bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Voice onset time in consonant cluster production by children and adults
Authors: Menyuk Paula , Klatt Mary
Published: September 2008

Voice onset time (VOT) characteristics of stops in initial clusters in American English words produced by children and adults were studied. Words were spoken in isolation and in sentence context by eleven three-and four-year-old children, and by a male and female adult. Spectrograms were made and VOT duration measurements taken. Three experienced listeners transcribed the isolated words and sentences. Analyses showed that overall timing characteristics were similar for children and adults. Speakers differed in their [±voice] boundary and there was no absolute time distinction between [±voice] stops; [+voice] stops showed less variability than [−voice]. VOT generally increased from labial to dental to velar clusters, and was shorter in sentence context and longer in clusters than in singletons. Children's VOT averages were generally, but not significantly, longer than adults' in all contexts, and coarticulation constraints affected the accuracy with which children produced the stop and liquid portion of a particular cluster.
Children's strategies for interpreting complex comparative questions
Authors: Townsend David J. , Erb Melinda
Published: September 2008

Fifty-four children aged between 3 and 6 were asked questions such as ‘Which box is Xer than it is Z?,’ where Xer was taller, shorter, fatter, or thinner and Z was tall or fat, in the context of five rectangles of varying dimensions. For most questions, the largest rectangle was chosen most often as an answer, regardless of the adjectives used. The older children often chose the Xest rectangle in the array, indicating interpretation of only the first clause of the question. After providing feedback on incorrect answers for the five-year-old children, a post-test showed a decrease in frequency of choices of the largest rectangle, no change in frequency of choices of the Xest rectangle, and, for some questions, an increase in the frequency of choices of the correct rectangle. The results are interpreted to mean that the linguistic strategy of attending to the first clause is more resistant to change than the more primitive non-linguistic preference for choosing the largest object without interpreting the sentence.
The meanings of two-word utterances in the speech of young children
Authors: Howe Christine J.
Published: September 2008

Recent attempts to classify the meanings of two-word utterances expressed by young children have assumed that children always intend ONE of the meanings adults might express. This paper challenges that assumption for two reasons. Firstly, it is by no means self-evidently true. Indeed, since children and adults conceptualize the world differently, they may also differ in what they choose to say about the world. Secondly, it has supported research strategies which are at best unjustified and at worst ambiguous. In fact, research based on the assumption that children always intend a meaning adults might express has provided interesting insights into the interpretations adults place upon children's utterances but said next to nothing about the meaning of these utterances. This paper concludes by suggesting an alternative approach to the latter problem.
Syntactic styles in emerging language
Authors: Ramer Andrya L. H.
Published: September 2008

In this longitudinal investigation of the emerging grammar of seven children, differences in linguistic acquisition were observed. The syntactic analyses applied to the corpora included examination of emerging complexity, observance of word order constraints and subject-predicate specification among others. These analyses revealed two distinct styles of syntactic acquisition. These linguistic styles appeared to be sex- and speed-related with specific ties to particular utterance types and grammatical-relational specification. The observed styles of syntactic acquisition were differentiated by these differences so that the differences themselves constituted the style characteristics.
The linguistic maturity of 11-year-olds: some analysis of the written compositions of children in the National Child Development Study
Authors: Richardson K. , Calnan M. , Essen J. , Lambert L.
Published: September 2008

The written compositions of 11-year-olds in the National Child Development Study were analysed using the T-unit length (Hunt 1965) as a measure of syntactic maturity, and composition length as a measure of productivity. Only a weak association was found between mean T-unit length (MTUL) and composition length. There were no statistically significant regional differences in either composition length or MTUL. There were statistically significant sex and social class differences in composition length but not in MTUL. Composition length was associated with Reading Comprehension, General Ability test scores, and teachers' ratings of certain scholastic aptitudes. MTUL was associated only slightly or not at all with these measures. The results are discussed in relation to cognitive and linguistic development.
The early acquisition of word meaning
Authors: Reich Peter A.
Published: September 2008

The development of the meaning of shoe in one pre-lingual child, plus additional examples drawn from the literature, support a notion that word meanings start out very narrow and only become overextended later, though sometimes before the word is spoken. This appears to contradict the course of development of meaning hypothesized by Clark (1973). It is argued that the early development of word meaning is simply a special case of a much more general learning process.
Fundamental frequency characteristics of infant non-distress vocalization during the first twenty-four weeks
Authors: Laufer Marsha Zlatin , Horii Yoshiyuki
Published: September 2008

