bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The acquisition of voicing contrasts in Spanish and English learning infants and children: a longitudinal study
Authors: Eilers Rebecca E. , Oller D. Kimbrough , Benito-Garcia Carmen R. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe production of voice-onset time (VOT) was studied in a group of Spanish- and English-learning subjects at 1 and 2 years of age. Voice-onset time of initial stop consonants from canonical utterances was measured oscillographically. At one year no significant difference in VOT production was found between Spanish and English learners at any place of articulation. Mean VOT values for infants fell in the short lag range. By two years, four of the seven children in the English group and four of the children in the Spanish group showed significant evidence of having acquired the VOT distinction in stop consonants appropriate for their native language.
The defective tense hypothesis: on the emergence of tense and aspect in child Polish
Authors: Weist Richard M. , Wysocka Hanna , Witkowska-Stadnik Katarzyna , Buczowska Ewa , Konieczna Emilia 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTLongitudinal and cross-sectional designs were combined in this analysis of the evolution of children's capacity to represent deictic relationships. The longitudinal component contained the naturalistic observation of three relatively young children (1; 7–1; 9) and three somewhat older children (2; 0–2; 2). These children were tape-recorded in caretaker–child interactions. The analysis of the corpora from these children revealed: (1) imperfective activity verb phrases in the past tense, (2) telic verb phrases in the past tense used independently of resulting states, (3) moderately remote past references, and (4) deictic future references. The cross-sectional component contained an experiment in which elicitation procedures were used to obtain past and future references to atelic and telic situations. Nine 2½- and nine 3½-year-old children were tested. Generally high levels of performance reinforced the outcome of the longitudinal analysis.
Learning to in complement constructions
Authors: Bloom Lois , Tackeff Jo , Lahey Margaret 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe acquisition of to in infinitive complement structure was examined in the spontaneous speech data from four children, who were observed longitudinally from two to three years of age. The children learned to as a complementizer connective in the context of a small group of verbs and other matrix forms that take a verb phrase complement. They did not learn to in the context of the complement verbs to mark the infinitive. Secondly, the children learned to with the meaning ‘direction towards’ and not as a meaningless syntactic marker. These results contribute to understanding the relation between the acquisition of complex syntax and the verb system in child language, and to evaluating traditional and contemporary linguistic theories of infinitive complement structure in English.
Learning about points of view: spatial perspective and the acquisition of ‘I/you’
Authors: Loveland Katherine A. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTA cross-sectional and a longitudinal study of 2-year-old children was performed to investigate the developmental relationship between understanding differences in spatial point of view and correct comprehension and production of I/you pronouns. In Study I only those children who demonstrated understanding that individuals' points of view can differ had begun to master speaker's point of view, as shown by correct use of some of the pronouns. Only children with complete understanding of points of view were able to use all I/you pronouns without errors. In Study 11 no child used the set of I/you pronouns without errors until s/he had complete understanding of points of view. Across children, a given pronoun tended not to be free of errors until the child understood that points of view can differ. Results are interpreted to support the hypothesis that understanding spatial points of view is a cognitive prerequisite to understanding speaker's point of view, which governs the pragmatics of 11 you pronouns.
Patterns of vowel modification in mother–child speech
Authors: Ratner Nan Bernstein 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTPatterns of vowel articulation in conversational speech to an adult and to child listeners were analysed in the speech of nine mothers. Formant frequency analysis of vowels embedded in 2,406 words found in varying syntactic environments and uttered by women to pre-verbal, holophrastic and more advanced child listeners (MLUs 2·5–4·0) revealed an emerging pattern of content word clarification, as measured by wider dispersion and decreased overlap between vowel phoneme categories in formant characteristics. Additionally, function word clarification was noted in speech to the oldest children. Vowel production appears to be modulated by child–addressee language ability. Earlier studies suggesting a lack of phonetic clarification in mother–child speech may have investigated speech to children too mature to elicit maternal clarification behaviours.
Learning how to ask: patterns of inversion in yes–no and wh-questions
Authors: Erreich Anne 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study attempts to determine whether subject–auxiliary inversion occurs in yes–no questions before wh-questions and whether non-inversion errors (when daddy will come home?) are a characteristic feature of the acquisition of wh-questions. The data consist of the yes–no and wh-questions of 18 children, aged 2;5 to 3;0 with an mlu range of 2.66–4.26. Findings do not support previous claims that inversion is acquired in yes–no questions before wh-questions. Rather, a significant number of children were found to use an optional inversion rule in both question types. This fact appears to account for the finding that non-inversion errors are a characteristic feature of the acquisition of wh-questions.
