the primitive. That is likely to be difficult, and I show how the study of learning – much neglected in recent years – can help by reducing the number and type of innate primitives whose origin must be explained in that way.
The (non)realization of unstressed elements in children's utterances: evidence for a rhythmic constraint
Authors: Wijnen Frank , Krikhaar Evelien , Den Os Els
Published: September 2008

In this study it is argued that the omission of closed class morphemes and of unstressed syllables within words is related to their common characteristic, viz. that they are unstressed, rhythmically weak parts of utterances. Several strands of evidence indicate that it is unlikely that children are unable to perceive these elements in the input speech. The pattern of (non)realization of unstressed syllables within content words and the class of determiners, was analysed in two Dutch children from 1;6 to 2;11. It appeared that polysyllabic words were quite generally truncated in such a way that they fitted a trochaic (strong-weak) pattern, particularly in the early samples. Some observations with respect to the (non)realization of determiners are suggestive of an influence of an SW-constraint on the realization of noun phrases. These findings support the hypothesis that in the course of utterance preparation, words and phrases are mapped onto S(W) templates. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the dissolution of the SW-constraint coincides with the acquisition of specific aspects of stress assignment in Dutch, such as quantity sensitivity.
Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary
Authors: Bates Elizabeth , Marchman Virginia , Thal Donna , Fenson Larry , Dale Philip , Reznick J. Steven , Reilly Judy , Hartung Jeff
Published: September 2008

Results are reported for stylistic and developmental aspects of vocabulary composition for 1, 803 children and families who participated in the tri-city norming of a new parental report instrument, the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. We replicate previous studies with small samples showing extensive variation in use of common nouns between age o;8 and 1;4 (i.e. ‘referential style’), and in the proportion of vocabulary made up of closed-class words between 1;4 and 2;6 (i.e. ‘analytic’ vs. ‘holistic’ style). However, both style dimensions are confounded with developmental changes in the composition of the lexicon, including three ‘waves’ of reorganization: (1) an initial increase in percentage of common nouns from 0 to 100 words, followed by a proportional decrease; (2) a slow linear increase in verbs and other predicates, with the greatest gains taking place between 100 and 400 words; (3) no proportional development at all in the use of closed-class vocabulary between 0 and 400 words, followed by a sharp increase from 400 to 680 words. When developmental changes in noun use are controlled, referential-style measures do not show the association with developmental precocity reported in previous studies, although these scores are related to maternal education. By contrast, when developmental changes in grammatical function word use are controlled, high closed-class scores are associated with a slower rate of development. We suggest that younger children may have less perceptual acuity and/or shorter memory spans than older children with the same vocabulary size. As a result, the younger children may ignore unstressed function words until a later point in development while the older children tend to reproduce perceptual details that they do not yet understand. Longitudinal data show that early use of function words (under 400 words) is not related to grammatical levels after the 4OO-word point, confirming our ‘stylistic’ interpretation of early closed-class usage. We close with recommendations for the unconfounding of stylistic and developmental variance in research on individual differences in language development, and provide look-up tables that will permit other investigators to pull these aspects apart.
The syntax of questions in child English
Authors: Radford Andrew
Published: September 2008

The purpose of this article is to provide a contemporary Government-and-Binding (GB) reinterpretation and evaluation of Klima & Bellugi's classic 1966 work on the acquisition of interrogatives. I argue that the central insight of K&B's paper can be captured by positing that wh- questions in Child English involve a wh-pronoun positioned in the head complementizer (C) position within the Complementizer Phrase (CP) (so blocking auxiliary inversion if this involves positioning an inverted auxiliary in C) and that in the transition to Adult English, children come to learn that wh-questions involve a wh-phrase superficially positioned in the specifier position within CP. I argue that the wh-in-C analysis poses both developmental problems (in that it fails to account for child structures involving a preposed wh-phrase with an uninverted auxiliary) and potential theoretical problems (in that long movement of a wh-head may violate locality principles). I then consider two alternative accounts of wh-questions which posit that wh-movement involves movement of a wh-phrase from the very earliest stages of development. The first of these is an adjunction account, on which wh-phrases are analysed as clausal adjuncts in Child English (adjoined to the Verb Phrase (VP) in the earliest stages and to the Inflection Phrase (IP) in later stages). I note, however, that this provides no principled account of the absence of auxiliary inversion in child wh-questions, and poses continuity problems (especially within a framework such as that of Cinque (1990) in which it is assumed that wh-phrases never adjoin to VP or IP). Finally, I consider an alternative account on which initial wh-phrases are analysed as occupying the specifier position within CP at all stages of development. I note that the problem posed by this analysis is accounting for the absence of auxiliary inversion in early wh-questions, and offer an account which posits that children overgeneralize specifier-head agreement from IP to CP.
Maternal pitch height in ordinary and play situations
Authors: Reissland Nadja , Snow David
Published: September 2008