Fundamental frequency (F0) characteristics of non-distress vocalizations produced by four infants during the first twenty-four weeks of life were examined. This study constitutes the beginning of a longitudinal investigation of phonological development displayed by these children from birth to two years. Vocalization samples were obtained from home and laboratory recordings. Period-by-period F0melody plots and descriptive statistics for each utterance were derived from computer analysis. Mean F0centred around 335 Hz, with little variation evidenced when data were pooled. Duration, within-utterance range and variability did show developmental change. Individual F0fluctuations deviating from the mean were felt to be associated with the infant's state, activity levels, and changing vocal repertoire. Sources of variation among studies of infant F0characteristics appear to be related to differences in sampling and measurement techniques.
Learning how ‘it’ works
Authors: Tanz Christine
Published: September 2008

In a replication and extension of a study on the pronoun it by Chipman & de Dardel, 61 children aged 3; 1–5; 2 were asked to carry out instructions of the form ‘There is playdough on the table. Give it to me’. They were also asked ‘Give me some’, and ‘Give me the playdough’. The results indicate that children do observe the distinction between definite and indefinite pronouns as it applies to quantity, from the youngest age studied. It is also argued that to the extent that children fail to fully comprehend the implications of using the definite pronoun, their failure applies to definite reference in general, and not the pronoun in particular.
Conjunction reduction in child language
Authors: Lust Barbara
Published: September 2008

Coordinate conjunction was evaluated in early child language with regard to its structural properties. In a series of four studies, 60 two- and three-year-olds grouped by MLU were studied in an elicited imitation task where in the linguistic form of sentences was varied according to conjunction structure (whether sentential or phrasal) and according to pattern of redundancy deletion in conjunction reduction (whether forward or backward in directionality). Both factors were found to affect children's imitation. The results suggested specific constraints on the structure of coordination in child language.
A child's acquisition of Russian phonology
Authors: Timm Leonora A.
Published: September 2008

This paper represents a partial condensation of the results of a study covering 14 months in a Russian-speaking child's phonological development. The original investigation tested a theory of phonological acquisition formulated by Olmsted (1971), finding that – though modifications were necessary to accommodate certain aspects of the Russian data – Olmsted's hypotheses were, by and large, upheld. The present paper gives the evidence in support of the theory and offers in addition some detailed information on the Russian-speaking child's acquisition of specific phones over the months examined.
More about the same: children's understanding of post-articles
Authors: Karmiloff-Smith Annette
Published: September 2008

An experiment on children between 2; 0 and 7; 0 showed that they initially interpret the same X to mean ‘same kind’ in contexts where it actually means ‘same one’. This led to a critical evaluation of Piaget's implicit contention that young children are using determiners anaphorically. Stress is placed on the linguistic rather than conceptual component of children's behaviour in experiments involving questions of the type: Is it the same X? It is argued that language is not only the tool of intelligence for representing ongoing cognitive development, but that it is also a problem area for children within its own right. It is suggested that the importance of young children's processing procedures on the linguistic environment has hitherto been underestimated in Piaget's interactive epistemology.
Competence and talent in verbal riddle comprehension
Authors: Fowles Barbara , Glanz Marcia E.
Published: September 2008

Children in grades 1–3 (ages 6–9) were asked to retell and explain a series of riddles. The scoring system was developed to differentiate levels of competence. Ability to recall riddles was not found to be predictive of ability to explain them. Three cognitive factors seemed to determine level of riddle competence. Level of competence was NOT clearly related to age. Analysis of riddles yields descriptive attributes that distinguish easy from difficult riddles. Implications concern the relationship of riddle competence to reading ability and metalinguistic facility.
Native Spanish language acquisition: the effect of age, schooling and context on responses to ‘dile’ and ‘pregúntale’
Authors: Edelsky Carole , Muiña Virginia
Published: September 2008

The ability to distinguish ask and tell in Spanish was studied with five groups of native Spanish speakers: adults, 7- and 10-year-olds in a full-bilingual-programme school (BISO), and 7- and 10-year-olds in a non-total BISO school. The interviews included context-present and context-absent items. Differences in these subjects' responses and those elicited by Chomsky (1969) among children acquiring English are explored. Increased age, bilingual schooling, and presence of contextual clues enhanced performance. Relative difficulty of dile and pregúntale, stages in distinguishing these in three types of constructions, and comparisons of first and second language performance are discussed.
The achievement and antecedents of labelling
Authors: Ninio Anat , Bruner Jerome
Published: September 2008