Attentional priority of the agent in the acquisition of word reference
Authors: Grace Janet , Suci George J. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe role of agent priority in event perception in word acquisition was investigated using 24 infants at the one-word stage of language production. Nonsense words were presented in narrations referring to agent, recipient or stationary nonsense puppet-actors in filmed events. The nonsense stimuli along with a sense word referring to a sense puppet were presented in a habituation series. Word acquisition was measured by the extent of response recovery to an incorrect pairing of a nonsense word with a sense referent, and by the number of infants accurately choosing named puppets. Both measures were significantly greater for puppets in agent roles than for other puppets. A speech modification condition (exaggerated intonation with repetition) held attention longer but did not facilitate acquisition.
The child language data exchange system
Authors: MacWhinney Brian , Snow Catherine 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe study of language acquisition underwent a major revolution in the late 1950s as a result of the dissemination of technology permitting high-quality tape-recording of children in the family setting. This new technology led to major breakthroughs in the quality of both data and theory. The field is now at the threshold of a possible second major breakthrough stimulated by the dissemination of personal computing. Researchers are now able to transcribe tape-recorded data into computer files. With this new medium it is easy to conduct global searches for word combinations across collections of files. It is also possible to enter new codings of the basic text line. Because of the speed and accuracy with which computer files can be copied, it is now much easier to share data between researchers. To foster this sharing of computerized data, a group of child language researchers has established the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). This article details the formation of the CHILDES, the governance of the system, the nature of the database, the shape of the coding conventions, and the types of computer programs being developed.
‘He has too much hard questions’: the acquisition of the linguistic mass–count distinction in much and many
Authors: Gathercole Virginia C. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTSubjects aged 3;6–9;0 were asked to judge sentences in which much and many modified prototypical and non-prototypical mass and count nouns, and to correct those sentences judged to be deviant. The experimental results indicate that children do not approach the co-occurrence conditions of much and many with various nouns from a semantic point of view, but rather from a morphosyntactic or surface-distributional one. Children learn the proper form that the noun must take in these constructions before they learn the proper choice of quantifier. In addition, they reserve many for use with plural count nouns long before they learn that much is restricted in direct noun modification to use with singular mass nouns.
How does comprehension of passives develop? A comparison of actional and experiential verbs
Authors: Sudhalter Vicki , Braine Martin D. S. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTExperiment I required first, third, and sixth graders to identify the actor or experiencer from active and passive sentences with actional and three subclasses of experiential verbs. Actional passives were understood better than experientials, with no difference among the subcategories of experiential verbs, and no effect of verb frequency or regularity. Response distributions for each verb type did not show two populations of subjects – one knowing and the other not knowing the passive – but approximately unimodal distributions whose mean increased with age. Experiment II studied preschoolers. Again, the actional passives were systematically easier than the experientials, and again, for neither verb type did the response distributions show two distinct subject populations, one competent and the other incompetent. The forms of the distributions cannot be wholly accounted for by fluctuating attention to cues to passivization, but indicate that many children have partial knowledge of the passive (increasing with age). A hypothesis about the nature of this partial knowledge accounts for the gradual acquisition and the difference between the verb types.
Vocalizations of one-year-olds
Authors: Kent Ray D. , Bauer Harold R. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTMother–infant interactions were recorded for five dyads in a home environment. This report describes the vocalizations produced when the infants were 13 months old. Data are reported on syllable structure, phonetic properties of vowel-like and consonant-like segments, intonation contours and peak f0 values for individual syllables. In general, the acoustic–phonetic properties of the 13-month-olds' vocalizations were consistent with data reported in other studies for younger and older children. Hence, the results are seen as evidence for an overall continuity in early phonetic development.
Acoustic analysis of words produced by a child from 46 to 149 weeks
Authors: Mack Molly , Lieberman Philip 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTWe undertook a detailed computer-implemented acoustic analysis of the speech of a child from 46 to 149 weeks. We measured overall word duration and pitch perturbation (a measure of task-induced stress), in addition to measuring within-word phonetic segments. Results revealed that (1) there were strong age-dependent decreases in word duration but only at a relatively late stage (75–149 weeks); (2) degree of fluency was not correlated with vocal stress; (3) certain segments (i.e. /k/ and /æ/) increased greatly in duration, contributing to the absence of an overall word-duration decrease at an earlier stage (46–79 weeks) and revealing the child's ability to approximate adult-like phonetic norms. Relevance to theories of phonetic development and language change are discussed.
