bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A cross-linguistic perspective on the development of temporal systems
Authors: Weist Richard M. , Wysocka Hanna , Lyytinen Paula 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this research was to evaluate the development of temporal location within a cross-linguistic experimental design. The research focused on the transition from a temporal system based on absolute temporal relations involving speech time and event time to a more complex system involving relative temporal relationships and reference time. A comprehension test was constructed with problems which were diagnostic of two salient distinctions within each of three temporal systems. The procedure was based on a two-choice sentence–picture matching task. The children who participated were from Poland, the USA and Finland, and there were 12 children at each of the following age levels: 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, 5;6, and 6;6. The Polish and American children solved problems requiring absolute temporal location at 2;6, and the older children eventually solved most of the problems requiring relative location. The Finnish children followed a different pattern taking longer to comprehend both types of problems. A second experiment confirmed the Finnish pattern of development. The results of the comprehension test were compared to observations of conversational and narrative discourse which were the product of two elicitation procedures. The research demonstrates the way in which conceptual development places a universal constraint on the developmental process and how the specific properties of individual languages also have an effect.
Children's communicative abilities revisited: verbal versus perceptual disambiguating strategies in referential communication
Authors: Pynte Joel , Girotto Vittorio , Baccino Thierry 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe way seven- and nine-year-old French children and adults interpret ambiguous object descriptions was studied in four experiments. All four experiments followed the same basic procedure and consisted of two phases. During the training phase, plastic blocks varying in shape, colour and size were associated with fruit names. Some objects were always given just one label, the generic term, whereas others could be given either the generic or the specific label. For example, large circles were referred to as ‘pommes’ (‘apples’), and large BLUE circles as ‘reinettes’ (a kind of apple). Still others were given no name at all. During the test phase of the experiment, subjects were presented with referentially ambiguous messages and asked to point to a given object (Experiments 1, 2 and 3) or to draw an object (Experiment 4). The messages consisted of either a generic term preceded by an article (e.g. ‘(la pomme’ – ‘the apple’) or a verbal description based on a colour adjective (e.g. ‘le bleu’ – ‘the blue one’). When presented with the generic term, older children and adults persistently chose the object for which no specific term had been given during the training phase. When presented with an adjective description, they chose the referent for which no fruit name had been given during the training phase. Younger children's choices depended on whether the article preceding the description was definite or indefinite. These results are consistent with the Gricean approach to referential communication proposed by Jackson & Jacobs (1982) and with an extended version of the principle of contrast proposed by Clark (1987, 1988).
How the prosodic cues in motherese might assist language learning
Authors: Nelson Deborah G. Kemler , Hirsh-Pasek Kathy , Jusczyk Peter W. , Cassidy Kimberly Wright 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe function of motherese has become a pivotal issue in the language-learning literature. The current research takes the approach of asking whether the prosodic characteristics that are distinctive to motherese could play a special role in facilitating the acquisition of syntax. Hirsh-Pasek, Kemler Nelson, Jusczyk, Cassidy, Druss & Kennedy (1987) showed that infants aged 0;7–0;10 are sensitive to prosodic cues that would help them segment the speech stream into perceptual units that correspond to clauses. The present study shows that infants' sensitivity to segment-marking cues in ongoing speech holds for motherese but not for adult-directed speech. The finding is that, for motherese only, infants orient longer to speech that has been interrupted at clausal boundaries than to matched speech that has been interrupted at within-clause locations. This selective preference indicates that the prosodie qualities of motherese provide infants with cues to units of speech that correspond to grammatical units of language – a potentially fundamental contribution of motherese to the learning of syntax.
The systematic acquisition of word forms by a child during the first-fifty-word stage
Authors: French Ann 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis paper sets out to examine two findings reported in the literature: one, that during the one-word stage a child's word productions are highly phonetically variable, and two, that the one-word stage is qualitatively distinct from subsequent phonological development. The complete set of word forms produced by a child at the one-word stage were collected and analysed both cross-sectionally (month by month) and longitudinally (looking for changes over time). It was found that the data showed very little variability, and that phonological development during the period studied was qualitatively continuous with subsequent development. It is suggested that the phonologically principled development of this child's first words is related to his late onset of speech.
