bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Adult judgments of age and linguistic differences in infant vocalization
Authors: Olney Rachel L. , Scholnick Ellin K. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTCollege students judged the relative ages of pairs of vocalizations sampled either from a Chinese infant at 0; 6, 1; 0 and 1; 6 or from an American infant at the same ages. The judgments were 88% accurate, with the easiest judgments contrasting the 0; 6 and 1; 6 samples (96% accurate). With one exception, age contrasts for the Chinese infant were as easy to judge as those for the American infant. However, a second sample of college students was unable to judge the linguistic community of the vocalizer when age was held constant, whether the data were drawn from infant samples of 0; 6, 1; 0 or 1; 6 or from adults babbling to babies. These data led to speculations on the kinds of cues speakers of different languages use to discriminate infant vocalizations, and whether these cues are age-specific or language-specific. The data presently suggest the former, but the present study has methodological limitations, and generalizations are limited to one specific language contrast, English and Chinese.
How children talk about what happened
Authors: Antinucci Francesco , Miller Ruth 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the development of past tense expressions in the speech of children from 1; 6 to 2; 6. It is shown that this development depends crucially on the child's cognitive construction of the time dimension, as described by Piaget (1954, 1971). In this process two different cognitive routes are followed, depending on the type of event the child has to encode. Past events resulting in the end state of some object are gradually grasped and encoded by means of a practical process–effect coordination. Past states and activities, on the contrary, i.e. past events that do not result in an end state, are referred to through a more primitive distinction between a pretend vs. a real world. This difference is formally reflected in the differential past-tense marking appearing on verbs which describe the two different types of event.
Movement and location in the acquisition of deictic verbs
Authors: Macrae Alison J. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTSamples of spontaneous speech from seven two-year-olds were scanned for utterances containing the verbs go and come. Their distribution was extensive, and included many non-motional uses. No clear case of the wrong use of either verb was found and the children seemed to have a basis for discrimination. As verbs of motion, they were used in the context of describing the contour of movement rather than as means of relating end-points of a journey. This relation between systems of movement and location was taken to be crucial in explaining the child's long-standing difficulty in discriminating the verbs in experimental tasks.
Sizing things up: the acquisition of the meaning of dimensional adjectives
Authors: Bartlett Elsa Jaffe 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTTwo tasks were used to test predictions of the Semantic Feature Hypothesis (SFH) about children's comprehension of the meaning of spatial adjectives. Our data support SFH predictions about the order of acquisition for dimensional features: more general features are acquired first. Predictions about polarity, however, were not supported: our data show that children do not acquire [+ pol] features prior to their [− pol] counterparts. Type of task made no difference in children's comprehension of [+ pol] terms but did affect comprehension of [− pol] terms. To account for this pattern of results, an acquisition hypothesis is offered which, contrary to the SFH, proposes that polar features are acquired prior to dimensionality and that semantic features may be added quite independently to [+ pol] and [− pol] terms.
Everyday caretaker talk to toddlers vs. threes and fours
Authors: Schachter Frances Fuchs , Fosha Diana , Stemp Sarah , Brotman Nancy , Ganger Sonia 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTInterpersonal functions of everyday caretaker speech usage are examined when addressed to toddlers, threes, and fours. Twelve teachers, 4 at each age level, were each observed for 24 3-minute intervals during free play, and their speech classified into 45 responsive and spontaneous functional categories based on our previously developed classification scheme for spontaneous child speech (Schachter et al. 1974). The results support hypotheses derived from Piagetian theory concerning early developments in ego-differentiation. Speech patterns with increments in speech to toddlers include explicating desires, providing substitutes for prohibitions, reporting on the child, and word teaching, called alter-ego speech. Patterns with increments for threes and/or fours include enhancing the child's ego, assisting him to fulfil desires himself, and encouraging persistence, called ego-supportive speech, as well as modulations (explanations, justifications, etc.) and admonitions with appeals to norms, called ego-socializing speech. Implications for language acquisition are discussed.
Children's production and comprehension of questions
Authors: Tyack Dorothy , Ingram David 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study examined children's production and comprehension of questions, with the aim of discovering possible patterns in question acquisition. For the production study, questions were collected from 22 children aged 2; 0–3; 11. The data show a high frequency of yes-no, what, and where questions by age 2; 0. Why and how questions were infrequent but they increased with age. Who and when questions were rarely asked by children of any age. From the frequency data a rough chronological order of acquisition was inferred: what, where, why, how, when. In the comprehension study 100 children were tested, aged 3; 0–5; 5. The test controlled syntax and vocabulary and varied specific wh- question-words. The frequency of correct answers increased with the age of the children. When children made mistakes, their answers were not random but appeared to be following certain question-answering strategies. These included attention to semantic features of verbs and especially the placement of verbs in the sentence.