The achievement of labelling was investigated in a longitudinal study of one mother–infant dyad, using video-recordings of their free play in a period between 0; 8 and 1; 6. Analysis of joint picture-book reading revealed that this activity had very early on the structure of a dialogue. The child's lexical labels might be regarded as more adult-like substitutes for earlier communicative forms that he had utilized in the dialogue. These were smiling, reaching, pointing and babbling vocalizations, all of which were consistently interpreted by the mother as expressing the child's intention of requesting a label or providing one. Participating in a ritualized dialogue, rather than imitation, was found to be the major mechanism through which labelling was achieved.
Children's comprehension of their mothers' question-directives
Authors: Shatz Marilyn
Published: September 2008

Much of adult communication is carried on at the subtle level of indirect utterance meaning, where the speaker's intent is not literally expressed in his or her utterance. This work investigates the young child's ability to respond appropriately to the intended, as opposed to the literal, meaning of one class of such utterances, requests for action. The data were the responses of five children between 1; 7 and 2; 4 to the direct and indirect requests for action their mothers produced during a natural play session. All the children responded with action to requests for it regardless of how subtly the requests were expressed. The apparent ability of two-year-olds to deal with indirect speech acts is surprising in that the understanding of such utterances by adults is presumed to depend on a combination of sophisticated rule systems. Rather than grant the young child such knowledge, the alternative of an action-based response heuristic is proposed.
Temporal and sequential constraints on six-year-olds' phonological productions: some observations on the ‘ambliance’ phenomenon
Authors: Gilbert John H. V. , Johnson Carolyn E.
Published: September 2008

This paper reports the results of a preliminary study dealing with the ways in which children between six and seven years of age organize spoken language. In particular it deals with aspects of the temporal and segmental structure of polysyllabic English words containing the syllable C/jul/ (e.g. pediculous). On the basis of data presented, it is suggested (a) that in order to meet certain phonological conditions it is the relations between syllable (and not segment) durations which must undergo modification towards the adult duration values, and (b) that the achievement of such values is accompanied by some quasi-systematic alterations in phonological rules.
Features of infant sounds: the emergence of cooing
Authors: Stark Rachel E.
Published: September 2008

Vocalizations of two female infants, recorded over a 5-week period after the first emergence of cooing, were studied. The vocalizations were classified as cry, discomfort, vegetative and cooing (comfort) sounds. Fifty vocalizations of each sound type, distributed across the 5-week period of study, were selected from the output of each infant (400 vocalizations in all). The features of voicing, breath direction and consonant-like versus vowel-like were documented for each sound type. It was found that the features of the more primitive sound types regrouped themselves in comfort sounds. For the first time the feature of consonant-like was found to co-occur with voicing and egressive (outgoing) breath direction. The implications for theories of pre-speech development are discussed.
Strategies in the acquisition of deixis
Authors: Clark Eve V. , Sengul C. J.
Published: September 2008

Although deictic terms are among the earliest words children acquire, the proximal/non-proximal contrast (the true deictic contrast) between here and there, and between this and that, takes several years to master. As research on spontaneous production shows, children may start, for example, by using here with a deictic meaning, there with a non-deictic meaning, and a gesture to indicate a deictic contrast. On the basis of two experiments on comprehension, we argue that children go through at least three stages in acquiring the deictic contrasts. They start with NO CONTRAST, work out a PARTIAL CONTRAST used only in certain contexts, and finally master a FULL CONTRAST equivalent to the adult's. However, children follow different routes through these stages, depending on their initial choice of (a) the point of reference for the contrast – themselves or the speaker – and (b) the spatial relation to that point of reference – proximity or distance.
Noun-pronoun pleonasms: the role of age and situation
Authors: Cotton Eleanor G.
Published: September 2008

The process of topicalization occasionally produces pleonasms with nominal-pronominal reduplication (NPR). In these structures the topic nominal is often accompanied by a comment clause containing a pronoun which is co-referential with the topic. This article discusses NPR in the language of children ages seven and nine in four different situations, one of which was child-child in free play, three of which were child-adult in retelling stories, describing pictures, and answering questions. The younger children produced more NPR. Influenced by their attitudes toward their interlocutors, the content of the situations and themselves as communicators, all of the children produced little NPR talking to their peers and increasing amounts talking to adults. Examples are given and analysed.
Early lexical development: comprehension and production
Authors: Benedict Helen
Published: September 2008

Lists of the first 50 words comprehended and produced by eight infants between 0; 9 and 1; 8 were compared. Comprehension development began earlier (around 0; 9) and reached the 50-word level (age 1; 1) earlier than production development (ages 1; 0 and 1; 6 respectively) and rate of word acquisition for comprehension was twice that of production, confirming the hypothesis that comprehension precedes production for lexical development. Word-class analysis revealed differences in the proportion and type of action words in comprehension and production vocabularies. It is suggested that action is central to lexical development but is expressed differently in comprehension, where action words are used to initiate actions, and production, where non-action words accompany the child's actions.
What does the child mean? A critique of the ‘functional’ approach to language acquisition
Authors: Francis Hazel
Published: September 2008

