bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Lexical and syllabic patterns in phonological acquisition
Authors: Shibamoto J. S. , Olmsted D. L. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTFollowing Ferguson & Farwell (1975), this paper looks at phonological development in lexical terms and extends their method to consideration of syllables within words. Ferguson & Farwell dealt with word-initial consonants only; we attempt to determine whether the sets of phone classes in all positions are the same, whether differences that occur from position to position are primarily within the phone class or in the number and distribution of phone classes at each level in the tree, and what effect position in the syllable has on phone classes.
Why not semantic relations?
Authors: Duchan Judith , Lund Nancy J. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study challenges the semantic relations categories widely used for explaining children's early utterances. Ten 3-year-olds were asked two sets of questions involving the verb + with construction. Their responses were categorized according to existing semantic relations categories such as instrumental and locative. Problems with this approach emerged which were solved by developing a more simple dichotomous category system. The children responded by naming an item which is characteristically present for the duration of the given verb and not beyond its duration (chew with food). Thus the chosen item's presence was BOUNDED by the duration of the activity. When several items fitted the bounded criterion, the one most necessary for carrying out the activity was selected, and when no items fitted the bounded criterion, a non-bounded or continuously present item was reluctantly chosen.
Contextual priority: verbal shift at seven?
Authors: Muma John R. , Zwycewicz-Emory Carol L. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTDevelopmental changes in verbal responses to systematic variations in linguistic contexts contrast with the data reported in the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift studies. The present study indicates a protracted developmental shift extending from five years of age beyond nine years of age. Apparently the first priority is to create a linguistic context when none is given; once a linguistic context is realized, semantic-syntactic equivalences have priority, followed by differentiation and then integration.
More on the acquisition of locative prepositions: an analysis of Hebrew data
Authors: Dromi Esther 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe use of locative prepositions by Hebrew-speaking children aged 2; 0–3; 0, was investigated in a cross-sectional study. Thirty kibbutz children served as subjects. The spontaneous utterances of each child were analyzed and scored for the frequency with which the child supplied obligatory contexts for locative expressions as well as for appropriate use. The findings suggest the following order of acquisition: be- ‘in’; le- ‘to’; le+ pronominal suffixes ‘to’ (dative); al ‘on’; le ‘to’ (directional); mi- ‘from’; al-yad ‘beside’; meaxorey ‘behind’; mitaxat le- ‘under’. The role of formal linguistic complexity in determining that order is discussed. Special reference is made to the contrast between enclitic prefix prepositions and separate word prepositions that express the same locative notions.
The acquisition of time talk: relations between child and adult grammars
Authors: Smith Carlota S. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTA Reichenbach-type theory is proposed that accounts for a child's early system of temporal reference and relates it directly to the adult system. This theory makes predictions different from those of a competing theory, a strong decentring hypothesis. Experimental results and data from spontaneous speech are examined, and the predictions of the first theory are borne out: young English-speaking children express notions of temporal ordering as well as aspectual notions.
Assessing linguistic competence: when are children hard to understand?
Authors: Fabian-Kraus Veronica , Ammon Paul 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTIt is argued that previous assessments of children's knowledge of the hard to see type of construction were confounded by a variety of extra-linguistic factors. Therefore, the relatively delayed age of comprehension previously reported (6½–8 years) may have been due to younger children's deficiencies in extralinguistic skills. In the present study, with these extralinguistic complications eliminated, the passing age was found to be 5 years, and even 4-year-olds evidenced considerable knowledge of the target structure. Other findings were: variation in sentence difficulty as a function of the syntactic and/or aspectual character of the verb; high test–retest reliability at all levels of performance; and a necessary-but-not-sufficient empirical relation between comprehension of the target construction and the passive. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the acquisition of this particular structure and for the general problem of detecting linguistic competence from performance.
Learning the phonetic cues to the voiced-voiceless distinction: a comparison of child and adult speech perception
Authors: Greenlee Mel 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe present study explored children's perceptual capabilities with regard to the temporal acoustic cue of differential vowel duration, comparing children's perceptual identifications to those of adults. Three-year-old children, six-year-old children, and adults participated in two experiments, in which they were asked to identify (as voiced or voiceless) CVC words with uniformly voiceless final obstruents, but in which vowel duration was systematically varied. Children were also asked to identify a set of CONTROL stimuli, in which both closure voicing and vowel duration differences were present. Results indicate that both subject age and vowel duration of the TEST stimuli significantly affect identification responses. Adults and six-year olds evidence perceptual cross-over in their judgements for the TEST stimuli, while three-year-olds do not seem to change their identifications, regardless of variations in vowel duration. However, for both groups of children, the accuracy of identifications was greater for originally voiced stimuli on the CONTROL set of words, in which more than one potential cue to the voicing distinction was present. These results suggest that there is a complex and somewhat paradoxical relationship between developing production and perception which deserves further research. Children may consistently produce a phonetic difference (vowel duration) which they are unable to use as the SOLE perceptual cue for a phonological contrast.
Factors influencing children's hypothetical reference
Authors: Kuczaj Stan A. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTSixty 3- to 6-year-old children were tested in order to assess certain aspects of their ability to answer questions alluding to hypothetical events. Each child was asked four hypothetical questions from each of four topic areas: (1) past-parent, (2) past-fantasy, (3) future-parent and (4) future-fantasy. Although correct responses increased with age for each of the four categories, children more often responded correctly to future hypothetical questions than to past hypothetical questions and to hypothetical questions involving fantasy characters than to hypothetical questions involving the children's parents. Moreover, the interaction of the past-future and parent-fantasy factors yielded an overall pattern of difficulty for the four topic areas. These findings are discussed in terms of the factors which influence the development of hypothetical reference skills.
Children's understanding of ask and tell
Authors: Warden David 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTEvidence produced by Chomsky (1969) has suggested that 5-year-old children comprehend the verb tell more easily than the verb ask. This paper analyses the interpersonal context of appropriate use of these verbs and reports the results of two comprehension experiments with 5-year-olds. The first experiment, in attempting to correct an apparent methodological weakness in Chomsky's study, reverses her results and elicits a significantly higher frequency of correct responses to the verb ask than the verb tell: the second experiment demonstrates that this age group can consistently identify the speech acts to which the words ask and tell refer. The results are interpreted as support for the conclusion that 5-year-olds can comprehend the meaning of ask and tell, but that their linguistic comprehension is easily dominated by contextual and interpersonal expectations.
The development of relational arcs in the lexical semantic memory structures of young children
Authors: Norlin Peter F. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTForty-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

ABSTRACTThis 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.
Reduplication as a strategy of phonological development
Authors: Fee Jane , Ingram David 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTFive 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

ABSTRACTKindergarteners, 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

ABSTRACTStructural 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

ABSTRACT21 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

ABSTRACTThe 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

ABSTRACTInfants 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

ABSTRACTThe 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

ABSTRACTIn 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

ABSTRACTThis 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

ABSTRACTRecent 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

ABSTRACTPrevious 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

ABSTRACTAn 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

ABSTRACTAlthough 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.