Learning to make definitions
Authors: Litowitz Bonnie 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe ability to define words by means of other words, which forms a part of many standardized tests, must be learned by a child. The nature of the ‘definitional task’ and the development of language responses (from children 4; 5 to 7; 5) are discussed in terms of a linguistic analysis of the definitional form and its semantic relations. Progress in definitional strategies by children moves along two continua: conceptually from the individually experiential to the socially shared; and syntactically from actual predicates through hypothetical predicates to adult definitional sentence frames. Implications include novel elicitation techniques, psycholinguistically informed evaluation of direction and scoring measures of some common standardized verbal tests, and better understanding of the range of normal development on one specific language task.
Acoustical characteristics of infant cries: fundamental frequency
Authors: Murry Thomas , Amundson Pamela , Hollien Harry 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe fundamental frequencies (F0) of infant cries were analysed to determine if: (1) mean cry F0 differed as a function of the sex of the infant, and (2) mean cry F0 differed due to the stimulus evoking the cry. The results of this study indicate that there are no significant differences in mean cry F0 as a function of infant's sex or cry-evoking stimulus. However, there was tendency for male infants to have higher mean F0 than females. The results suggest that the infants' F0 may confuse listeners attempting to make perceptual judgments about the source and nature of the cry.
What's the use of imitation?
Authors: Clark Ruth 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTAttitudes towards imitation have been coloured by theoretical disputes about the nature of language. But even if language is rule-governed, children may be helped by imitation to discover the rules. This paper reviews evidence for and against imitation as a factor in the acquisition of syntax. The conclusion reached is that the effects of imitation on children's speech are too pervasive for the process to be dismissed as irrelevant. Many idiosyncratic features of children's speech seem to be traceable to imitation interacting with other simple mechanisms. For the author, the important question is no longer whether imitation can help children to acquire syntax, but precisely how a child gradually extracts grammatical information from the repertoire of imitated sequences at his disposal.
Who is ‘Daddy’ revisited: the status of two-year-olds' over-extended words in use and comprehension
Authors: Thomson Jean R. , Chapman Robin S. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTDiary observations of two-year-olds' over-extended word use have been interpreted as arising from the word's underlying semantic feature structure, retrieval error, or limited vocabulary. The first interpretation was tested by analysing whether the same few features systematically characterized most over-extensions of a word (picture-naming task), and whether the same word was over-extended in comprehension (picture-pointing task). Four instances of over-extended use were studied in each of 5 children aged 1; 9 to 2; 3. A semantic feature interpretation is rejected, as is the view that overextensions are used by the child deliberately, to refer to objects which he knows are not properly named by the words. The need to construct models of early word meaning which reflect the early instability of conceptual organization, the probability of retrieval error in recall tasks, and the developmental history of individual words – particularly parental acceptance or rejection of use – is discussed.
Height, age, and function: differing influences on children's comprehension of ‘younger’ and ‘older’
Authors: Kuczaj Stan A. , Lederberg Amy R. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThree investigations of pre-school children's comprehension ofyoungerandolderare discussed. The results suggest that children focus on height (or the lack of the same) in their initial hypotheses about the meanings of the terms, ignoring age and/or function cues. The results also suggest that the acquisition of antonyms which may be characterized as marked–unmarked is not necessarily characterized by the child equating the meaning of the marked and unmarked terms prior to learning the correct meaning of the marked term. These findings are discussed in terms of recent theorizing about lexical-meaning acquisition.
Temporal constraints on consonant clusters in child speech production
Authors: Gilbert John H. V. , Purves Barbara A. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe present investigation examines three hypotheses concerning the development of temporal coordination of consonant clusters in the speech of children at four age levels. Results of the investigation reveal that, within the context of the consonant clusters tested, five- and seven-year-olds can be roughly separated from older children and adults on the basis of absolute duration of consonants. The implication appears to be that the timing programme used by children to achieve cluster control is different from that of adults.