Ten children at mean ages of o; 11.3 and o; 15.3 and their monolingual German-speaking mothers were audio- and videotaped in their homes while having a meal with a spoon (ordinary situation) and while feeding a doll with a spoon (play situation). Sentences spoken by the mothers that were comparable in length and sentence type across situations were analysed acoustically. In both data-collection sessions, it was found that the mothers spoke with the same mean amplitude in the two situations but they used higher mean fundamental frequency when speaking during the play situation than during the ordinary situation. In the first data-collection session, when the infants did not yet use meaningful words or engage in pretend play, the mothers also used a wider pitch range in the play situation than in the ordinary situation. It is concluded that mothers use both pitch height and pitch range to introduce the preverbal infant to the difference between non-play and play situations, and they continue to use variations in pitch height to mark the same distinction after the children have become active participants in pretend play activities. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of possible longitudinal patterns associated with mothers' use of intonational key and register.
Knowledge of binding in normal and SLI children
Authors: Franks Steven L. , Connell Phil J.
Published: September 2008

The properties of reflexives vary across adult languages with respect to (i) the domain in which a reflexive may be bound and (ii) the syntactic positions an appropriate antecedent may occupy. These two issues have been approached in GB theory in various ways, each with specific implications for acquisition. In this paper we examine these implications by testing normal and Specific Language Impaired (SLI) children for evidence of the binding domain and orientation properties of their grammars. The investigation reveals that, contrary to most previous claims, normal children acquiring English pass through a long-distance binding stage. SLI children, however, do not display this pattern, tending instead to behave like very young normal children in requiring the nearest available NP to be the antecedent. We argue that this constitutes an early binding stage not previously identified. Finally, we interpret our findings in terms of a conception of acquisition dubbed the ‘competing grammars’ model, according to which competing incompatible grammars may coexist in the mind of the learner.
Comparing communicative competence in child and chimp: the pragmatics of repetition
Authors: Greenfield Patricia M. , Savage-Rumbaugh E. Sue
Published: September 2008

Through an analysis of chimpanzee–human discourse, we show that twoPan troglodyteschimpanzees and twoPan paniscuschimpanzees (bonobos) exposed to a humanly devised symbol system use partial or complete repetition of others' symbols, as children do: they do not produce rote imitations, but instead use repetition to fulfil a variety of pragmatic functions in discourse. These functions include agreement, request, promise, excitement, and selection from alternatives. In so doing, the chimpanzees demonstrate contingent turn-taking and the use of simple devices for lexical cohesion. In short, they demonstrate conversational competence. Because of the presence of this conversational competence in three sibling species, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans, it is concluded that the potential to express pragmatic functions through repetition was part of the evolutionary history of human language, present in our common ancestor before the phylogenetic divergence of hominids and chimpanzees. In the context of these similarities, two interesting differences appeared: (1) Human children sometimes used repetition to stimulate more talk in their conversational partner; the chimpanzees, in contrast, use repetition exclusively to forward the non-verbal action. This difference may illuminate a unique feature of human linguistic communication, or it may simply reflect a modality difference (visual symbols used by the chimpanzees, speech used by the children) in the symbol systems considered in this research. A second difference seems likely to reflect a true species difference: utterance length. The one- and two-symbol repetitions used by the chimpanzees to fulfil a variety of pragmatic functions were less than half the maximum length found in either the visual symbol combinations addressed to them by their adult human caregivers or the oral repetitions of two-year-old children. This species difference probably reflects the evolution of increased brain size and consequent increased memory capacity that has occurred since the phylogenetic divergence of hominids and chimpanzees four to seven million years ago.
The functions of novel word compounds
Authors: Windsor Jennifer
Published: September 2008

