bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The development of relational arcs in the lexical semantic memory structures of young children
Authors: Norlin Peter F.
Published: September 2008

Forty-eight normally developing children, twelve each at ages three, four five, and six years, were asked to define and describe ten concrete nouns expressively with no attendant visual stimuli. Responses were coded according to the semantic relations expressed. Nineteen different semantic relationships were isolated in these definitions, and significant differences were found between the age levels in the various configurations of semantic relational categories represented in the first five relations elicited from each child by each noun. Compatible with recent hypotheses concerning the development of internal semantic memory structures, these differences also proved to be highly predictive of a subject's chronological age. The results suggest that semantic relational analysis may be a productive method of documenting the characteristics of lexical semantic systems of very young children.
The role of perceived variability in the transition to language
Authors: Greenfield Patricia Marks
Published: September 2008

This article will treat attention to variability as a perceptual structure which mediates the transition from sensorimotor activity to language. The guiding idea is that the attentional system is geared to variability from the very beginning of life and that a speaker's language use is coordinated with this system as it emerges.
Facilitation of semantic comprehension at the one-word stage of language development
Authors: Fritz Janet J. , Suci George J.
Published: September 2008

Early in the development of language, children must learn to relate the language they hear to objects and events in their immediate perceptual environment. Gilmore (1977) found that infants at the two-word stage of language production and, under certain conditions, some infants at the one-word stage as well, seemed to map a simple sentence (e.g. The bunny hugs the kitty) onto a visual event (which, for example, showed a puppet rabbit hugging a puppet cat). In Gilmore's experiment, a habituation series of trials, presenting either appropriate pairings of a variety of sentences with visual events (as in the above example), or inappropriate pairings (e.g. The kitty hugs the bunny, when, in fact, the reverse was true) were presented repeatedly until subjects habituated. A test series of trials followed with an inappropriate/appropriate pairing, whichever was not used during habituation. Two-word subjects seemed to discriminate between the test and habituation pairings in either case. One-word subjects seemed to discrimi- nate only when they received the appropriate pairing during habituation and the inappropriate during the test.
Reduplication as a strategy of phonological development
Authors: Fee Jane , Ingram David
Published: September 2008

Five hypotheses are explored about the role of REDUPLICATION in phonological development. Specifically, it was postulated that children who frequently reduplicate would (a) use more multisyllables, (b) be better at maintaining adult syllable structure, and (c) show limited ability at final consonant production. For all children, it was further proposed that reduplication would (d) be used predominantly as a means to maintain a nonreduplicated adult syllable, and (e) characterize the speech of the youngest subjects. Data were analysed for 24 children between 1; 1 and 2; 8, and compared when possible to results reported in Schwartz, Leonard, Wilcox & Folger (1980). The results confirmed the above hypotheses, revealing reduplication to be a general pattern during the earliest stages of phonological development that is used most frequently by children preferring to follow a multisyllabic rather than monosyllabic course of development.
The use of linguistic and non-linguistic strategies in kindergarteners' interpretations of ‘more’ and ‘less’
Authors: Hudson Lynne M. , Guthrie Karen H. , Santilli Nicholas R.
Published: September 2008

Kindergarteners, grouped according to number conservation ability, were asked to explain their choices of more and less in a series of parallel tasks requiring comparative judgements of continuous quantities. Errors on less tasks, as well as correct choices of more, were often determined by the non-linguistic strategy of choosing the greater amount. Non-conservers were more likely than conservers or transitional conservers to rely on this strategy. Furthermore, mature semantic knowledge of more was found to precede the development of a similar understanding of less. Non-conservers were less likely than conservers or transitionals to have a mature understanding of either term.
Sentence coordination in Japanese and English
Authors: Hakuta Kenji , de Villiers Jill , Tager-Flusberg Helen
Published: September 2008

Structural and contextual constraints on coordination in child speech are discussed. An elicited production study with English- and Japanese-speaking children in which these constraints were manipulated is reported. Results show referential context to be an important determinant of conjunction structure. In addition, structural parameters also influenced the extent to which redundancy is expressed in utterances. A preliminary model of coordination production based on a conjunction rule is proposed.
Ambiguity and implicature in children's discourse comprehension
Authors: Jackson Sally , Jacobs Scott
Published: September 2008

21 first graders and 20 third graders were told to pick drawings of clowns out of an array on the basis of ambiguous messages. One of the messages could be taken to refer to either of two clowns, depending on which interpretive strategy the child employed. The other message could be given no definite interpretation. Although 23 of 41 children refused to make a definite choice for the second message, 31 specified choices for the first message. First graders applied an Antecedence Maxim strategy. Third graders used a Quantity Maxim strategy.
More questions than answers: a study of question–answer sequences in a naturalistic setting
Authors: van Hekken Suus M. J. , Roelofsen Wim
Published: September 2008