A pragmatic analysis of spontaneous imitations
Authors: Folger Joseph P. , Chapman Robin S. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTChildren's imitations were analysed as a function of parental speech acts for six children in early Stage I of language acquisition. The relative frequency with which children imitated mothers reflected the relative frequency with which mothers imitated children (Spearman rank correlation = 0·77). Although parents' imitative expansions could all be categorized as having primary speech act functions (e.g. request for information) from the parents' point of view, expansions constituted a separate class of speech events in terms of children's responses. The children imitated imitations far more frequently than non-imitative speech acts in the same category. These findings suggest that individual differences in children's propensity to imitate may arise from the degree to which parents provide a model of imitation as a speech act.
Agent–patient word-order preference in the acquisition of Tagalog
Authors: Segalowitz Norman S. , Galang Rosita G. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study investigated 3-, 5- and 7-year-old Tagalog-speaking children's mastery of agent-focus (active) and patient-focus (passive) sentence structures. In contrast to the usual English developmental pattern with actives and passives, the Tagalog children generally showed better mastery of patient-focus sentences than agent-focus sentences. These results were attributed to the children's strategy of interpreting the first noun of a sentence to be the agent of the action. The structure and usage of these sentence types in Tagalog do not appear to provide linguistic pressures favouring such a strategy. Thus these results are consistent with the view that such a strategy might be non-linguistic in origin.
The development of the full passive
Authors: Horgan Dianne 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTSpontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children aged 2; 0 to 13; 11 and elicited passives from 262 college students were analysed. Full passives were classified as REVERSIBLE (The dog was chased by the girl), INSTRUMENTAL NON-REVERSIBLE (The lamp was broken by (orwith) the ball), or AGENTIVE NON-REVERSIBLE (The lamp was broken by the girl). The Agentive non-reversible did not appear until after age 9; and until age 11 no child produced both Reversible and Non-reversible passives. All the children used the passive in a semantically restricted way (but not in the same way). The possible developmental course of the full passive was traced for children who initially used only Reversible passives versus those who initially used only Instrumental non-reversible passives.
Language use, role and context in a five-year-old
Authors: Martlew Margaret , Connolly Kevin , McCleod Christine 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTTo explore the relationship of language use and speech adaptation to role and context the spontaneous speech of a boy aged 5; 6 was recorded in three different situations: playing alone, playing with a friend of the same age, and playing with his mother. Several analyses were made of the speech transcripts to examine the relationship between context and language use. The nature of play episodes was also investigated. The findings suggest that role play has an important function in the development of a child's ability to communicate effectively, and that a child's awareness of his own role and the expectations he has concerning social interactions lead to modification in language use.
Some developmental aspects of sentence processing and memory
Authors: Tyler Lorraine K. , Marslen-Wilson William 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThree groups of children, aged 5, 7 and 11 years, were tested in a clause-memory task, in order to investigate the role of syntactic and semantic factors in children's recall and processing of spoken continuous prose. The children listened to a story, which was interrupted at intervals during which they were asked to repeat verbatim the last sentence they heard. The test-sentences always consisted of two clauses: either of the main–main type, or of the main–subordinate or subordinate–main types. The prose material was also either normal prose, or semantically uninterpretable but syntactically normal prose. The results suggest a developmental sequence in which the youngest group's performance is dominated by semantic factors. They do not show the adult clause-memory effects, their recall is dominated by the main clause, and their recall of normal prose is not clausally segmented. The two older groups' performance more closely approximates that of adults.
Games, social exchange and the acquisition of language
Authors: Ratner Nancy , Bruner Jerome 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe nature of early games and how they might assist the infant in language acquisition were explored in a longitudinal study of two mother–infant dyads, using video-recordings of their free play. Analysis of appearance and disappearance games, in particular, revealed: (1) a restricted format, with a limited number of semantic elements, and a highly constrained set of semantic relations; (2) a clear repetitive structure, which allowed both for anticipation of the order of events and variation of the individual elements; (3) positions for appropriate vocalizations which could in turn be used to mark variations; and (4) the development of reversible role relationships between mother and child.
Some aspects of child phonology in imitative and spontaneous speech
Authors: Leonard Laurence B. , Schwartz Richard G. , Folger M. Karen , Wilcox M. Jeanne 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTChild phonologists have made varying assumptions concerning the nature of phonological characteristics of children's imitative utterances and their relationship to the characteristics of spontaneous utterances. This study examined this relationship in children in early Stage I. A task was devised which permitted an inspection of children's unsolicited imitations of nonsense words reflecting syllabic shapes and consonants in and out of the child's phonological system. The results are discussed with respect to production constraints, phonological idioms, and selection and avoidance rules operative in imitative speech during this period of development. The findings indicated that while these imitative utterances were subject to the same production constraints they were not subject to the same selection and avoidance rules operative in spontaneous speech.