The attribution of function of various kinds to elements of child speech is discussed, and the question of the validity of the interpretations on which such attribution rests is explored with reference to Halliday's work on the development of meaning. Work in the philosophy of language is used to explore the kind of evidence needed for valid interpretation, and its systematic nature within a framework of the structure of linguistic behaviour. It is argued that theoretical clarity in this area would aid the study of both language use and language acquisition.
The development of young children's capacity to judge anomalous sentences
Authors: Carr Diane B.
Published: September 2008

Judgements about the acceptability of anomalous and non-anomalous sentences were elicited from children between the ages of 2; 0 and 5; 0. Generally such judgements have been assumed to be a direct reflection of linguistic competence. Longitudinal study of individual children indicated that developmental changes in children's judgemental capacities were erratic, with sudden regressions in performance as well as sudden improvements. This was especially true of the youngest children, aged between 2; 0 and 3; 6. It appeared that, despite irregularity, certain general developmental patterns could be discerned. It is difficult to reconcile these findings with a view of sentence judgements which assumes that they directly represent linguistic competence. It is suggested that the most satisfactory explanation of the developmental data must rest on the assumption that not simply linguistic factors, but also cognitive/experiential factors are involved in sentence judgements.
Adjective ordering in the language of young children: an experimental investigation
Authors: Richards Meredith Martin
Published: September 2008

Young children described objects which differed on three simultaneous dimensions, using adjective combinations appropriate to the dimensions. Three- and 6-year-olds displayed significant ordering preferences for these adjectives, which agreed with the ordering preferences of adults in the same task. Four- and 5-year-olds were less constrained in their adjective ordering, although descriptive competence with the adjectives improved greatly at age five. In a comprehension task, the children located the objects from verbal descriptions which used the same adjectives. Neither latency nor accuracy of comprehension was affected by the order of adjectives in the description at any age. The children also reproduced the adjectives in different orders; the few errors which occurred were unrelated to adjective order.
Children's comprehension of ‘because’ in reversible and non-reversible sentences
Authors: Emerson Harriet F.
Published: September 2008

Comprehension of event order was compared for reversible ‘X because Y’ (‘Y because X’ is also logical) and non-reversible ‘X because Y’ sentences. Children aged 5; 8–10; 11 chose one of two picture sequences, differing in event order, and put two pictures in first/last order to match a sentence ‘X because Y’ (order of mention violates temporal order) or ‘Because Y, X’ (order of mention preserves temporal order). Reversibility and clause order effects reflected the use of semantic probability cues and order-of-mention strategies for comprehension. Judgements were also made of grammatical acceptability for correct and reversed ‘X because Y’ sentences. Response strategies used in the two experiments suggest that development of comprehension of the role of because reflects acquired independence from contextual support and acquisition of a meaning component: ORDER.
Observations on the role of logically constrained sentences in the comprehension of ‘before’ and ‘after’
Authors: Kavanaugh Robert D.
Published: September 2008

Sentences were constructed in which the terms before and after were embedded in logically constrained and logically reversible sequences. As in French & Brown (1977), pre-school children found the constrained sentences easier to comprehend. These findings add a new dimension to Clark's (1971) original before and after study in which the effect of logically constrained sentences was not considered. The results of the two studies are consistent with a growing literature (including current formulations of semantic feature theory) which implicates contextual cues and child strategies in the comprehension process, and raises questions about the role of parental speech in the child's comprehension of temporal terms.
Some reasons why successive single word utterances are not
Authors: Branigan George
Published: September 2008

Two suprasegmental characteristics of three children's single-word, successive single-word and multiple-word utterances were examined spectrographically. The location of terminal pitch contour and the duration of words were compared across the three utterance types. It was found that successive single-word utterances shared suprasegmental patterns, on these dimensions, with multiple-word forms but not with single words. It is argued that successive single-word utterances are not simply single words uttered in close temporal proximity. Further, an account of the underlying organization of successive utterances is proposed.
Mothers' speech to children and syntactic development: some simple relationships
Authors: Furrow David , Nelson Katherine , Benedict Helen
Published: September 2008

This study investigated the relationships between children's linguistic environments and their language acquisition. Speech samples taken from seven firstborn children and their mothers when the children were 1; 6 and 2; 3 were analysed within a number of semantic and syntactic categories to determine correlations between mothers' speech and subsequent language development. Several characteristics of mothers' speech (e.g. utterance length, use of pronouns) significantly predicted later child speech. The significant correlations suggested that mothers' choice of simple constructions facilitated language growth. Further, they showed that the motherese code differed from adult-adult speech in ways which aided language development. Differences between our study and previous investigations of environmental effects on language development probably resulted from the failure of earlier investigations to take into account children's level of language competence at the time when environmental effects were assessed.
New names for old things: the emergence of metaphoric language
Authors: Winner Ellen
Published: September 2008

