bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Linguistic factors in children's understanding of idioms
Authors: Gibbs Raymond W. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis study examined the effect of two linguistic factors on children's understanding of idioms. Kindergarten, first, third and fourth graders listened to idiomatic expressions either alone or at the end of short story contexts. Their task was to explain verbally the intended meanings of these idioms and then to choose the correct idiomatic interpretations of these phrases. The results showed that in the presence of supporting context younger children (kindergarten and first graders) understood idioms that were syntactically frozen (e.g.turn back the clock) better than they did idioms which can be seen in a variety of syntactic forms (e.g.lay down the law). Older children (third and fourth graders) comprehended both kinds of idiom equally well. Moreover, with context, children at all grade levels were better at explaining the figurative meanings of idioms whose literal and idiomatic interpretations were closely related (e.g.hold your tongues) than they were at explaining idioms whose literal and figurative meanings were not closely related (e.g.beat around the bush). Without context there were few significant differences noted in children's understanding of the different kinds of idiom. The significance of these findings for developmental models of idiom comprehension is discussed.
Sentence comprehension in Hungarian-Russian bilingual and monolingual preschool children
Authors: Pléh Csaba , Jarovinskij Alexandr , Balajan Alexandr 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis paper's authors examine the interpretation of transitive sentences with varying word orders /SVO, OVS, SOV, OSV/. The subjects were Hungarian-Russian bilingual preschool children and their Hungarian and Russian monolingual peers. Bever's ‘first noun as agent’ strategy – as indicated by OVS and OSV errors – appears to be weaker in the bilinguals. An explanation for this is proposed in terms of Slobin's ‘attention to the end of words’ factor. The mistaken identification of sentence-initial objects as agents depends on case marking allomorphy. Bilinguals, in general, appear to pay more attention to allomorphy and thus make fewer interpretation errors than their monolingual peers.
Playing with pronouns in French maternal speech to prelingual infants
Authors: Rabain-Jamin Jacqueline , Sabeau-Jouannet Emilie 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTConventional and displaced uses of pronouns in maternal speech to refer to the baby were investigated in a developmental study of six mother—infant dyads using video-recordings of their free play at three, seven and ten months. These pronominal uses were analysed in a number of semantic contexts to determine how interactive situations influence the use of different types of pronouns. Results show that third- and first-person pronouns occur significantly more often in the semantic context of affect-oriented activities than in the semantic context of goal-directed activities. For second-person pronouns the results are the opposite. The contrast found between these two contexts, i.e. where the child is presented as the agent of a meaningful activity or not, shows how the place constructed for the baby as an interlocutor in maternal speech evolves with age. This study underlines the part the third person plays with its descriptive value in the acquisition of the system of pronouns.
The validity of a parent report instrument of child language at twenty months
Authors: Dale Philip S. , Bates Elizabeth , Reznick J. Steven , Morisset Colleen 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTWhen carefully assessed and analysed, parent report can provide a valuable overall evaluation of children's language at 20 months. Norming information and validity coefficients are presented here for a vocabulary checklist assessment included in the Early Language Inventory. Normative data are provided for fullterm, preterm, and precocious samples, including selected vocabulatory subsets that are indicative of early language learning style. The vocabulary checklist has substantial validity as indexed by correlations with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and particularly with a language subscale derived from that test.
The acquisition of polysynthesis
Authors: Mithun Marianne 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTPolysynthetic languages can present special extraction puzzles to children, due to the length of their words. A number of hypotheses concerning children's strategies for acquiring morphology, originally proposed on the basis of their approaches to somewhat simpler systems, are confirmed by observations of five children acquiring Mohawk. Among the Mohawk children, the earliest segmentation of words was phonological rather than morphological: stressed syllables, usually penultimate or antepenultimate, were extracted first. Ultimate syllables were then added, confirming the salience of the ends of words. During this time, distinctions expressed by adults in affixes were either omitted or expressed analytically. Acquisition then moved leftward by syllables. When most utterances were long enough to include pronominal prefixes as well as roots, morphological structure was apparently discovered. It is not surprising that the pronouns should trigger this awareness, since they are frequent, appearing with every verb and most nouns, they are functional, and they are semantically transparent. From this point on, the children acquired affixes primarily according to their utility and semantic transparency rather than their phonological shape or position.