The traditional assumptions that novel word compounds fill lexical gaps and allow speakers to convey an intended meaning more precisely were explored. Examples from spontaneous language demonstrated that some novel compounds occur in the absence of a lexical gap and that not all compounds serve a communicative function. The relation between communicative demands and novel noun–noun compound use was explored experimentally also. Twenty-eight five-year-old children and 16 adults participated in referential and non-referential communication tasks in which they were exposed to referents whose elements were inherently and non-inherently related. Both children and adults produced more compounds for inherent than for non-inherent referents. However, although the children demonstrated that they were sensitive to the need for greater communicative precision in the referential compared to the non-referential task, there was no difference in frequency of compound use across tasks. These results suggest that the functions ascribed to novel compounds warrant closer scrutiny.
The past conditional verb form in French children: the role of semantics in late grammatical development
Authors: Boloh Yves , Champaud Christian
Published: September 2008

As shown by Bowerman (1986), it has proved remarkably difficult to find clear-cut interpretations of why children face problems with conditionals. The present study reassesses a part of this puzzle by analysing four- to eight-year-old French children's acquisition of conditional verb forms. Relevant data in the literature and results of an experiment designed to gain information on the temporal meaning of young children's past conditional verb forms are presented and discussed. Among others, they are shown to provide weak support for interpretations stressing the role of conceptual problems and related mapping problems. Meeting one of Slobin's (1985) proposals, an interpretation is suggested that views the lateness of the past conditional verb form as due to an unexpected juxtaposition of ‘possibility’ and ‘non-possibility’ in its semantic representation. It is argued that such a juxtaposition cannot be achieved on the sole basis of cognitive development and that it requires the preliminary mastery of the conditional verb form.
Interactive influences on phonological behaviour: a case study
Authors: Ratner Nan Bernstein
Published: September 2008

An infant girl's unusual phonological behaviour was evaluated in the light of a maternai model which appeared to exaggerate features of normal conversational speech. It is suggested that parental responses to immature speech patterns may account for selected case study behaviours which have been reported in both the child phonology and child fluency literatures. It appears that evaluation of phonological development within an interactive framework may allow a more accurate picture of the conditions under which children learn speech skills. To this end, further study of the phonetic characteristics of input language and patterns of parental feedback to early articulatory attempts is desirable.
Imitations, repetitions, routines, and the child's analysis of language: insights from the blind
Authors: Pérez-Pereira Miguel
Published: September 2008

A blind child and her sighted twin sister were recorded at home once a month from 2;5 to 3;5. Their imitations, repetitions and routines (IRR speech) were analysed with respect to three dimensions (type, faithfulness to the model, and function). MLU for IRR speech was greater than that for productive utterances, which supports the idea that these productions facilitate language development. The blind girl used routines and modified imitations and repetitions more frequently than her sighted sister, and her use of modified repetitions increased during the study. She also seemed to use IRR speech for a longer period in her development. Both children frequently used these forms as a means of maintaining conversation and to fulfil their intentions. By introducing modifications (varying some element, or expanding the model) both children, especially the blind girl, analysed language and learned to use these utterances in the appropriate circumstances with a clear pragmatic function. Such behaviour is typical of holistic language processing and acquisition.
Words in discourse: a dialectical approach to the acquisition of meaning and use
Authors: Levy Elena , Nelson Katherine
Published: September 2008

Word learning by young children is viewed as a problem of deriving meaning from the use of forms in discourse contexts. Uses of causal and temporal terms in private speech by a child studied longitudinally from 1;9 to 3;0 are analysed from this perspective. Evidence is presented that words are first constrained to uses in specific discourse contexts, and later used more flexibly and with greater control over the semantics of the terms. Derivation of meaning from discourse is described as a dialectical process, and as such it is claimed to be more consistent with the full range of observational data, and with theories of word learning applicable to older children and adults, than other current theories of lexical acquisition in early childhood.
Interactive communication between children: learning how to make language work in dialogue
Authors: Anderson Anne H. , Clark Aileen , Mullin James
Published: September 2008

In this paper we investigate the development of interactive communication skills in 170 children aged seven to thirteen. Using a communication task that allows extended dialogues between pairs of young speakers, we are able to assess both the overall communicative success achieved by any pair; and from an analysis of the dialogues we can identify several interactive strategies that characterize older and more successful communicators. Successful communication involves the active involvement of both participants: asking and answering questions, volunteering information and responding sensitively to contributions from their partners. In contrast to the process of language acquisition, the development of these interactive skills takes place over an extended time period and subjects vary greatly in their ability to communicate effectively. For many analyses differences in the communicative success achieved by subjects differ more within than between age groups. For example, a substantial minority of our oldest subjects communicate no better than children six years younger
Anaphora and branching direction in Japanese
Authors: O'Grady William , Cho Sook Whan , Sato Yutaka
Published: September 2008