The present study examines changes with age in interrogative sequences among Dutch-speaking children. Thirty-eight male and female pairs of children were videotaped in a play situation; eight pairs of pre-schoolers and ten pairs of 7-, 9- and 11-year-old schoolchildren, with an equal number of pairs of boys and pairs of girls at each age level. An interrogative sequence consists of: question–listener reaction–confirmation of that reaction. Questions were analysed according to function, content and form, and listener reaction according to how appropriate it was. The main results are: (1) changes with age occur in the use and form but not in the content of questions; (2) a relation exists between the function, content and form of a question and the listener's reaction; (3) listeners frequently do not answer questions (this tendency is stronger within the two younger age groups than within the two older ones); (4) answers are frequently not confirmed.
Similarity of babbling in Spanish- and English-learning babies
Authors: Oller D. K. , Eilers R. E.
Published: September 2008

Infants from a variety of linguistic backgrounds have been reported to babble similarly. The present study considers this possibility in detail, offering a concrete characterization of how babbling of Spanish- and English-learning babies is similar. Babbling of a group of Spanish- and another of English-learning infants (12 months of age) was recorded and transcribed by two experimenters, one a primarily Spanish speaker and one a primarily English speaker. Results show that in spite of gross phonetic differences between the adult phonologies of Spanish and English, babies from both groups produce predominantly CV syllables with voiceless, unaspirated plosive consonants. Vowel production is also perceived as notably alike. In the light of such similarities, possible differences in babbling of the two groups may be hard for even sophisticated listeners to notice.
The role of input frequency in lexical acquisition
Authors: Schwartz Richard G. , Terrell Brenda Y.
Published: September 2008

The influence of frequency of occurrence in input upon early lexical acquisition was examined within an experimental paradigm. Twelve children (1; 0·21 to 1; 3·15) were presented with 16 contrived lexical concepts, each involving a nonsense word and four referents, over ten experimental sessions. Within each concept two exemplars were presented frequently and two were presented infrequently. Overall the children named more frequently presented exemplars than infrequently presented exemplars. However, when the absolute number of presentations was held constant, distributed (infrequent) presentations led to greater acquisition than massed (frequent) presentations.
The acquisition of social deixis: children's usages of ‘kin’ terms in Maharashtra, India
Authors: Carter Anthony T.
Published: September 2008

In relatively unstructured interviews, Maratha and Brahmin children in Maharashtra, India, are asked to identify and to speak about household members, relatives, friends, and neighbours. It is argued that characteristic features of the usages and definitions of so-called ‘kin’ terms of young children as compared to those of adults reflect not only an incomplete grasp of the adult system of kinship reference, but also a quite accurate understanding of the deictic system of address in which kinship per se plays at most a peripheral role. It is further argued that, following Silverstein and Levinson, pragmatic rules of use play a major role in this address system and that, pace Piaget and others, these rules are acquired by a form of observational learning which requires that children be able to take another's point of view.
Play with language: overextensions as analogies
Authors: Hudson Judith , Nelson Katherine
Published: September 2008

This study experimentally investigated the hypothesis that some of young children's overextensions are analogic expressions by comparing children's labelling of objects in a naming task to their labelling of the same objects in a play situation. All of the 11 children (1; 8–2; 4) renamed substitute objects during pretend play. Criteria were established which identified 27% of children's renamings as analogic. Analysis of children's choice of substitute objects in pretend play showed that older children's (2; 2–2; 4) selections were influenced by their previous naming of the objects. In addition, both younger and older children tended to choose more functionally similar objects over more physically similar objects although ambiguous objects were renamed most often. Records collected by mothers for one week provided further evidence that children spontaneously produce analogic extensions.
Semantic and cognitive development in 15- to 21-month-old children
Authors: Gopnik Alison , Meltzoff Andrew N.
Published: September 2008

Recent studies suggest a specific relationship between the acquisition of the word ‘gone’ and the development of the object concept. A longitudinal study investigated whether there is a similar relationship between the acquisition of words that encode success and failure, such as no, uh-oh and there, and the development of means–ends skills. A cross-sectional study investigated both these relationships. The results suggest that children acquire the word gone after they solve simple invisible displacement tasks but before they solve serial invisible displacement tasks. They also show that children acquire success/failure words after they use insight to solve the problem of the string but before they use insight to solve more difficult means–ends problems. These sequences cannot be explained in terms of age, general cognitive development or general linguistic development. It is argued that gone encodes a concept related to the concepts that underlie success on invisible displacement tasks, and that success/failure words encode concepts related to the concepts that underlie the development of insight. Children seem to acquire words that encode concepts they have just developed or are in the process of developing. These results suggest that there are strong and specific links between the acquisition of particular types of meanings and particular cognitive achievements. Several alternative explanations for these early links between semantic and conceptual development are proposed.
Environmental correlates of individual differences it language acquisition
Authors: Furrow David , Nelson Katherine
Published: September 2008