Criteria were devised to distinguish between literal and metaphoric word usage in early language. These criteria were applied to the spontaneous speech transcripts of one child between 2; 3 and 4; 10.15. All unconventional word uses were identified and were then scored as overextensions, anomalies, or metaphors. The majority of unconventional word uses proved to be metaphors. Moreover, a developmental sequence of types of metaphors produced was found: those metaphors predominant during year 2 were based on the pretend actions of symbolic play; those predominant at year 4 were based on perceptual grounds alone, without the support of action.
The development of locative expressions in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish
Authors: Johnston Judith R. , Slobin Dan I.
Published: September 2008

The ability of children between the ages of 2; 0 and 4; 8 to produce locative pre- or postpositions was investigated in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish. Across languages, there was a general order of development: (1) ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘under’, and ‘beside’, (2) ‘between’, ‘back’ and ‘front’ with featured objects, (3) ‘back’ and ‘front’ with non-featured objects. This order of development is discussed in terms of nonlinguistic growth in conceptual ability. Language-specific differences in the general pattern of development are discussed in terms of a number of linguistic factors which may facilitate or retard the child's discovery of the linguistic means for encoding concepts.
Complex sentences: acquisition of syntactic connectives and the semantic relations they encode
Authors: Bloom Lois , Lahey Margaret , Hood Lois , Lifter Karin , Fiess Kathleen
Published: September 2008

The acquisition of connective forms and the meaning relations between connected clauses in the development of complex sentences is described for four children from two to three years of age. The major results of the study include the developmental interactions between syntactic connectives and meaning relations, and between these interactions and the discourse environments in which they occurred. The first syntactic connective the children learned,and, was the most general: semantically,andwas used to encode conjunction with all of the different conjunction meaning relations in the order Additive < Temporal < Causal < Adversative. Other connectives were semantically more specific, and were learned subsequently with different syntactic structures in the order Conjunction < Complementation < Relativization. These results are discussed in terms of FORM, relative linguistic complexity; CONTENT, the intersection of form with conceptual and semantic factors affecting acquisition; and USE, discourse cohesion.
On coordination in child language
Authors: Ardery Gail
Published: September 2008

This paper evaluates Lust's (1977) study of coordination in child language, both on its own merits and in the light of my own research. First, particular design weaknesses in Lust's study are noted which render her results questionable. In addition, it is argued that the hypotheses proposed by Lust fail to make any substantive predictions about the types of errors which children make with coordinate structures. Finally, it is shown that Lust's hypotheses cannot account for the results of my own comprehension and non-imitative production experiments. It is concluded that Lust cannot account for a wide range of phenomena concerning coordination in child language, and consequently an alternative set of hypotheses is proposed.
Overextension in early language development
Authors: Rescorla Leslie A.
Published: September 2008

This research explored overextension in the early vocabularies of six children, followed in a language diary study from 1; 0 to 1; 8. Results indicated that only one-third of the first 75 words acquired by each child were ever overextended. A small set of high-frequency, early acquired words accounted for a disproportionate number of overextensions. Overextensions were classified into three types: categorical overinclusions, analogical overextensions and predicate statements. Four types of information served as the bases for word applications: perceptual, action-functional, affective and contextual. The use of words to denote associative complexes of a well-organized, systematic character was discussed as a characteristic form of early word usage.
Fathers' and mothers' speech in early language development
Authors: Rondal J. A.
Published: September 2008

Five French-speaking middle-class couples and their male only-children were tape-recorded separately at home while interacting verbally in a free-play, a story-telling, and in a family meal situation. The children's ages ranged from 1; 6 to 3; 0. The speech of the fathers, mothers, and children was transcribed and analysed for its semantic, syntactic, and language-teaching aspects. The results indicate that paternal speech displays the same simplification processes usually found in maternal speech to young children. Paternal speech, however, also contains some linguistic patterns at variance with those found in maternal speech. It is hypothesised that maternal and paternal speech may be complementary in their influence on language development in the children.
Preschool children's sentence comprehension: strategies with respect to word order
Authors: Lempert Henrietta , Kinsbourne Marcel
Published: September 2008