Alternative explanations for the relationship between maternal verbal interaction style and child language development
Authors: Yoder Paul J. , Kaiser Ann P. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe present study analysed formerly unexamined indirect routes for relationships between time 1 maternal speech and later child language development. Ten normally developing children in Brown's early stage 1 and their mothers were the subjects. For each dyad, two free-play sessions occurring five months apart were videotaped in the subjects' homes. Mothers' pragmatic language use was coded from time 1 sessions. Child language level was coded at both sessions. Even though time 1 scores of the outcome were controlled, seven of the ten relationships involving mother speech and child language development were indirectly related through one of two time 1 child language measures. The results indicate that a mother-driven, direct influence model may be inappropriate for many mother speech–child language development relationships. We argue that child-driven and mother-driven explanatory models for the indirect relationships are equally feasible.
On the developmental contour of child language: a reply to Smith & Weist
Authors: Bloom Lois , Harner Lorraine 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTA developmental perspective in child language research begins with a focus on the child and the processes that contribute to change in the child's knowledge of language. Developmental change occurs in an organized, systematic way, with later changes influenced at least in part by developments at an earlier time. The acquisition of tense and aspect provides a relevant example. Data previously published by Weist, Wysocka, Witkowska-Stadnik, Buczowska & Konieczna (1984) are reanalysed here to show, statistically, that children learning Polish are influenced by aspect in aquiring verb tense, just as children are in learning English, Italian, Hebrew, Turkish and other languages. Children beginning to learn verb inflections find aspectual contour particularly compelling in leading them to learn tense distinctions.
From babbling towards the sound systems of English and French: a longitudinal two-case study
Authors: Levitt Andrea G. , Aydelott Utman Jennifer G. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe utterances of one French and one American infant at 0;5, 0;8, 0;11, and 1;2 were transcribed and acoustically analysed for syllable duration and vowel formant values. Both general and language-specific effects emerged in the longitudinal study. Initial similarities in the consonantal repertoires of both infants, increasing control in producing targetF1andF2values, and developmental changes in babbling characteristics over time seem to reflect universal patterns. Yet the babbling of the infants differed in ways that appear to be due to differences in their language environments. Shifts in the infants' sound repertoires reflected phoneme frequencies in the adult languages. The English-learning infant produced more closed syllables, which is characteristic of English, than the French-learning infant. The French-learning infant tended to produce more regularly-timed nonfinal syllables and showed significantly more final-syllable lengthening (both characteristic of French) than the English-learning infant.
Analysis of pronominal errors: a case-study
Authors: Oshima-Takane Yuriko 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe present paper reports a case-study of a normally developing boy who made pronominal errors for about ten months. Comprehension and production of first- and second-person pronouns were longitudinally examined from 1; 7 to 2; 10 to test three hypotheses concerning pronominal errors: pronominal errors are a result of either (a) semantic confusion, (b) simple imitation, or (c) confusion between self and others. The results showed that the child began using first- and second-person pronouns at about 1; 8 and mastered the correct usage by 2; 10. Consistent errors for the first- and the second-person pronouns were observed from 1; 11 to 2; 4, but proportions of errors occurring in his imitative language were low. The comprehension and production data clearly indicated that the child persistently made pronominal errors due to semantic confusion. That is, first-person pronouns referred to a person with whom the child conversed and second-person pronouns referred to himself.
Beyond the basics: preschool children label objects flexibly at multiple hierarchical levels
Authors: Waxman Sandra R. , Hatch Thomas 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTAlthough preschoolers typically accept the basic level label for an object (e.g. dog) and tend to resist all others (e.g. collie, animal), this tendency is not inviolable. Under certain circumstances, children accept more than one label per object. In this experiment, with 20 three- and 20 four-year-old children, we extended this body of research in three ways. We examined (1) children's production of multiple, hierarchically related labels; (2) the pragmatic consequences of the inherent asymmetry of inclusion relations; and (3) the influence of morphology (modifier + noun constructions vs. simple lexemes) at the subordinate level. Children labelled objects most frequently at the basic level, but also readily produced many non-basic level terms. Children, like adults, may prefer to label objects at the basic level, but they exhibit no general prohibition against also labelling at other, non-basic levels. Their performance challenges the notion that the ability to label objects flexibly at multiple levels is beyond the young child's capacity.
Children's understanding of the evidential connotation of ‘know’ in relation to overestimation of their own knowledge
Authors: Mitchell Peter , Robinson Elizabeth J. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis study examined five- to seven-year-olds' assumptions about the experiential connotation of ‘I know that's X’. In Experiment 1 children tried to identify which of a set of unfamiliar targets had a given name (X), and after they had chosen, we enquired either whether they KNEW their chosen item was (X) or whether they were SURE. Six- to seven-year-olds (N = 39) judged that they were sure more often than they judged that they knew, which suggests that although they experienced confidence that they had chosen correctly, they assumed it would be inappropriate to judge ‘know’, because this would imply an experiential basis, which was absent. Five- to six-year-olds (N = 36) did not discriminate between the two kinds of question. In Experiment 2, children could infer which item was a named unfamiliar cartoon character by ruling out familiar distractors. Six- to seven-year-olds (N = 35) judged that they knew they had picked the right one much more often than they judged that they knew their chosen picture was (target name). Again, five- to six-year-olds (N = 44) did not discriminate between the two kinds of question. This demonstrates powerfully that the older children held an experiential connotation of ‘I know that's X’, since they avoided such judgements even when they knew by inference they had chosen correctly.