Previous studies have reported systematic individual differences among children in their noun and pronoun use. This study examined mothers' use of nouns and pronouns and their references to objects and persons as environmental variables which might relate to children's nominal preferences. Mothers' speech to children classified as referential or expressive in speech style (Nelson 1973) at low and high MLU levels (Nelson 1975) was analysed, and differences relating to children's style and MLU were reported. Results showed no relationship between mothers' use of nouns or pronouns and children's speech style, but did show that mothers' references to objects and persons were related to children's style. These findings are the strongest evidence to date that environmental factors contribute to stylistic differences in language acquisition, and also give support to Nelson's (1973) hypothesis that the communicative functions of language are an important factor in referential and expressive speech styles.
Preschool children's comprehension of agency
Authors: Bridges Allayne
Published: September 2008

An acting-out task and two modified forms of the token-assignment task described by Braine & Wells (1978) were used to test the ability of 72 children aged 3;0–4;6 to identify the actor in an event; in one token-assignment task the children were required to respond after watching silent enactments of transitive events, and in the other the children heard verbal descriptions of similar events. Comparison of individual response patterns across the tasks revealed that whereas 62 of the 72 children could identify the actor in the non-verbal task, 19 of them subsequently failed to perform as well when they had to base their judgement on active sentences in the verbal task; and of the 44 who responded accurately in the verbal token-assignment task only 34 responded consistently correctly when required to act out those sentences. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of syntactic comprehension.
Blind children's language: resolving some differences
Authors: Andersen Elaine S. , Dunlea Anne , Kekelis Linda S.
Published: September 2008

Although the role of visual perception is central to many theories of language development, researchers have disagreed sharply on the effects of blindness on the acquisition process: some claim major differences between blind and sighted children; others find great similarities. With audio-and video-recorded longitudinal data from six children (with varying degrees of vision) aged 0; 9–3; 4, we show that there ARE basic differences in early language, which appear to reflect differences in cognitive development. We focus here on early lexical acquisition and on verbal role-play, demonstrating how previous analyses have failed to observe aspects of the blind child's language system because language was considered out of the context of use. While a comparison of early vocabularies does suggest surface similarities, we found that when sighted peers are actively forming hypotheses about word meanings, totally blind children are acquiring largely unanalysed ‘labels’. They are slow to extend words and rarely overextended any. Similarly, although verbal role-play appears early, attempts to incorporate this kind of language into conversations with others reveal clear problems with reversibility – specifically, the ability to understand the role of shifting perspectives in determining word meaning. Examination of language in context suggests that blind children have difficulties in just those areas of language acquisition where visual information can provide input about the world and be a stimulus for forming hypotheses about pertinent aspects of the linguistic system.
Acquiring case-marked pronouns in Hebrew: the interaction of linguistic factors
Authors: Rom Anita , Dgani Revital
Published: September 2008

Children's production of case-marked pronouns in Hebrew was studied with respect to possessive marking, direct-object marking, and ‘on’- locative marking. In each of these three instances the preposition appears in a bound form with a suffixal pronominal. One hundred and five children between 2;0 and 5:5 were tested in a game-like procedure designed to elicit each of the three prepositions with 1st, 2nd and 3rd personal pronouns. Results indicate that general cross-linguistic principles are operating in the acquisition process, while language specific morphophonological complexity affects relative order of acquisition. A developmental sequence may be seen in the five response patterns identified.
The role of phonetic factors in parent reference
Authors: Locke John L.
Published: September 2008

Throughout this century observers have commented on the beginning talker's evident preference for words denoting ‘father’ over words representing the meaning of ‘mother’. Bateman (1917) said that ‘the most frequently named object is the paternal parent’. Leopold (1948) stated that ‘papa…appears far more commonly as the first meaningful word than does mama’. In this paper I will review some of the reported data on parent reference and propose a phonetic account of the child's evident preference for paternal terms.
Comprehension of Icelandic pronoun gender: semantic versus formal factors
Authors: Mulford Randa
Published: September 2008