Learning how to use verbs: lexical coding and the influence of the input
Authors: De Villiers Jill G. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTSamples of spontaneous speech from two young children and their mothers were analysed to examine how children learn some of the inflectional/syntactic possibilities for individual verbs. Multiple regression analyses were performed to establish predictors of the children's range of grammatical use of particular verbs. Maternal variety of use proved to be a highly significant predictor of the children's use of the same verbs, but maternal frequency was not a significant predictor of children's use. Step-wise regression analyses revealed that each child's own mother's use was a significantly better predictor of the child's use than that of the unacquainted mother. It is argued that the children were monitoring the grammatical patterns of use of individual verbs in the input they received. The extent of novel use of verbs by the child cannot be assessed from these data, and awaits further experimental investigation.
Some possible causes of children's early word overextensions
Authors: Hoek Dorothy , Ingram David , Gibson Deborah 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTOne child's lexical development was followed from 1; 1 to 1; 7 to look for possible causes of early word overextensions. Lexical acquisition was observed for comprehension and production through the use of a parental diary and systematic language sampling. In addition, 16 nonsense words were taught in 10 experimental sessions over a two-month period to control for phonological effects. The results isolated six distinct factors behind early word overextensions. It is concluded that overextensions should not constitute the primary data for the construction of theories of semantic acquisition.
Object permanence and relational words: a lexical training study
Authors: Tomasello Michael , Farrar Michael Jeffrey 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTObservational/correlational research has established that children in stage 5 object permanence development use words that refer to the visible movement of objects, while it is not until stage 6 that they use words referring to the invisible movement of objects (e.g. gone). It is not clear, however, whether the cognitive competence evidenced by performance in the object permanence task is a prerequisite for these linguistic productions or whether they both emerge simultaneously from some underlying representation. The current study used a lexical training paradigm to teach object words, visible movement words, and invisible movement words to children at stage 5 and stage 6 object permanence development. Stage 6 children learned all three types of words equally well. Stage 5 children learned object and visible movement words, especially in comprehension, but did not learn the invisible movement word. These results indicate that the cognitive structures underlying performance in the object permanence task are genuine prerequisites for learning these types of words.
Context effects on lexical specificity in maternal and child discourse
Authors: Lucariello Joan , Nelson Katherine 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTMother–child (two-year-old) object labelling was studied in three natural discourse settings: (1) routine, caretaking; (2) free play; and (3) novel. Object labelling was found to be considerably more varied in these natural discourse settings than in experimental situations. While basic level tokens predominated in the free play context, they were significantly less prevalent in the routine and novel contexts. Additionally, subordinate level term usage was more common in the routine and novel contexts. The relation between mother and child labelling was also investigated and results indicated that context may be more important in determining level of labels than maternal modelling. Analyses of the discourse uses of non-basic level terms revealed that mothers were organizing the social-interactive context in ways that may facilitate child category formation.
The acquisition of the present perfect: explaining differences in the speech of Scottish and American children
Authors: Gathercole Virginia C. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study assesses the role of frequency of input in the acquisition of the present perfect by Scottish and American children. Two questions were addressed: (1) Do adults speaking Scottish English use the present perfect more frequently in speech to children than those speaking American English? (2) If there is a difference in the frequency of input, how does this affect the course of development of this structure in the language of Scottish vs. American children? Cross-sectional data were collected from 12 Scottish and 12 American children aged 3; 0 to 6; 4 and from adults interacting with them in naturalistic settings. The data led to the conclusions that (1) Scottish adults use the present perfect construction in their speech to children much more frequently than American adults do; (2) Scottish children use the present perfect construction in their speech long before their American counterparts; and (3) frequency of input does play a major role in the timing and order of acquisition of the present perfect. However, its role appears to be an interactive one, in which it conspires with factors such as semantic, syntactic, and cognitive simplicity to make some forms easier to learn than others.
The acquisition of the voicing contrast in Thai: a study of voice onset time in word-initial stop consonants
Authors: Gandour Jack , Petty Soranee Holasuit , Dardarananda Rochana , Dechongkit Sumalee , Mukngoen Sunee 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on a cross-sectional acoustical investigation of the development of the voicing contrast in Thai word-initial stops. Voice onset time (VOT) productions associated with three bilabial stops (/b p ph/), three alveolar stops (/d t th/), and two velar stops (/k kh/) were measured in seven 3-year-old children, seven 5-year-old children, seven 7-year-old children, and seven adults. Within each age group, differences in mean VOT between homorganic stop consonants indicated that 3-year-olds have acquired all voicing contrasts except /b/ vs. /p/ and /d/ vs. /t/. By age five, children have acquired all voicing contrasts. However, as measured by differences in mean VOT across age groups, 5-year-olds still do not produce /b/ or/d/ in an adult-like manner. Issues concerning the order of acquisition and nature of development of stop consonants are discussed.