Fifty-two children aged 2; 5 to 6; 3 acted out the meaning of reversible passive and inverted cleft sentences. The younger children overgeneralized two strategies that led to passive sentence reversal. In order of frequency, they are: (1)‘agent + action’ (the noun preceding the verb being interpreted as agent even when it is the second noun), and (2) ‘order-of-mention’ (the first noun being treated as agent). Whereas younger children tended to use an individually consistent approach to both structures, older children were more likely to vary their approaches when they did not comprehend a structure.
Consistency in the pattern of change in mothers' speech: some discriminant analyses
Authors: Bellinger David
Published: September 2008

This study demonstrates a striking absence of variability in the speech which mothers address to children of the same age within the 1- to 5-year range. Speech to children of 1; 0, 1; 8, 2; 3 and 5; 0 years was analysed for aspects of syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse structure. Discriminant function analyses showed that the age of the child to whom a mother was speaking could be predicted very accurately from her speech. The rate at which mothers' speech changed was greatest when the children were 1; 8–2; 3, and least when they were 2; 3–5; 0. These trends in the evolution of the maternal speech register are interpreted as responses to concurrent changes in children's language behaviour.
Speech roles and the development of personal pronouns
Authors: Charney Rosalind
Published: September 2008

Pronoun mastery demands a knowledge of speech roles and an ability to identify oneself and others in those roles. Twenty-one girls' (age 1; 6–2; 6) knowledge of my, your, and her was assessed when they were speakers, addressees and non-addressed listeners. My and your were at first understood correctly only when referring to the child's own speech role: your was comprehended when the child was addressed, though not produced correctly by the child; my was used by the child as speaker, while still not comprehended correctly when used by others. The first consistent production of her referred to dolls. Children thus were initially aware of speech roles, but only when they themselves occupied those roles.
Ostensive definition in vocabulary teaching
Authors: Ninio Anat
Published: September 2008

Ostensive definitions of words are ambiguous as to their referent. In a study of 40 mother–infant dyads engaged in looking at picture-books, it was found that 95% of ostensive definitions referred to the whole object depicted, rather than to its parts, attributes or actions. On the rare occasions when mothers named parts of objects, they avoided misunderstanding of the level of reference either by naming the part immediately after naming the whole, or by including a reference to the whole in the definition of the part. What's that? questions are not used to request labelling of the part.
Description and explanation in the acquisition of verb-forms
Authors: Fletcher Paul
Published: September 2008

Research on the learning of verb-forms in English has consistently reported the late acquisition of the PRESENT PERFECT. Explanations for this have been in terms of children's cognitive abilities. Difficulties are presented for such explanations by an apparent discrepancy between American English (AE) and British English (BE) acquisition data. This paper examines in detail the forms included in the PRESENT PERFECT paradigm, and the use of these and related forms by a sample of BE children aged 3; 3. While there is considerable variability across the sample, the results indicate that BE children at this age have not in any sense mastered the present perfect. The implications of this are discussed.
The development of noun definition
Authors: Wehren Aileen , Lisi Richard De , Arnold Marjorie
Published: September 2008

This study investigated the development of noun definition by grade school children and adults (N = 100). Subjects were asked to define 15 common nouns in one of two conditions: with objects present or without objects present. Definitions were classified on the basis of perceptual attributes (CONCRETE), everyday usage (FUNCTIONAL) or a combination of these (COMBINATORIAL). Results were analysed with a 5 (Grade) × 2 (Condition × 3 (Category) Analysis of Variance which indicated no effects for condition, but a Grade × Category interaction. With increasing age, there was a shift from FUNCTIONAL to COMBINATORIAL definitions; CONCRETE definitions were infrequent for all grades. In addition, age changes were found in the forms of the definitions subjects produced. In contrast to the children, adults formulated definitions in a more complex Aristotelian form. It was concluded that noun definition is a metalinguistic ability which follows a course of development similar to that for the acquisition of word meaning.
Regularity vs anomaly: the acquisition of Hebrew inflectional morphology
Authors: Berman Ruth A.
Published: September 2008

The paper examines the acquisition of selected aspects of the inflectional system of Modern Hebrew, a language rich in bound morphology. By age three, children acquire the major inflectionally marked categories of the system, in the sense that they make semantically relevant distinctions of tense, person, number, and gender. Certain morphologically complex forms are simplified by neutralization or reformulation or by analytic paraphrases of bound constructions. Various anomalous forms are handled by regularization of lexical exceptions or by conflating forms belonging to different lexical patterns, while forms which are opaque due to neutralization of historically distinct root consonants or to inaccessibility of rules governing their alternations are processed by reference to certain ‘paradigms’ taken as basic.
The allative bias in three-year-olds is almost proof against task naturalness
Authors: Freeman N. H. , Sinha C. G. , Stedmon J. A.
Published: September 2008