The ability of Icelandic children (aged 4 to 8 years) to identify referents of gender-marked pronouns was tested under three conditions: (i) referents with natural/semantic gender, (ii) familiar referents with grammatical gender, (iii) unfamiliar referents with grammatical gender. Potential formal information about grammatical gender was held constant across all conditions. Children's correct identification of pronoun referents was most highly related to the familiarity of the referents and the availability of natural gender information, not to formal gender information. The results are discussed in light of contradictory findings from German. It is argued that subtle differences in the formal gender systems of.the two languages may underlie the different experimental results and may lead to different developmental patterns.
Children's acquisition of Warlpiri: comprehension of transitive sentences
Authors: Bavin Edith L. , Shopen Timothy A.
Published: September 2008

Comprehension test results from children acquiring Warlpiri as a first language in the Yuendumu community indicate that the canonical transitive sentence is one with an ergative-absolutive verb. We hypoth- esize that the acquisition process is influenced by a number of properties of the language, properties including the presence of homophonous forms for some of the case endings, the use of three different case frames, the optional ellipsis of core arguments, and the optionality of case markings in certain conditions.
The emergence of illocutionary skills
Authors: Reeder Kenneth
Published: September 2008

A psycholinguistic experiment elicits highly reliable judgements from young English-speaking children aged 2; 6–3; 0 about illocutionary force of utterances presented in controlled contexts. Puppet play simulated extralinguistic features judged capable of constituting felicity conditions upon the illocutionary acts Request and Offer. The experimental data bear upon two questions: (1) What set of features, linguistic and pragmatic, constitute cues for the discrimination of illocutionary force by young children? (2) What is the lower developmental bound of the emergence of discrimination of illocutionary force for Requests and Offers? While grasp of illocutionary force for Offers was well-established by 2; 6, discrimination skills for Requests probably continues to develop between 2; 6 and 3; 0. Relevant pragmatic features are explicated, and a model of the comprehension of illocutionary force proposed in the light of the results.
Hungarian research on the acquisition of morphology and syntax
Authors: Macwhinney Brian
Published: September 2008

This review analyses research on the acquisition of Hungarian morphology and syntax. The specific topics covered are morphological analysis, neologisms, acquisition of the first inflections, morpheme order, word order and agreement. Several lines of evidence suggest that the first unit acquired by the child is the word. Because of the structure of Hungarian, both errors in segmentation of the utterance and errors in the segmentation of the word are minimized. Morphological analysis seems to begin at the semantic level and proceed to the morphological level. Data on acquisition of free word order and early inflections are potentially of great interest, although presently inconclusive.
Satisfying inquisitive adults: some simple methods of answering yes/no questions
Authors: Steffensen Margaret S.
Published: September 2008

The development of two children's responses to yes/no questions is studied longitudinally. It will be proposed that the children realize that they must verbalize, but do not understand the semantics of the question form or the affirmative and negative particles. Their answers are not appropriate by the conventions of adult speech. In this situation, each child develops his own system, a phenomenon to be called PRAGMATIC VARIATION. Head nodding and shaking show a pattern of development comparable to that of the verbal responses. The options available to children acquiring English are discussed.
Plurals in child speech
Authors: Park Tschang-Zin
Published: September 2008

The development of plurals in two German-speaking children was analysed, based on observational data. It was found that (1) plurals were supplied in 90% of the obligatory contexts somewhere between Stage IV and Stage V; (2) plurals were not functionally distinguished from singulars, occurring also in singular contexts; (3) the predominant morphological deviations were of the type in which an additional plural marker was attached to an already correct plural; (4) referring to a single object or event, formally correct plural utterances were often constructed, partly because of as yet unestablished verb conjugation rules. It was argued that the children were learning plurals by rote, conditioned by morphological complexity which cannot be subsumed under any general rule.
Language mixing in bilingual children
Authors: Lindholm Kathryn J. , Padilla A. M.
Published: September 2008

Language samples of five Spanish/English bilingual children between the ages of 2; 10 and 6; 2 were examined for language mixes. Only 2% of the total utterances examined contained mixes. The most common type of mix involved the insertion of single lexical entries – mostly English nouns into Spanish utterances. Very few phrasal mixes were observed. It was concluded that language mixes do not constitute a major interference in the acquisition of bilingualism since children appear to be able to differentiate their two linguistic systems from an early age.
A test of metaphoric comprehension and some preliminary developmental data
Authors: Pollio Marilyn R. , Pollio Howard R.
Published: September 2008

The purposes of the present study was to develop a multiple-choice test of figurative language comprehension and to evaluate the development of such comprehension over a wide range of ages and children. To do this, samples of novel and frozen figures were selected from a corpus provided by elementary school children and then administered to 149 different children between 9 and 14 years. Results showed that the test produced was a reliable one, and one that produced meaningful developmental trends. In addition, differences were noted between the comprehension and production of novel and frozen figures of speech. These findings were discussed in terms of their methodological and developmental implications.
The unintelligibility of speech to children
Authors: Bard Ellen Gurman , Anderson Anne H.
Published: September 2008