Phonetic variation in multisyllable babbling
Authors: Mitchell Pamela R. , Kent Raymond D. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis investigation examined phonetic variation in multisyllable babbling of infants from 0;7 to 0;11. The basis of this investigation was to examine assumptions present in major models of infant vocal development which suggest systematic developmental increases in phonetic variation of these babbles, and posit separate stages of repetitive (multisyllables with non-varied phonetic elements) and non-repetitive (phonetically varied multisyllables) babbling. Eight infants were audiotaperecorded in their homes at ages 0;7, 0;9 and 0;11. The multisyllable vocalizations were categorized based on the presence or absence of phonetic variation, and the source of that variation (place change, manner change or both). Multisyllables were produced with phonetic variation at or near the beginning of multisyllable babbling, which failed to support the existence of distinct stages of repetitive and nonrepetitive babbling.
Homonymy and reduplication: on the extended availability of two strategies in phonological acquisition
Authors: Lleó Conxita 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTIn the literature on phonological acquisition certain strategies such as homonymy and reduplication are viewed as phenomena appearing at a very early age, resulting from a deficient sound-inventory and sound-distribution. Data on homonymy and reduplication from a longitudinal study will be considered, which show that: (a) such strategies can appear later in the child's linguistic development than it has been proposed; (b) the lexical item has to be considered a central unit, beyond the earliest stages, in the acquisition of phonology.
Lexical assignability and perspective switch: the acquisition of verb subcategorization for aspectual inflections
Authors: Rispoli Matthew 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis paper explores how children learn the range of aspect inflections to which a verb is amenable. The data considered are from observations of three Japanese boys aged between 1; 10 and 2; 1. Analyses focus on the children's mastery of Aktionsart specific intersentential patterns. For example, in one pattern, a caregiver asksnani shiteiru? ‘What is someone or something doing’. The conventional answer is with the continuative-te iruform of a verb that expresses an activity. Three conclusions are drawn. First, lexical assignment had begun before aspectual inflections were used to signal temporal perspective switch. Secondly, lexical assignment began with anchorpoints tying certain lexical contrasts to the Aktionsart of minimal sentences. Thirdly, overgeneralizations of aspect inflections are due to the difficulty of acquiring devices that signal temporal perspective switch.
Children's use of information in word learning
Authors: Au Terry Kit-Fong 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTWhenever children hear a novel word, the context supplies information about its meaning. One way children may cope with so much information is to use whatever seems to make sense, given their prior knowledge and beliefs, while ignoring or quickly forgetting the rest. This work examined if and how children's beliefs about word meanings may affect their use of contrastive linguistic information in the input in word learning. In Study 1, some 3- and 4-year-olds were introduced to a novel material or shape name and heard it contrasted with familiar words. Others merely heard the novel word used for referring to an object. These children were then tested to determine what they had learned about their new word meaning. In Study 2, another group of 3-and 4-year-olds were asked to name the materials and shapes used for introducing these novel terms. Children made use of linguistic contrast only in some situations. They benefited more when the novel term did not overlap much in denotation with any terms commonly known by 3-and 4-year-olds. These results suggest that children can use information in the input very efficiently in learning a term for an as-yet-unnamed category, but not in learning a term similar in denotation to a word they already know. Thus, the results are consistent with the claim that children believe every word has a unique denotation.
The who, when and where of early narratives
Authors: Peterson Carole 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTTo be well understood, narratives need to be embedded within appropriate contextual information. The early development of key orientation (participants, location and time) was traced with an 18-month longitudinal study of real-experience narratives produced by 10 children aged approximately 2–3; 6. Listener knowledge or inference was required to decode most named participants and many were not specified at all. There was no developmental improvement. Orientation to when was rare at first and involved formula words indiscriminately applied. There was steady developmental improvement in frequency as well as differentiation of time references. where information was more common at all ages, particularly when the narrated events occurred away from home. It also showed developmental improvement, but only for away-from-home locations. Overall, very young children can produce narratives in an unscaffolded context to adults unfamiliar with their experiences. The potential role of parental scaffolding in teaching orientation skills is discussed.
