bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Types of linguistic knowledge: interpreting and producing compound nouns
Authors: Clark Eve V. , Berman Ruth A. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe present study examined the types of linguistic knowledge that affect children's ability to understand and produce novel compounds in Hebrew. Sixty children aged 3;0–9;0, and 12 adults, were asked to interpret and to produce novel Noun + Noun compounds. Their comprehension was in advance of their production. In comprehension, morphological form of head nouns had little effect: from age four, children did equally well on all the compound forms tested; they identified head nouns and also possible relations between heads and their modifiers. In production, though, knowledge of morphological form was crucial. The fewer the changes children had to make in the forms of head nouns, the earlier they mastered that compound pattern. Finally, children who produced novel compounds correctly were also able to interpret novel compounds, but not vice versa.
How to make young children produce cleft sentences
Authors: Hupet Michel , Tilmant Brigitte 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe present study focuses on the effects of contextual demands on the selection of a particular syntactic device, in asking whether French-speaking children from 4 to 10 years old will spontaneously produceit-cleft sentences if there is a functional necessity arising from the context. Taking into account recent studies that have specified the discourse function(s) served by this marked sentence form, it was hypothesized that the cleft formulation would be more likely than its uncleft counterpart whenever the child's intention was to contrast their own belief or knowledge with that of their addressee. The study showed this to be the case when the matter of the disagreement concerned the agent of an action: that situation elicited an overwhelming majority (from 80% to 97%) of cleft constructions, even from the youngest children. On the other hand, when the matter of the disagreement concerned the patient, there were only a few cleft constructions, even with the oldest children; contrastive stress on the object constituent was the predominant device employed for marking information in that situation. The high proportion of clefts in the Agent condition, and the high proportion of stressed object constituents in the Patient condition, both differ from previously reported data. These differences are discussed with reference to differences in task requirements and to differences between the prosodie constraints of French and English.
The linguistic marking of agentivity and control in child language
Authors: Budwig Nancy 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the relationship between linguistic forms and the functions they serve in children's early talk about agentivity and control. The spontaneous linguistic productions of six children ranging between 1;8 and 2;8 served as the data base. Preliminary analyses of who the children referred to and what forms were used in subject position suggest that the children could be divided into two groups. Three children primarily referred to Self and relied on multiple Self reference forms in subject position, while the other children referred to both Self and Other and primarily used the Self reference form, I. A functional analysis was carried out to examine whether the seemingly interchangeable use of Self reference forms could be related to semantic and pragmatic patterns. The findings indicate that at a time before they regularly refer to others, the children systematically employed different Self reference forms to mark distinct perspectives on agency.
Form and function in the acquisition of Korean wh-questions
Authors: Clancy Patricia M. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTIn this paper the order in which wh-questions are acquired in the production and comprehension of two Korean children, aged 1;8–2;8 and 1;10–2; 10, is analysed and compared with the available crosslinguistic data. Consistencies in acquisition order are hypothesized to be based on universals of cognitive development, which constrain the comprehension and production of wh-forms and influence the order in which mothers introduce them, and on functionally based similarities in the input of form/function pairs across children and languages. Discrepancies in acquisition order are attributed to differences in interactive style across caregivers and children, leading to different input frequencies of particular forms and individual children's selection of different forms for use.
How children understand idioms in discourse
Authors: Cacciari Cristina , Levorato Maria Chiara 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTSome studies have shown that children tend to interpret figurative language literally. Our hypothesis is that they can reach an idiomatic competence if idioms are presented within a rich informational environment allowing children to grasp their figurative sense. First and third graders were presented with narratives biased both to the figurative meaning of idioms (experiment 1) and to the literal meaning (experiment 2) and then given a comprehension task. Experiment 3 was designed to investigate children's production of idioms as compared to the comprehension abilities explored in experiments 1 and 2. Results show that informative contexts can improve children's ability to perceive idiomatic meanings even at the age of seven; and that children are less able to produce idioms than to comprehend them. Generally results emphasize that children seem able to perceive that language can be both figurative and literal.