Words artificially isolated from twelve parents' speech to their children (aged 1; 10–3; 0) were significantly less intelligible to adult listeners than words originally spoken to an adult. This effect holds for randomly sampled words and, to a lesser extent, for matched pairs. While parents did not adjust the clarity of word tokens to the linguistic naiveté of the child listeners, they did adjust intelligibility inversely to the observed predictability of the sampled words in their sentence contexts, and words to children proved more redundant in this sense. The relationship of these findings to other work on the clarity of motherese is examined and the implications for the study of children's speech perception outlined.
Individual differences at 20 months: analytic and holistic strategies in language acquisition
Authors: Bretherton Inge , McNew Sandra , Snyder Lynn , Bates Elizabeth
Published: September 2008

The study focuses on the language abilities of 30 20-month-old children, using data from two sources: a detailed maternal interview and 90 minutes of videotaped observation. Observed language was coded into the categories used for the interview. Production and comprehension at 28 months (MLU, PPVT and morphology comprehension) were also assessed. Observation and interview data at 20 months were highly intercorrelated. Cluster analyses of both data sets yielded referential, grammatical morpheme and dialogue clusters, providing partial support for the nominal/pronominal and referential/expressive acquisition styles reported in the literature. However, the referential and grammatical morpheme clusters were highly correlated, suggesting that two acquisition strategies are developing in parallel. Only for those children who heavily emphasize one strategy can one speak of a distinctive style. All interview and observation clusters predicted 28-months MLU, but the grammatical morpheme clusters did not predict later performance on a Grammatical Morpheme Test. It is tentatively suggested that holistic processing strategies underlie the pronominal/expressive style.
Children's judgements of transitivity errors
Authors: Hochberg Judith G.
Published: September 2008

Diary studies of English, Hebrew and Portuguese have led to debate on whether there is directionality in children's transitivity errors – that is, whether children are as likely to coin intransitives from transitives (*Bert knocked down) as they are transitives from intransitives (*I falled my cup). The judgements made by 3- and 4-year-olds showed a strong bias in favour of innovative transitives in English. It is argued that this bias results from children's preference for prototypical, highly transitive descriptions of events.
Linguistic complexity and performance
Authors: Smith Carlota S. , van Kleeck Anne
Published: September 2008

This article reports an experimental investigation of the influence of linguistic factors on linguistic performance. The factors studied were interpretive complexity and surface length; they were expected to affect performance differentially, depending on the demands of the task. The stimulus sentences were three temporal adverbial structures wherein sentences high in interpretive complexity were low in surface length and vice versa. The experiment presented a toy-moving and an imitation task to children aged 3;6–6;0. The results show an interaction between type of linguistic complexity and type of linguistic performance. Sentences high in interpretive complexity were the most difficult in the toy-moving task and the easiest in the imitation task, and vice versa. The experiments suggest that different abilities are tapped by imitation and toy-moving tasks.
Effects of contingent and noncontingent maternal stimulation on the vocal behaviour of three- to four-month-old Japanese infants
Authors: Masataka Nobuo
Published: September 2008

A total of 48 male infants experienced either conversational turn-taking or random responsiveness of their mothers when aged 0;3 and 0;4. In both periods, the infant's rate of vocalizing was not significantly influenced by the contingency of the mother's response, but contingency altered the temporal parameters of the infant's vocal pattern. Infants tended to produce more bursts or packets of vocalizations when the mother talked to the infant in a random pattern. When the infants were aged 0;3 such bursts occurred most often at intervals of 0·5–1·5 sec whereas when they were aged 0;4 they took place most frequently at significantly longer intervals, of 1·0–2·0. The difference corresponded to the difference between intervals with which the mother responded contingently to vocalizations of the infant at 0;3 and at 0;4. While the intervals (between the onset of the infant's vocalization and the onset of the mother's vocalization) rarely exceeded 0·5 sec when the infant was aged 0;3, they were mostly distributed between 0·5 and 1·0 sec when he was aged 0;4. After vocalizing spontaneously, the infant tended to pause as if to listen for a possible vocal response from the mother. In the absence of a response, he vocalized repeatedly. The intervals between the two consecutive vocalizations were changed flexibly by the infant according to his recent experience of turn-taking with the mother.
Differential responding to two- and three-year-olds' utterances: the roles of grammaticality and ambiguity
Authors: Furrow David , Baillie Constance , McLaren Jennifer , Moore Chris
Published: September 2008