This paper constitutes a response to Lust & Mazuka's (1989) defence of the Principal Branching Direction parameter and their critique of O'Grady, Suzuki-Wei & Cho's (1986) experiment, which purported to show that even children learning left-branching languages exhibit a preference for forward patterns of anaphora. Results of new experimental work with children learning Japanese are reported and shown to support the claim that there is a universal preference for forward patterns of anaphora in the early stages of language acquisition.
Object transfer, intersubjectivity and third position repair: early developmental observations of one child
Authors: Wootton Anthony J.
Published: September 2008

Interaction sequences are explored which are initiated by either child requests or adult offers of objects. The focus is on those sequences in which the child does not want an object that is passed to her, and on how the child manages such an interactional contingency. Throughout the age range in question, 1;0 to 1;8, the child uses re-requests where this contingency occurs in request sequences. The analysis traces the development of these re-requests and compares them with other forms of re-request. In addition, differences are uncovered as between request and offer sequences concerning the child's ways of dealing with an unwanted object that is passed to her. Linkages are made between these themes and work on third position repair within conversation analysis. Home based video-recordings of one child between the ages of 1;0 and 1;8 constitute the data base for the study.
A metrical template account of children's weak syllable omissions from multisyllabic words
Authors: Gerken Louann
Published: September 2008

Young children learning English as well as many other languages frequently omit weakly stressed syllables from multisyllabic words. In particular, they are more likely to omit weak syllables from word-initial positions than from word-internal or -final positions. For example, the weak syllable of a weak-strong (WS) word likegiraffeis much more likely to be omitted than the weak syllable of a SW word liketiger. Three hypotheses for this omission pattern have been offered. In two, children's weak syllable omissions reflect innate perceptual biases either to ignore initial weak syllables or to encode word-final syllables. In contrast, the SW Production Template Hypothesis states that children have a template for producing a strong syllable followed by an optional weak syllable. When they apply a series of SW templates to their intended utterances, weak syllables that do not fit the templates are more likely to be omitted than those that do. To compare the three hypotheses, young two-year-olds were asked to say four-syllable SWWS and WSWS nonsense words. Children's pattern of weak syllable preservations was highly consistent with the SW production template hypothesis, but not with the perception-based hypotheses. Implications of this research for children's function morpheme omissions and for the relation of metrical and segmental production templates are discussed.
The development of segmental phonological production in a bilingual child
Authors: Schnitzer Marc L. , Krasinski Emily
Published: September 2008

A longitudinal diary-and-videotape study of the production of phonological segments by a Spanish–English bilingual child, age 1;1–3;9, revealed four stages in consonantal acquisition: presystematic variation, formation of a single system, separation into two systems corresponding to the two languages, and achievement of adult target values with later interference of one language in the other. Vocalic acquisition proceeded with widespread variation, followed by stabilization at target adult values, without any apparent intermediate unitary-system stage. Relevance of the data adduced here to the issue of whether bilingual children first function with a single system before acquiring two discrete languages is discussed. The issue of what it may mean to have one or two systems of phonology is addressed.
The unintelligibility of speech to children: effects of referent availability
Authors: Bard Ellen Gurman , Anderson Anne H.
Published: September 2008

Speech addressed to children is supposed to be helpfully redundant, but redundant or predictable words addressed to adults tend to lose intelligibility. Word tokens extracted from the spontaneous speech of the parents of 12 children aged 1;10 to 3;0 and presented in isolation to adult listeners showed loss of intelligibility when the words were redundant because they had occurred in repetitions of an utterance (Experiment 1) or referred to an entity which was physically present when named (Experiment 2). Though children (N= 64; mean age 3;5, S. D. 6·1 months) recognized fewer excerpted object names than adults (N= 40), less intelligible tokens appeared to induce child listeners to rely on the word's extra-linguistic context during the recognition process (Experiment 3), much as such tokens normally induce adults to rely on discourse context. It is proposed that interpreting parental utterances with reference to non-verbal context furthers linguistic development.