On children's uses of from, by and with in oblique noun phrases
Authors: Clark Eve V. , Carpenter Kathie L. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis study was designed to follow up children's early spontaneous uses of from to mark oblique agents by giving 40 children (aged 2; 5–6; 1), and 10 adults, grammatical and ungrammatical sentences containing from, with, and by to imitate and to repair. As predicted, children's imitations and repairs showed that (a) 2–year-olds produce from for agents, and with for instruments in imitation; and (b) as children get older, they shift to by for agents in their repairs, and keep from to mark locative sources. These findings support the hypothesis that when children first try to express oblique agents, before acquisition of conventional by, they choose from for this purpose because agents, as instigators of actions, are conceived of as the source of the action and its result.
Nursery rhymes, phonological skills and reading
Authors: Bryant P. E. , Bradley L. , Maclean M. , Crossland J. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTNursery rhymes are an almost universal part of young English-speaking children's lives. We have already established that there are strong links between children's early knowledge of nursery rhymes at 3;3 and their developing phonological skills over the next year and a quarter. Since such skills are known to be related to children's success in learning to read, this result suggests the hypothesis that acquaintance with nursery rhymes might also affect children's reading. We now report longitudinal data from a group of 64 children from the age of 3;4 to 6;3 which support this hypothesis. There is a strong relation between early knowledge of nursery rhymes and success in reading and spelling over the next three years even after differences in social background, I.Q and the children's phonological skills at the start of the project are taken into account. This raises the question of how nursery rhymes have such an effect. Our answer is that knowledge of nursery rhymes enhances children's phonological sensitivity which in turn helps them to learn to read. This paper presents further analyses which support the idea of this path from nursery rhymes to reading. Nursery rhymes are related to the child's subsequent sensitivity to rhyme and phonemes. Moreover the connection between knowledge of nursery rhymes and reading and spelling ability disappears when controls are made for differences in these subsequent phonological skills.
Pitch alterations in British motherese: some preliminary acoustic data
Authors: Shute Brenda , Wheldall Kevin 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTSpeech samples from eight British female adults addressing young children and another adult were analysed in terms of vocal pitch. Increases in vocal pitch when addressing young children were observed but were smaller than the increases noted by North American researchers, and variability across speakers was marked. Some adults only slightly raised their vocal pitch to young children. Pitch increases were generally more marked for mean as against modal pitch measures, and for free speech as against reading aloud conditions.
Genetic factors in the ontogeny of spoken language: evidence from monozygotic and dizygotic twins
Authors: Locke John L. , Mather Patricia L. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTRecent controversy about the innateness of language has awakened interest in the genetic basis of linguistic development. In this study, we analysed more extensively data from Mather & Black (1984).in order to test the hypothesis that the speech articulation of monozygotic (MZ) twins would be qualitatively more similar than that of age- and sex-matched dizygotic (DZ) twins. Analyses revealed that 4–year-old MZ twin pairs were significantly more likely to misproduce the same sounds on an articulation test than were DZ twin pairs, and that DZ twins were no more likely to share errors than were children who were both genetically and environmentally unrelated. There was no evidence that MZ twins made more similar errors than DZ twins, and indeed it was difficult to make this determination since only broad categories of error (substitution, distortion, omission) were available for analysis. The greater amount of genetic material shared by MZ twins, and the presumably more similar morphology of their speech mechanisms, may have caused certain sound patterns to be of more nearly equal difficulty for both members of a MZ pair. However, these findings need to be confirmed with phonetically more detailed analyses.
Control and coreference in early child language
Authors: Hsu Jennifer Ryan , Cairns Helen Smith , Eisenberg Sarita , Schlisselberg Gloria 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the relationship between control and coreference using an act-out task involving 81 children ranging in age from 3;1 to 8;0 and eight adults ranging in age from 30 to 55. The results replicated previous findings in revealing five developmental stages in children's interpretation of PRO, an empty pronominal element. A significant relationship was observed in the patterns of children's interpretation of forwards sentences containing PRO and those containing overt pronouns. However, there was no relationship in the development of restrictions on control and restrictions on coreference.