Mothers have been found to respond differently to grammatical and ungrammatical utterances in young children's language. However, parents indicate that they are conscious only of responding to communicative aspects of their children's speech, not grammar. Further, researchers have looked to the understandability of utterances to explain the effects of grammaticality on maternal responses. The present study addressed the question of whether it is actually grammatical form that mothers respond to, or whether it is ambiguity in the communicative functions of children's utterances. Three mother-child dyads were videotaped in a free play setting when the children were 2;0 and 3;0. Children's spontaneous comprehensible utterances were rated for grammaticality and ambiguity of function, and mothers' responses to them were noted. Results indicated that mothers responded differentially to both the ambiguity and grammaticality of children's utterances, and that these two factors had some degree of independence in their effects on mothers' responses.
Uses of past forms in the social pretend play of Italian children
Authors: Musatti Tullia , Orsolini Margherita
Published: September 2008

In different languages children have been found to use past verb forms to express the meaning of ‘unreality’ during social pretend play. In this study, the verb forms used by 14 four-year-old Italian children in their pretend play were investigated. Results show that different Italian past verb forms tend to co-occur with different play activities. The imperfect occurs mainly when children plan and negotiate their pretend activities and marks the transition from a real to a pretend frame of reference. The present perfect occurs mainly when children implement their plans and communicate within a pretend frame that has already been established. Results of this study are discussed in comparison with findings on the pretend language of children speaking other languages.
Continuity in lexical and morphological development: a test of the critical mass hypothesis
Authors: Marchman Virginia A. , Bates Elizabeth
Published: September 2008

Several recent studies have demonstrated strong relationships between lexical acquisition and subsequent developments within the domain of morphosyntax. A connectionist model of the acquisition of a morphological System analogous to that of the English past tense (Plunkett & Marchman, 1993) suggests that growth in vocabulary size may relate to the onset of over-regularization errors. However, this model suggests that the relationships between vocabulary size and morphosyntactic development are non-linear. Incremental increases in the number of verbs to be learned result in qualitative shifts in the treatment of both previously learned and novel forms, but only after the size of the lexicon exceeds a particular level (i.e. reaches a ‘critical mass’). In this paper we present parental report data from an extensive study of English-speaking children aged 1;4 to 2;6 using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Toddler form (N = 1130). These data corroborate several findings from previous studies, including the early usage of unmarked verb stems and the correct production of irregular past tense forms. Further, we demonstrate support for the ‘critical mass’ view of the onset of over-regularization errors, focusing on continuity among lexical and morphological developments. In our view, these data suggest that these linguistic milestones may be paced by similar, if not identical mechanisms.
How mothers teach basic-level and situation-restricted count nouns
Authors: Hall D. Geoffrey
Published: September 2008

Recent research suggests that young children assume, as a default, that a word applied ostensively to an unfamiliar object (e.g. a man riding in a car) is a basic-level count noun (e.g. person) rather than a situation-restricted count noun (e.g. passenger). In this experiment, 14 mothers and their children (mean age 3;7; range 3;0 to 4;6) participated in a story-book reading session in which the mothers taught their children both a basic-level count noun and a situation-restricted count noun for a series of object drawings. An analysis of mothers' spontaneous teaching strategies revealed that, for a given object, they typically taught a basic-level count noun before a situation-restricted count noun. Furthermore, they tended to teach basic-level count nouns exclusively through estensive definition, especially when the objects were unfamiliar. Moreover, they were (1) more likely to use estensive definitions and (2) less likely to provide additional information concerning the application of the word, when teaching basic-level count nouns than when teaching situation-restricted count nouns. The results provide new evidence that word teachers, like young word learners, assume that a basic-level count noun is the psychologically-privileged candidate for an ostensive definition involving an (unfamiliar) object.
Morphological cues to verb meaning: verb inflections and the initial mapping of verb meanings
Authors: Behrend Douglas A. , Harris L. Lynn , Cartwright Kelly B.
Published: September 2008

The present studies investigated children's use of verb inflections to guide their initial mapping of verb meanings. Given that children initially apply the progressive-inginflection to verbs denoting actions and the past-edinflection to verbs denoting results of events, two studies were conducted to investigate whether children use these inflections during mapping of novel verb meanings. In both studies, subjects were taught novel verbs and were asked to extend those verbs to events in which the action or result differed from events used to teach the verbs. It was predicted that subjects would be less likely to extend verbs inflected with-ingto events with new actions and would be less likely to extend verbs inflected with-edto events with new results. Eighteeen three- and five-year-olds and 24 adults participated in Experiment 1 in a between-subjects design that produced weak effects for the youngest subjects tested. Experiment 2 tested 16 three-year-olds and 19 five-year-olds in a within-subjects design and produced the predicted effect for three-year-olds, but not for five-year-olds. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for early verb learning and regarding the use of the bootstrapping construct in language acquisition research.
Actionality and mental imagery in children's comprehension of declaratives
Authors: Thibaut Jean-Pierre , Rondal Jean A. , KÄens Anne-Marie
Published: September 2008