An update on the CHILDES/BIB (formerly ISU/CHILDES) database*
Authors: Higginson Roy 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTA description is given of the CHILDES/BIB database, its contents, and its relationship to the CHILDES database. CHILDES is a depository of child language corpora, and the publisher of CHAT (a transcription manual), and CLAN (an electronic package for child language research). CHILDES/BIB is an electronic bibliographic database that is an autonomous unit of CHILDES.
Children's deictic and nondeictic interpretations of the spatial locatives in front of and behind
Authors: Cox Maureen V. , Isard Sarah 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTA younger group (mean age 5;10) and an older group (mean age 9;11) of children were asked to place a toy man IN FRONT OF or BEHIND a car which either faced away from them or faced sideways. When the observer's viewpoint was not emphasized in the instructions, or was merely implied, both age groups responded in a nondeictic way. When the viewpoint of the observer was an essential component of the task and the spatial term was omitted, both age groups selected a deictic location. However, when the viewpoint was emphasized but when the spatial term was also included the responses were split between deictic and nondeictic locations.
Stiff systems of ordinary differential equations. Part 1. Completely stiff, homogeneous systems
Authors: Mahony J. J. , Shepherd J. J. 
Published: February 2009

AbstractFor the completely stiff real homogeneous systemwhere e is a small positive parameter, a method is given for the construction of a basis for the solution space.If A has n linearly independent eigenvector functions, then there exists a choice of these, {si}, with corresponding eigenvalue functions {λi}, such that there is a local basis for solution, that takes the formwhere vi is a vector that tends to zero with e. In general, a basis of this form exists only on an interval in which the distinct eigenvalues have their real parts ordered. A construction is provided for continuing any solution across the boundaries of any such interval. These results are proved for a finite or infinite interval for which there are only a finite number of points at which the ordering of the real parts of eigenvalues changes.
Equations for periodic solutions of a logistic difference equation
Authors: Brown A. 
Published: February 2009

AbstractThe paper is concerned with periodic solutions of the difference equation un + 1 = 2aun, where a and b are constants, with and b > 0. A new method is developed for dealing with this problem and, for period lengths up to 6, polynomial equations are given which allow the periodic solutions to be determined in a precise and practical manner. These equations apply whether the periodic solutions are stable or unstable and the elements of the cycle can be determined with an accuracy which is not affected by instability of the cycle.A simple transformation puts the equation into the form , where A = a2 − a, and the detailed discussion is based on this simpler form. The discussion includes details such as the number of cyclic solutions for a given value of A, the pattern of the cycles and their stability. For practical purposes, it is enough to consider a restricted range of values of A, namely , although the equations obtained are valid for A > 2.
The response to a hot spot in a combustion problem
Authors: Tam K. K. , Kiang M. T. 
Published: February 2009

AbstractA simple model for a problem in combustion theory has multiple steady state solutions when a parameter is in a certain range. This note deals with the initial value problem when the initial temperature takes the form of a hot spot. Estimates on the extent and temperature of the spot for the steady state solution to be super-critical are obtained.
Non-destructive testing of optical-fibre preforms
Authors: Anderssen R. S. , Calligaro R. B. 
Published: February 2009

AbstractWhen optical fibres are made by first constructing optical-fibre preforms, the fibre which is pulled from the heated preform is simply a scaled down version of the original preform structure. The expansion coefficient profile α(r) of the preform, which relates directly to the fabrication variables, can be determined from non-destructive optical retardation measurements δ(r) performed on the preform. In addition, the residual elastic stress distributions in a fabricated preform, which can be used to compare different fabrication procedures, have simple definitions as linear functionals of the expansion coefficients α(r). Thus, through the use of optical retardation data, an examination of different manufacturing procedures for preform fabrication is reduced to a problem in non-destructive manufacturing procedures for preform fabrication is reduced to a problem in non-destructive testing and analysis. The underlying numerical problem of evaluating the stres distributions reduces to solving and Abel-type integral equation for α(r), which involves an indeterminacy, followed by the evaluation of linear functionals defined on α(r). It is shown how the known inversion formulae for the Abel-type integral equation can be used formally to reduce the numerical problem of evaluating the radial stress to the evaluation of a linear functional defined on the data δ(r) which bypasses the indeterminacy. When only the radial stress is required, the problem of actually solving the Abel-type integral equation is avoided. Methods for evaluating the non-radial stresses, which avoid the indeterminacy, are also derived.