A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants
Authors: Fernald Anne , Taeschner Traute , Dunn Judy , Papousek Mechthild , de Boysson-Bardies Bénédicte , Fukui Ikuko 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis study compares the prosodie modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants in French, Italian, German, Japanese, British English, and American English. At every stage of data collection and analysis, standardized procedures were used to enhance the comparability across data sets that is essential for valid cross-language comparison of the prosodie features of parental speech. In each of the six language groups, five mothers and five fathers were recorded in semi-structured home observations while speaking to their infant aged 0; 10–1;2 and to an adult. Speech samples were instrumentally analysed to measure seven prosodic parameters: mean fundamental frequency (f0), f0-minimum, f0-maximum, f0-range, f0-variability, utterance duration, and pause duration. Results showed cross-language consistency in the patterns of prosodic modification used in parental speech to infants. Across languages, both mothers and fathers used higher mean-f0, f0-minimum, and f0-maximum, greater f0-variability, shorter utterances, and longer pauses in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech. Mothers, but not fathers, used a wider f0-range in speech to infants. American English parents showed the most extreme prosodic modifications, differing from the other language groups in the extent of intonational exaggeration in Speech to infants. These results reveal common patterns in caretaker's use of intonation across languages, which may function developmentally to regulate infant arousal and attention, to communicate affect, and to facilitate speech perception and language comprehension. In addition to providing evidence for possibly universal prosodic features of speech to infants, these results suggest that language-specific variations are also important, and that the findings of the numerous studies of early language input based on American English are not necessarily generalisable to other cultures.
The transition from optional to required subjects
Authors: O'Grady William , Peters Ann M. , Masterson Deborah 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTWe propose (contra Hyams, 1986) that the optional subject phenomenon in early child language arises because children have not yet acquired the morphological elements (primarily modals and tense) necessary to distinguish Subject-Taking (ST) verbs (e.g. finite verbs) from their non-Subject-Taking (NST) counterparts (e.g. infinitives). Unaware of this distinction, children are able only to observe that verbs sometimes occur with subjects and sometimes without. We show that our proposal makes a number of developmental predictions which we then test with the help of longitudinal data from three children. We conclude that: (i) There is no systematic morphological distinction between ST and NST verbs during the optional subject stage (OSS). (2) The emergence of the distinction between ST and NST verbs is gradual rather than sudden. (3) There is variation from child to child in terms of which morphologically-defined subclass of verbs is first recognized as subject-taking. (4) There is no link between the emergence of modals or contracted copulas and the end of the OSS.
Limits on negative information in language input
Authors: Morgan James L. , Travis Lisa L. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTHirsh-Pasek, Treiman & Schneiderman (1984).and Demetras, Post & Snow (1986).have recently suggested that certain types of parental repetitions and clarification questions may provide children with subtle cues to their grammatical errors. We further investigated this possibility by examining parental responses to inflectional over-regularizations and wh-question auxiliary-verb omission errors in the sets of transcripts from Adam, Eve and Sarah (Brown 1973). These errors were chosen because they are exemplars of overgeneralization, the type of mistake for which negative information is, in theory, most critically needed. Expansions and Clarification Questions occurred more often following ill-formed utterances in Adam's and Eve's input, but not in Sarah's. However, these corrective responses formed only a small proportion of all adult responses following Adam's and Eve's grammatical errors. Moreover, corrective responses appear to drop out of children's input while they continue to make overgeneralization errors. Whereas negative feedback may occasionally be available, in the light of these findings the contention that language input generally incorporates negative information appears to be unfounded.
Patterns of object–name extension in production
Authors: Chapman Kathy L. , Mervis Carolyn B. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe evolution of young children's categories, as measured by category name production, was studied. The focus was on categories whose names initially were overextended. Four children (initially aged 1; 1 to 1; 3) were visited at home twice a week over a four- to six-month period, until they were approximately 1;7. The play sessions included eli-citations of the names of specially chosen objects. Results indicated that, as predicted, four sequences of category evolution were found, formed by the intersection of two factors: overlap vs. mutual exclusivity and first re-assignment separate vs. first re-assignment joint. As expected, most sequences involved initial overlap, and the choice of first reassignment option varied as a function of the relationship (hierarchical or non-hierarchical) between the initial child-basic category and the new category.
Contextual information and temporal terms
Authors: Gorrell Paul , Crain Stephen , Fodor Janet Dean 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTWe report an experiment designed to identify how contextual information can influence children's performance on an experimental task involving temporal terms. Grain (1982) reported improved performance on a comprehension task when subjects were provided with contextual information, and he suggested that the improvement was due to satisfaction of presuppositions. However, this contextual information might have served to simplify task demands by providing prior information concerning an important aspect of the task. The present study distinguishes these factors by incorporating contextual information into the subordinate clause of the test sentences in a comprehension experiment (to satisfy presupposions) or into the main clause (to provide comparable prior information without satisfying presuppositions). We conclude that contextual information results in a significant improvement only when such information can be used to satisfy presuppositions.