Who, why, when, and how: a development study
Authors: Cairns Helen S. , Hsu Jennifer Ryan 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTFifty children between the ages of 3; 0 and 5; 6 were asked six types of wh- questions following videotaped sequences. It is argued that differential difficulty of various forms of who questions supports a parallel model of information retrieval and processing during discourse. The differential difficulty of why and when questions are, however, attributable to a necessary progression in the ability to encode the relevant concepts linguistically. Responses to how questions are difficult because they involve a number of unrelated skills.
Directing two-year-old's attention; some clues to understanding
Authors: Bridges Allayne 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe behaviour of 32 mothers during an object-retrieval game was analysed in terms of the hints and ‘clues’ they used to direct their children's attention. Age-related differences were found in the type of information offered; the prompts 2; 0-year-olds received primarily concerned the target-objects' whereabouts, whereas 2; 6-year-olds' mothers referred to the target-objects (especially those unfamiliar by name) in terms of the children's background knowledge of the objects' functions or associations, as well. Possible explanations for these changes are discussed and the view is advanced that these differences should be interpreted as reflecting changes in the way mothers structure the task for their children as they become more independent problem-solvers.
The conceptual impact of linguistic input
Authors: Deutsch Werner 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study was concerned with the question of how linguistic input of the social environment might affect children's acquisition of word meaning. It was argued that the conceptual impact of linguistic input could be demonstrated where the conceptual components underlying word meaning are not primarily based on perceptual categories, as in the case of kinship terms. In two experiments, 84 German children living in families, and 84 orphans, aged from 6 to 10, were compared in their ability to use natural or artificial kinship names as terms for kinship relations. The results suggested that a mere familiarity interpretation for the actual difference in the ability to use kinship terms could be ruled out. Orphans showed a specific conceptual deficit in handling relational components even when the familiarity of the terms was equated for the two groups. Two issues these results raise are whether the orphans' deficit will disappear with increasing age, and to what extent the correct use of kinship terms is due to differences in general intelligence.
Language without communication: a case study
Authors: Blank Marion , Gessner Myron , Esposito Anita 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTTwo branches of language functioning are now actively being studied: one focuses on language as a system for expressing syntactic-semantic relations, the other as a system of interpersonal communication. In this paper, a case is presented of a child who at 3; 3 showed a marked schism between these two areas. In the former domain he displayed behaviour that in most respects was age appropriate and relatively extensive. In the latter domain, he displayed almost totally ineffective functioning. His difficulties in the use of language for communication were mirrored from infancy by a serious failure either to understand or produce non-verbal communication (e.g. gestures). It is suggested that the structural and communicative aspects of language are based upon different sets of skills which particularly in cases of language disorder may function independently of one another.
Can information theory explain early word choice
Authors: Pea Roy D. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTOne problem of interest in child language study has been specifying what features of the speech situation determine what children will say. Several cognitively based approaches to child language development have proposed principles of ‘informativeness’ to explain the child's choice of word(s). These principles predict that the child will choose the ‘most informative’ element of a situation and encode it in speech. Detailed inspection of this view reveals that the notion of ‘informativeness’ is not rigorously denned as in information theory, and would require the development of formal semantic and pragmatic information theories. Simpler accounts of available data do not require the notion of ‘information’.
Changes in the explicitness of mothers' directives as children age
Authors: Bellinger David 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the surface forms which mothers use to direct their children's behaviour. It is generally supposed that social factors control a speaker's choice of directive form. However, it is shown that mothers' use of the various forms may be related to a cognitive variable, viz. the degree to which the forms possess the surface properties and, hence, clarity of canonical imperatives. As children get older, mothers' directives lose, in a meaningful order, properties which help to specify their mood and content. It is suggested that the social properties of the context do eventually replace the cognitive demands of the various forms as the primary influence on mother's choices.
Talking to children: the effects of rate, intonation, and length on children's sentence imitation
Authors: Bonvillian John D. , Raeburn Vicki P. , Horan Elizabeth A. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTTwelve nursery school children (mean age = 3; 9) attempted to imitate sentences which varied systematically in rate of presentation, intonation and length. The children more successfully imitated shorter sentences than longer ones, and sentences spoken at a rate nearer their own than sentences spoken at slower or faster rates. The imitation of long sentences read with normal intonation was superior to the imitation of long sentences read with flat intonation. Since adults frequently address children in short sentences, spoken slowly and with exaggerated intonation, these results indicate that these speech modifications may enhance the children's language comprehension.