Previous work bas demonstrated that children understand sentences with actional verbs better than nonactional verbs. This ACTIONALITY EFFECT bas been reportee to be restricted to passives and to be independent of experimental context. The present experiment was conducted with 48 French-speaking children aged 5;0–7;11. The actionality effect was studied by systematically varying the voice of the test sentences and the voice of the interpretive requests. Pictures corresponding or not to the predicate—argument structure of the sentences were presented to the subjects, who were independently classified as visualizers or nonvisualizers, in order to investigate the relation between sentence actionality and mental imagery. The interaction between actionality, voice of sentence, and interpretive request revealed that the actionality effect depends on the type of task used in order to assess comprehension, and that it can be reversed in some conditions. Our results also suggest that the actionality effect is linked to mental imagery. Visualizers demonstrated better comprehension of actional sentences than nonvisualizers, whereas the reverse was true for nonactional sentences. Mental image may serve as a support for the computations involved in sentence comprehension.
The relation between index-finger extension and the acoustic quality of cooing in three-month-old infants
Authors: Masataka Nobuo
Published: September 2008

Fourteen full-term, healthy, three-month-old infants were observed during a total of 15 minutes spontaneous face-to-face interaction with their mothers. Facial and manual actions, gaze direction and vocalizations were coded. The infants' cooing vocalizations were categorized into syllabic and vocalic sounds. Index-finger extension occurred frequently in sequence with syllabic sounds, which are speech-like vocalizations, but rarely occurred in sequence with vocalic sounds. No other categories of nonvocal behaviours showed such a relationship. In a subsequent experiment, the infants experienced either conversational turn-taking or random responsiveness from their mothers. In the turn-taking condition, the infants produced a higher ratio of syllabic to vocalic sounds, and a higher frequency of index-finger extension. These results suggest a strong connection between speech and the pointing gesture long before the infant can actually talk.
A longitudinal study of infant vocalizations during mother–infant games
Authors: Rome-Flanders Tibie , Cronk Carolyn
Published: September 2008

This study explored the development of verbal behaviours of infants during two mother–infant games. Twenty-five infants were videotaped as they played peek-a-boo and ball with their mothers at 0;6, 0;9, 1;0, 1;3, 1;6, and 2;0. The frequencies of eight categories of vocal/verbal behaviours were analysed as they evolved over time in both games. Despite differences in the structure and level of difficulty of peek-a-boo and ball, the development of these behaviours proved to be similar in the two games. One category, PRIMITIVE VOCALIZATIONS, which did not change in frequency over time, was seen to have a pragmatic rather than a linguistic function. Another category, PRELEXICAL COMMENT, demonstrated an early capacity for conveying topic and comment together in the form of speech sounds combined with an attentiongetting gesture well before the emergence of multiple-word utterances. The vocal behaviours produced during games were compared with the results of language tests administered during the experimental sessions. Strong correlations were found between the results of these two measures of language. The predictive nature of vocal behaviours during games is discussed.
Early lexical development: the contribution of parental labelling and infants' categorization abilities
Authors: Poulin-Dubois Diane , Graham Susan , Sippola Lorrie
Published: September 2008

In the present longitudinal study, we examined changes in parental labelling and infants' categorization skills as potential predictors of vocabulary composition, the age of the naming explosion, and the acquisition of subordinate labels. Sixteen French- and English-speaking parent–child dyads were videotaped during a 2O-minute free-play session every month beginning when the child was 1;0 and ending at 2;0. The children received object-manipulation tasks every three months and their vocabulary growth was recorded. Parental labelling practices were assessed monthly using a picture-book reading task. Both parental labelling and children's categorization skills predicted the content of children's lexicon, with children with more names in their vocabulary having better categorization skills. Furthermore, the naming explosion was found to coincide with improvement of categorization skills. These findings suggest that the influence of each factor varies as a function of the stage and aspect of lexical development considered.
Rice balls and bear hunts: Japanese and North American family narrative patterns
Authors: Minami Masahiko , McCabe Allyssa
Published: September 2008