An allative bias has been noted in children's comprehension of deictic verbs and directional prepositions. This study investigates the allative bias and its susceptibility to contextual modification. Three-year-olds were asked to act according to requests to move one object to or from another, and to identify where an object had come from or gone to. A reliable bias was found whereby ‘to’ was easier than ‘from’. Attempts to make the utterance more naturally related to the task, by using movement and fronted objects, modulated the bias to a small extent, but did not abolish it. An analysis of directional expressions in terms of the components SOURCE, PATH and GOAL is presented in relation to the task-demands.
Cognitive precursors of receptive vs. expressive language
Authors: Smolak Linda
Published: September 2008

Although cognitive precursors of language production have received considerable attention, the relationship of cognitive development to language comprehension development remains unexplored. In the present research, the relationship of object permanence and classification skills to receptive, as well as expressive, language development was investigated in infants between 0; 9 and 1; 3. Results indicated that object permanence, classification, and parent–child verbal interaction ratings were about equally related to language comprehension functioning. No prerequisite stage of object permanence functioning could be discerned. On the other hand, object permanence was more strongly related to language production than were classification and verbal interaction. Furthermore, it appeared that a minimum of Stage 5 object permanence functioning was necessary prior to the onset of language production.
Tagging after red herrings: evidence against the processing capacity explanation in child language
Authors: Todd Peyton
Published: September 2008

A case is reported of failure to supply negation in tag questions for a period of nearly two years. The duration of this error shows that it could not have been the result of limited processing capacity, and this provides reason to doubt this explanation for the similar case of children's failure to invert subject and auxiliary verb in wh-questions. It is argued that other cases which have been explained in terms of limited processing capacity are equally compatible with an explanation in terms of context-specific knowledge, which holds that a rule is simply not known for contexts other than those where it is expressed.
Children's use of lexical and non-lexical information in responding to commands
Authors: Wilcox Stephen , Palermo David S.
Published: September 2008

Two experiments are reported in each of which eighty children between the ages of two and six years of age were given a series of commands containing relational terms and similar commands in which the relational terms were replaced by nonsense. The results indicated that children are able to use information from a number of sources which help them to interpret such commands. Younger children, particularly, seemed to rely relatively little upon word meaning, per se. Evidence is offered that the children's responses were constrained by the non-linguistic context, by prior repetition of commands, and by information available from the linguistic context.
Doggerel: motherese in a new context
Authors: Hirsh-Pasek Kathy , Treiman Rebecca
Published: September 2008

Four master–dog dyads were studied to determine whether the language that is used in speaking to dogs (doggerel) resembles the language that is used in speaking to children (motherese). The structural properties of doggerel are strikingly similar to those that have been reported for motherese. Certain differences between motherese and doggerel may arise in functional and social areas. The similarities between the two language registers suggest that motherese is not elicited in response to either the linguistic level or the cognitive/intellectual level of the child. Rather, the social responsiveness of the listener may be sufficient to elicit the motherese register.
Words and plans: early language and the development of intelligent action
Authors: Gopnik Alison
Published: September 2008

Many early words encode aspects of plans, that is, actions performed in order to bring about events. Gone and down encode the fact that an action is intended to bring about a certain type of event. There and oh dear encode the success or failure of plans, no encodes the rejection of a plan. More encodes the repetition of a plan. It is argued that the concepts encoded by gone and down are like the concepts that underlie trial- and-error problem-solving and are developed after 12 months. The more abstract concepts encoded by there, oh dear, no and more are associated with the development of insight after 18 months. These early words are acquired because they are relevant to the child's cognitive problems.
Do children pick and choose? an examination of phonological selection and avoidance in early lexical acquisition
Authors: Schwartz Richard G. , Leonard Laurence B.
Published: September 2008

The influence of phonological selection and avoidance upon early lexical acquisition was examined within an experimental paradigm. During 10 bi-weekly experimental sessions, 12 children (1;0.21 to 1;3.15 at the outset) were presented with 16 contrived lexical concepts, each consisting of a nonsense word and four unfamiliar referents. For each child, eight words involved phonological characteristics which had been evidenced in production (in) and eight had characteristics which had not been evidenced in production or selection (out), in words were produced imitatively and non-imitatively in greater numbers and in earlier sessions than OUT words, providing evidence for the influence of selection and avoidance. The degree of phonetic accuracy of these two types of productions did not differ. These findings are discussed in terms of a proposal concerning early phonological representation and acquisition.
If I were you and you were me: the analysis of pronouns in a pronoun-reversing child
Authors: Chiat Shulamuth
Published: September 2008