Cross-linguistic studies of directionality in first language acquisition: the Japanese data – a response to O'Grady, Suzuki-Wei & Cho 1986
Authors: Lust Barbara , Mazuka Reiko 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTElsewhere we have argued on the basis of cross linguistic studies of directionality effects on anaphora in child language, that there is no universal ‘forward directionality preference (FDP)’; rather such a preference is linked to languages with specific grammatical properties. Although such a preference has been attested in English acquisition, matched experimental designs in Japanese, Chinese and Sinhalese, for example, do not show this effect. In this paper we argue that current attempts to show that forward directionality effects can also be induced in Japanese acquisition do not succeed in supporting the FDP. Specifics of the design of stimulus sentences in these experiments vary previous cross-linguistic designs so as to favour forward directionality on independent grounds, and confound cross linguistic comparisons. They in fact support a universal structure dependence in children's hypotheses about directionality of anaphora’.
Contrast: a semantic constraint?
Authors: Gathercole Virginia C. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis article challenges the position of Clark (1988) with regard to Contrast. The evidence cited in support of this theory from adult languages is far from clear, and the evidence coming from child language admits of alternative explanations. In addition, the ‘logic’ of assuming Contrast leads to insurmountable difficulties in the acquisition of irregular forms and allomorphs. An alternative to Contrast is proposed. This draws on the drive towards the adult system, the development of non-linguistic concepts, the acquisition of language in context, and the use of the Co-operative Principle by participants in conversational exchanges to account for those features of language and language acquisition that Contrast was designed to explain.
Discourse and the acquisition of grammatical morphemes
Authors: Farrar Michael Jeffrey 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTAdult recasts of child utterances have been shown to be related in a general way to the child's acquisition of syntactic structures. The current study had two aims. The first aim was to determine which feature(s) of recasts (i.e. reformulation, expansion, topic continuation, or reply) was responsible for facilitating language acquisition by comparing them to other maternal discourse models that were systematically defined by these properties. The second aim was to investigate this relation more specifically by relating adult discourse models of specific grammatical morphemes to the child's acquisition of those same morphemes. Again, recasts were of particular interest. Twelve mother-child dyads were videorecorded during one hour of naturalistic interaction when the children were 1;10 and 2;4. Results indicated that maternal recasts of specific morphemes were related to the acquisition of those same grammatical morphemes during certain developmental periods, whereas other grammatical morphemes were facilitated by expansions and topic continuations. These results are discussed in terms of the processes responsible for these effects.
The development of definitional skill
Authors: Snow Catherine E. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTGiving good definitions requires controlling both word meaning and definitional form. Definitions from 137 second to fifth graders (i.e. aged seven to eleven) were scored to reflect conformity to the classic Aristotelian form and quality of information provided. Comparisons among children with different backgrounds indicated that school exposure to English was strongly related to per cent formal definitions given and their quality. 63 children were also tested in French, their foreign language. Performance in French was lower than in English; exposure to French at home related to the amount of information the children provided in informal definitions, not to quality of formal definitions. The results suggest that performance on definitions is most strongly affected by opportunities to practise the required form.
Input evidence regarding the semantic bootstrapping hypothesis
Authors: Rondal Jean A. , Cession Anne 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe input language addressed to 18 language-learning children (MLU 1.00–3.00) was analysed so as to assess the quality of the semanticsyntactic correspondence posited by the semantic bootstrapping hypothesis. The correspondence appears to be quite satisfactory with little variation from the lower to the higher MLUs. All the persons and things referred to in the corpora were labelled by the mothers using nouns. All the actions referred to were labelled using verbs. Most of the attributive information was conveyed by adjectives. Spatial information was expressed through the use of spatial prepositions. As to the functional categories, all agents of actions and causes of events were encoded as subjects of sentences. All patients, themes, sources, goals, locations, and instruments were encoded as objects of sentences (either direct or oblique). This good semantic-syntactic correspondence may make the child's construction of grammatical categories easier.