The development of mental terms: pragmatics or semantics?
Authors: Moore Chris , Davidge Jane 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe distinctions between the mental terms, know, think and sure was examined in an experiment with 60 children between three and six years of age. The children were required to find an object hidden in one of two places. Their only clues were two statements involving contrasting mental terms, with each statement referring to one of the possible hiding places. Results showed a significant improvement with age for the know-think and sure-think contrasts, with think treated as a less reliable index of location than both know and sure by four to five years of age. No change with age was found for know-sure contrast. It is concluded that by four to five years of age, children recognize the function of mental terms to express degrees of certainty, and that this understanding is probably not based on the factive properties of the terms.
Timing in mother-infant communications: a comment on Murray & Trevarthen (1986)
Authors: Elias Gordon , Broerse Jack 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTMurray & Trevarthen (1986) experimentally manipulated the behaviours of mothers and infants in an attempt to determine who is responsible for the fine temporal patterning during vocal engagements. In the present note it is argued that the measures of content and style of maternal talk used by Murray and Trevarthen do not directly indicate the ways in which the behaviours of the partners are combined on a moment-to-moment basis.
The role of parental input in the development of a morphological system
Authors: Goldin-Meadow Susan , Mylander Carolyn 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTIn order to isolate the properties of language whose development can withstand wide variations in learning conditions, we have observed children who have not had access to any conventional linguistic input but who have otherwise experienced normal social environments. The children we study are deaf with hearing losses so severe that they cannot naturally acquire spoken language, and whose hearing parents have chosen not to expose them to a sign language. In previous work, we demonstrated that, despite their lack of conventional linguistic input, the children developed spontaneous gesture systems which were structured at the level of the sentence, with regularities identifiable across gestures in a sentence, akin to syntactic structure. The present study was undertaken to determine whether one of these deaf children's gesture systems was structured at a second level, the level of the gesture – that is, were there regularities within a gesture, akin to morphologic structure?We have found that (1) the deaf child's gestures could be characterized by a paradigm of handshape and motion combinations which formed a matrix for virtually all of his spontaneous gestures, and (2) the deaf child's gesture system was considerably more complex than the model provided by his hearing mother. These data emphasize the child's contribution to structural regularity at the intra-word level, and suggest that such structure is a resilient property of language.
Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar? Evidence from a study of autistic, Down's syndrome and normal children
Authors: Tager-Flusberg Helen , Calkins Susan 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis paper re-opens the question of whether imitation plays a significant role in the acquisition of grammar. Data for this study came from four samples of naturalistic mother-child speech taken over the course of one year from four autistic, four Down's syndrome and four normal children, covering a range of MLU stages. In general, autistic children used more formulaic language, including imitations, than Down's syndrome children, who in turn used more than the normal children. Comparisons of imitative and spontaneous corpora from the same transcripts were made using MLU and the Index of Productive Syntax. The main findings were that, with few exceptions, spontaneous speech utterances were longer, and contained more advanced grammatical constructions than did the imitation utterances. These findings held across all three groups of subjects. We conclude that imitation does not facilitate grammatical development.
Referential style at thirteen months: why age-defined cross-sectional measures are inappropriate for the study of strategy differences in early language development
Authors: Pine Julian M. , Lieven Elena V. M. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis study examines the relationship between cross-sectional measures of referential style taken at 1;1 and measures based on the first 50 words in 12 first-born children. Since no significant relationship is found it is argued that age-defined cross-sectional measures are inappropriate for the study of strategy differences in early language development because they confound such differences with variation due to differences in development level.
From one word to two words: repetition patterns on the way to structured speech
Authors: Veneziano Edy , Sinclair Hermine , Berthoud Ioanna 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis paper gives an account of the transition from one-word to multiword utterances based on the productions of one child from age 1;5.23 to 1;8.15 in spontaneous interaction with her mother. The authors' interpretation of the observed development emphasizes: (1) the initial dissociation and later co-ordination of temporal chaining of elements on the one hand and meaning-relatedness between elements on the other; and (2) the psychological importance of repetition patterns for the change from single-word functioning to meaning-related and temporally-chained multi-word utterances, i.e. utterances that show the duality of patterning characteristic of human language.