The use of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in speech: the development of listener-specific skills
Authors: Waller Glenn 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTTwo experiments are reported, where the development of pragmatic communication skills was assessed in a simple but realistic setting, so that even the youngest speakers could construct consistently accurate messages. It was shown that children of up to six years are specifically hampered by the speaker's use of left and right, but not by the use of named landmarks. Children were also allowed to create their own messages. The ability of the speaker to use language which would be valuable to a particular listener could then be measured. The results show a development between six and seven years in speakers' ability to select and use linguistic forms which are appropriate to listeners' receptive skills, though speakers could use objectively accurate information at an earlier age.
Semantic and pragmatic uses of ‘but’
Authors: Peterson Carole 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTAll uses of the connective but by narrating children 3; 6 to 9; 6 were classified as having primarily semantic function, pragmatic function, or as errors. The youngest children make the majority of errors, mistakenly using but when causal or precausal relationships exist. All children most commonly use but to signal semantic relationships such as semantic opposition or violation of expectation, although the oldest children use but proportionately more to encode more complex contrasts. However, children at all ages also use but for primarily pragmatic functions, to interrupt the flow of their narrative in order to insert relevant comments, monitor the listener's attention, or change topic. If discourse can be conceptualized as having multiple levels, but signals a change in level within a speaker's turn.
Is early pragmatic development measurable?
Authors: Dale Philip S. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTMeasures of pragmatic development for children in the second year of life were developed, based on a brief (30 minute) language sample and on structured elicitation conditions. When age is partialled out, number of pragmatic functions expressed is not statistically related to MLU, due to the fact that the number of functions grows steadily during the one-word and very early two-word phases. Performance on the structured imperative tasks also reflects development during this period, though performance on the declarative tasks does not. We conclude that the range of pragmatic functions in the second year is measurable and contributes information not provided by a measure of syntactic development such as MLU. Such information should prove useful for research on language and cognition in normal and language-impaired children.
The acquisition of the voicing contrast in English: a study of voice onset time in word-initial stop consonants
Authors: Macken Marlys A. , Barton David 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on a longitudinal study of the acquisition of the voicing contrast in American English word-initial stop consonants, as measured by voice onset time. Four monolingual children were recorded at two-week intervals, beginning when the children were about 1; 6. Data provide evidence for three general stages: (1) the child has no contrast; (2) the child has a contrast but one that falls within the adult perceptual boundaries of one (usually voiced) phoneme and thus is presumably not perceptible to adults; and (3) the child has a contrast that resembles the adult contrast. The rate and nature of the developmental process are discussed in relation to two competing models for phonological acquisition and two hypotheses regarding the skills being learned.
Relationships between parental input frequencies and children's language acquisition: a reanalysis of Brown's data
Authors: Moerk Ernst L. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTTo evaluate Brown's assertion that frequency of input is not a significant variable in language acquisition, some of Brown's data were reanalysed. The data pertaining to Adam, Eve, Sarah and their parents were predominantly obtained from Brown's (1973) book and were supplemented from the transcripts. Parental input frequency and the children's age at mastery were highly related for each of the three triads. Then Sarah's input and rate of language acquisition were compared with that of the other two children. The correlation between Sarah's relative input deprivation and her relative linguistic delay was 0·66. Finally, an analysis of Eve's acquisition of specific prepositional phrases involving the preposition in were made. Again it was found that frequency of input was highly related to frequency of production. Detailed analyses of parent-child interactions provided evidence also for short-term effects of input frequency.
‘Mommy sock’: the child's understanding of possession as expressed in two-noun phrases
Authors: Golinkoff Roberta Michnick , Markessini Joan 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThirty children with a mean length of utterance ranging from 1·00 to 4 and an age range of 1; 7 to 5; 5 were tested by their own mothers for comprehension of two-noun possessive phrases such as mommy's shoe. Three types of possessive relationships (alienable, intrinsic and reciprocal) in addition to anomalous possessive phrases were used to uncover children's knowledge of the semantics and syntax of English possession. Results indicated, first, that even young children may have detailed notions of which objects are likely to serve as possessors and which as possessions, and second, that word order may not be used to comprehepossessive phrases until considerable linguistic development has occurred.