In past research, the form of Japanese children's personal narratives was found to be distinctly different from that of English-speaking children. Despite follow-up questions that encouraged them to talk about one personal narrative at length, Japanese children spoke succinctly about collections of experiences rather than elaborating on any one experience in particular (Minami & McCabe, 1991). Conversations between mothers and children in the two cultures were examined in order partly to account for the way in which cultural narrative style is transmitted to children. Comparison of mothers from the two cultures yielded the following salient contrasts: (1) In comparison to the North American mothers, the Japanese mothers requested proportionately less description from their children. (2) Both in terms of frequency and proportion, the Japanese mothers gave less evaluation and showed more verbal attention to children than did North American mothers. (3) Japanese mothers pay verbal attention more frequently to boys than to girls. In addition, at five years, Japanese children produce 1·22 utterances per turn on average, while North American children produce 2·00 utterances per turn, a significant difference. Thus, by frequently showing verbal attention to their children's narrative contributions, Japanese mothers not only support their children's talk about the past but also make sure that it begins to take the shape of narration valued in their culture. The production of short narratives in Japan is understood and valued differently from such production in North America.
Children's comprehension of the distinction betweenwantandneed
Authors: Moore Chris , Gilbert Cheryl , Sapp Felicity
Published: September 2008

Two experiments examined the development of children's understanding of the difference betweenwantandneed. In experiment 1, children were tested on their knowledge thatwantrepresents an intrinsic desire whereasneedrepresents an instrumental desire. Forty-five children between three and five years of age heard four stories in which one character encountered a problem, while another did not. A desirable object which could alleviate the problem was then introduced, and after both characters requested the object, the children were asked whether each characterwantsthe object orneedsit. Three-year-olds were unable to differentiate the two terms in such contexts, whereas four- and five-year-olds were significantly more likely to say that the character experiencing the problem needed the object, while the other wanted it. In experiment 2, 45 subjects between three and five years of age were tested on their understanding that a request employingneedexpresses a stronger desire than one employingwant. Subjects were required to give an object to one of two characters, one of whom asked for it usingneedand the other usingwant. In this experiment, three-year-olds were equally likely to give the object to the character usingwantas to the one usingneed. Both four- and five–year–olds were significantly more likely to give the object to the character who usedneed. The results from these two experiments show that the understanding of the semantic and pragmatic difference betweenwantandneeddevelops at about four years of age.
An experimental test of phonemic cyclicity
Authors: Gierut Judith A.
Published: September 2008

Laryngeal-supralaryngeal cyclicity has been put forth as an acquisition principle that describes expansion of the phonemic inventory as a bivalent cycle with alternations between the elaboration of laryngeal and supralaryngeal properties of the system (Gierut, 1994). This study evaluated experimentally the claims of the principle by manipulating the domain of the cycle and the phase relationship of the cycle as independent variables, and by monitoring longitudinally the order of emergent phonemic distinctions in the sound systems of seven children with phonological delays (aged 3;4 to 5;8) as the dependent variable. Three general findings emerged: (1) the course of acquisition for all children was consistent with cyclicity; (2) there were no differences in phonemic acquisition between children taught a laryngeal as opposed to a supralaryngeal distinction; and (3) children taught out-of-phase with the cycle evidenced greater phonemic expansion than those taught inphase with the cycle.
Measuring the vocabulary spurt: a reply to Mervis & Bertrand
Authors: Goldfield Beverly A. , Reznick J. Steven
Published: September 2008

We reply to Mervis & Bertrand's report of three children (aged 1; 6–1; 8 at the start of the study) who evidenced a ‘late’ vocabulary spurt. Differences in assessing productive vocabulary, and the questionable inference that size of the lexicon is a reliable indicator of the vocabulary spurt, make it inappropriate to compare these children to previous studies that directly measure change in rate of word learning. Further work using continuous records of lexical development and controls for repeated cognitive assessments is needed to test hypotheses about the spurt and related cognitive and linguistic achievements.
On the analysis of brine transport in porous media
Authors: van Duijn C. J. , Peletier L. A. , Schotting R. J.
Published: September 2008

An analysis is given of brine transport through a porous medium, which incorporates the effect of volume changes due to variations in the salt concentration. Two specific situations are investigated which lead to self-similarity. We develop the existence and uniqueness theory for the corresponding ordinary differential equations, and give a number of qualitative properties of the solutions. In particular, we present an asymptotic expression for the solution in terms of the relative density difference (ρs−ρf)/ρf. Finally, we show some numerical results. It is found that the volume changes have a noticeable effect on the mass transport only when salt concentrations are large.
A mathematical model for the wet-spinning process
Authors: Ockendon H. , Terrill E. L.
Published: September 2008

A mathematical model for the hydrodynamic flow and fibre deflections in a wet-spinning process is presented. The model is characterized by two parameters: α which is a characteristic ratio of the hydrodynamic force to the tension force acting on a fibre, and β which is a characteristic ratio of the fibre drag to the fluid inertia. The model is applied to three situations: (i) the spin bath of the process where α ≪ 1 and β ≫ 1, (ii) the preheat bath where α is order 1 and β ≫ 1, (iii) a fibre spreading process where α is order 1 and β is order 1 or smaller. In each case, analytical results are obtained for the fluid flow and fibre deflections and compared with experiment.