The development of sentence planning
Authors: Wijnen Frank 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis is an exploratory case study of the relation between speech output disturbances (dysfluencies) and the development of language production processes. The data consist of transcribed weekly speech samples of a Dutch boy between 2;4 and 2;11. The period of observation captures the early phase of the transition from ‘pre-grammatical’ to grammatical language. The frequency of occurrence of dysfluencies (i.e. repetitions, revisions and incomplete phrases) shows a significant increase and a subsequent decline. Whereas in the first half of the observation period the dysfluencies are distributed relatively randomly over sentences, in the second half they tend to concentrate in function words and sentence-initial words. The decline of dysfluency rate is shown to be related to an abundant use of a few ‘syntactic frames’. It is argued that these results reflect the emergence of a component in the speech production apparatus which is specifically dedicated to serial-order planning.
A longitudinal study of the relationship between early language development and play development
Authors: Ogura Tamiko 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTTemporal correspondences between the attainment of specific milestones in play and language were examined through a longitudinal study of four Japanese children (aged 0;7 to 0;11 at the beginning of the study). There were developmental correspondences between the onset of six language landmarks (the emergence of first words, naming words, vocabulary spurts, word-chains, nonproductive two-word utterances, productive two-word utterances) and the onset of subcategories of play. Language and play both reflected the development of underlying symbolic ability, and both developed in a parallel manner at the single-word stage. After the emergence of word-chains, language and play developed interdependently. All the children proceeded through the same sequence of stages, but the rate of development was different depending on their environment.
Patterns of language learning-related behaviours: evidence for self-help in acquiring grammar
Authors: Shatz Marilyn , Ebeling Karen 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTFour kinds of language learning-related behaviours (LLRBs) were examined in the home conversations of six English children studied for six months from age 2;0 to 2;6. The speech of the children was coded for the number of times they participated in language lessons, language practice, metalanguage and revisions of prior language. All the children were active and frequent producers of LLRBs, with revisions being observed most commonly. Further analysis revealed that the majority of the revisions that the children initiated involved grammatical changes, with the revised utterances tending to be more grammatical than their predecessors. An auditory monitor is proposed as a partial explanation for revision behaviour, and is evaluated relative to other possible accounts of the findings.
A little goes a long way: evidence for a perceptual basis of learning for the noun categories COUNT and Mass
Authors: McPherson Leslie Maggie Perrin 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTVarious theories of learning for the categories COUNT NOUN and MASS NOUN are compared. It is argued that children assign words to these categories on the basis of intuitions arising from perception that are relevant to Macnamara's (1986) semantic definitions of the categories. These definitions rest on the centrality of identity in the meaning of nouns and the centrality of individuation in the meaning of count nouns but not mass nouns. Empirical evidence is presented that supports the hypothesis that young children classify words as count nouns or mass nouns on the basis of perceptual information about the extension of the words, that is, whether or not the extension consists exclusively of enduring individuals whose discreteness from one another is perceptually salient (count nouns) or not (mass nouns). In an experiment, 48 children with a mean age of 2;10 (S.D. = 0;5) were taught a word for a kind of object (i.e. a perceptually distinct individual) or for a kind of substance (i.e. a collection of small granules). For some children the word was syntactically COUNT and for others it was syntactically MASS. Half of the children received incongruous perceptual and syntactic cues. For most of these children, classification of the word was guided by the object- or substance-like appearance of the stimulus despite the presence of incongruent syntactic cues. Syntactic cues influenced classification of the word for a minority of subjects, most of whom were among the oldest in the sample. It is concluded that perceptual information is critical in early decisions about membership in the categories COUNT NOUN and MASS NOUN.
Fuzzy boundaries and the extension of object-words
Authors: Carabine Bob 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTAn extensive fuzzy boundary was identified within the adult extension of two exemplary object-words, ‘dog’ and ‘ball’. The fuzzy boundaries were incorporated into the standard of adult extension against which the preschool child's use of ‘dog’ and ‘ball’ was compared, and the investigation provided a framework in which children's responses to fuzzy boundary referents could be accommodated. Responses to fuzzy boundary referents were considered as having precedents within adult extension and the data revealed the provision of precedents for a significant number of the young child's applications and non-applications of the words. The investigation concluded that, through adherence to an oversimplified concept of adult extension, previous research has underestimated the degree of correspondence that exists between child and adult extension.