An investigation into the pronoun distribution of a pronoun-reversing child reveals inconsistencies both within production and between production and comprehension. This distribution is compatible with some analyses of normal pronoun development and pronoun reversal which have attributed non-adult person distinctions to the child. However, the data are also compatible with a quite distinct hypothesis which postulates that the child's pronouns are plurifunctional: the unreversed pronouns encode full adult distinctions, and are independent of the reversed pronouns, which function to shift perspective. The evaluation of these hypotheses and the questions they raise for normal and pathological pronoun development are discussed.
Children's comprehension of ‘before’ and ‘after’ reinvestigated
Authors: Trosborg Anna
Published: September 2008

The present paper is concerned with establishing the relative difficulty involved in the acquisition of the temporal conjunctions before and after. It tries to control the influence on performance of the following variables: contextual support within a sentence (logically/arbitrarily ordered sequences), order of mention, syntactic complexity, task requirement variables, and memory load. In addition, experiments intended to throw light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying an understanding of these conjuctions are described. The concept of time is supposed to be spatial in origin. An understanding of relative time is dependent on ability to decentre and coordinate. Finally, it is suggested that reversible thinking (in a Piagetian sense) is involved in the process of making inverse sentence order agree with event order.
Assessing the role of experience on infants' speech discrimination
Authors: MacKain Kristine S.
Published: September 2008

Several studies have investigated the effect of a particular linguistic environment on infants' discrimination of voicing for stop consonants. Exposure to contrasts phonemic for a community has been said to heighten preverbal infants' sensitivity to these contrasts.

This paper argues that phonetic input cannot be specified and ‘experience’ cannot be defined in this context without knowing how infants perceptually structure speech input. Consequently, the discrimination paradigm provides no test for the effect of experience on infants' speech discrimination. The conditions to be met in order to conclude an effect of experience are outlined.
Origins of verbal logic: spontaneous denials by two- and three-year olds
Authors: Pea Roy D.
Published: September 2008

Children two to three years of age can spontaneously correct false statements and affirm true ones in a modified sentence verification paradigm. Such performances imply that very young children display knowledge of the rules of correspondence between language and reality (truth conditions) which are central to propositional logic, at an age when logical development in cognition has not been previously acknowledged.
The prosody of maternal speech: infant age and context related changes
Authors: Stern D. N. , Spieker S. , Barnett R. K. , MacKain K.
Published: September 2008

The speech of 6 mothers to their healthy infants was examined longitudinally during the neonatal period and at 4, 12, and 24 months in a semi-naturalistic setting. Features of speech analysed were: contour of fundamental frequency, repetitiveness, timing (durations of vocalizations and pauses), tempo and MLU. The neonatal period was characterized by elongated pauses. During the 4-month period the extent of pitch contouring and repetitiveness was greater than at earlier or later ages. By 24 months, the duration of vocalizations and length of MLU became markedly greater. The period of intense face-to-face interaction around the fourth month proved to involve more changes in certain prosodic features. Some of the possible functions of these changes during this phase are discussed.
Mothers' use of fantasy in speech to young children
Authors: Kavanaugh Robert D. , Whittington Sue , Cerbone Mark J.
Published: September 2008

This study examined mothers' use of fantasy in speech to young children. Observations of mothers in free-play interactions with their 12-to 27-month-old children formed the basis for an analysis of the frequency and type of fantasy relationships encoded in maternal speech. Results suggested that fantasy speech to roughly year-old children was relatively infrequent and restricted to descriptions of the feelings, actions, and functions of animate and inanimate objects. Speech to 1½-year-olds encoded essentially the same fantasy characteristics, but mothers of children in this age group introduced more distinct instances in their fantasy talk. A more notable change occurred in the fantasy utterances directed to 2-year-olds. Mothers of these children talked about non-existent imaginary objects, and often asked the child to extend a play episode by providing a new fantasy element. These findings were discussed in terms of the nature and function of the dyadic interactions in which mothers' fantasy talk occurred.
Prefix versus suffix information processing in the comprehension of tense and aspect
Authors: Weist Richard M.
Published: September 2008

This research evaluated the Polish child's capacity to comprehend aspect and tense distinctions realized by either prefixation or suffixation. Ten 2; 6 and ten 3; 6 children were given a picture–sentence matching task. Aspect picture sets contrasted completed with incompleted situations and sentences contrasted perfective with imperfective verbs differing by a prefix or a suffix. Tense picture sets portrayed either ongoing vs. anticipated action or results of action vs. anticipated action contrasts. Again sentences differed in verb forms either by prefixes or suffixes. The results showed that young children can pay attention to the beginnings of words as easily as to the ends of words and can understand a wide range of aspect and tense distinctions.