Development of categorical identification of native and non-native bilabial stops: infants, children and adults
Authors: Burnham Denis K. , Earnshaw Lynda J. , Clark John E. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTUsing an infant speech identification (ISI) procedure, English language environment infants, two- and six-year-old children, and adults were tested for their identification of sounds on a native (voiced/voiceless bilabial stop) and a non-native (prevoiced/voiced bilabial stop) speech continuum. Categorical perception of the two contrasts diverged as a function of age, increasing for the native contrast and decreasing for the non-native between two and six years. In Experiment 2, subjects of the same four ages were tested for their identification of a continuum of harmonic tones varying in pitch. Comparison of the results of Experiment i with the essentially continuous perception of this pitch continuum supports the view that the perception of the native contrast becomes more categorical with age, while perception of the non-native contrast becomes less categorical, especially at six years. Experiment 3, in which adults were tested on the three continua with a multi-trial open set procedure, demonstrated that results with the ISI procedure in Experiments 1 and 2 are comparable to results with more traditional methods. The results of the three experiments are discussed in terms of the role of specific linguistic experience in the development of categorical speech perception.
Unusual phonological patterns and their underlying representations: a case study
Authors: Leonard Laurence B. , Mcgregor Karla K. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTAn unusual phonological pattern exhibited by a child aged 2;9 is described. The pattern involved the production of word-final strident continuants in words whose adult forms contain these features in initial, rather than final position (e.g. [ops] for soap). The data are interpreted as compatible with models of child phonology that permit direct mapping of features to final position.
When do children avoid backwards coreference?
Authors: Hsu Jennifer Ryan , Cairns Helen Smith , Eisenberg Sarita , Schlisselberg Gloria 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the claim that very young children avoid backwards coreference in their interpretation of sentences containing pronouns. Eighty-one children ranging in age from 3;1 to 8;0 and eight adults acted out four types of pronominal sentences. Cross-sectional data and individual response patterns reveal that children initially, prefer internal coreference even when such a response is disallowed for structural reasons. Avoidance of backwards coreference appears to be a late developing phenomenon characteristic of six-year-olds. Adult response patterns, which are manifested by some very young children, emerge as the dominant pattern by age seven.
Representational demands in mothers' talk to preschool children in two contexts: picture book reading and a modelling task
Authors: Sorsby Angela J. , Martlew Margaret 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTShared book reading is considered to be an influential factor in language and literacy development and has been associated with more complex and demanding forms of tutorial language use. The present study seeks to examine mothers' discourse in joint picture book reading in terms of the level of representational demand which it places on the child, that is the extent to which it requires the child to engage in abstract thought. This was compared with the language used in another interactive, but more product oriented task, modelling a clown using play-doh. Twenty-four mother child dyads (in which the mean age of the children was 4;2) were videotaped while engaged on these tasks and the conversation was analysed for representational demand (levels of abstraction), interactive features and communicative function. The mother's conversation was found to be at a higher level of abstraction in reading than in play-doh modelling. The accuracy of child responses to high level requests for information was superior for reading, while responses to low level requests were similar in both situations. The interactive categories were more utterance-based and less attention-based than in the modelling task.
A longitudinal analysis of young children's cohesion and noun specification in narratives
Authors: Peterson Carole , Dodsworth Pamela 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe early production of nine cohesive devices during narration about personal experience was examined in an 18-month longitudinal study of 10 children between approximately age 2;0 and 3;6. The specification of noun phrases and types of noun errors were also explored. The number of cohesive ties increased with both age and MLU, due to increased pronominal reference and conjunctions (while clausal and verbal ellipsis decreased). Specific cohesive devices also were acquired at different MLU levels. Most noun phrases were non-problematic and errors declined with increasing age and MLU; specifically, noun omissions declined. However, when new nouns were introduced, approximately one out of five were ambiguous throughout the study. Thus, children's narratives become more comprehensible with age as cohesive links increase and noun errors decrease, but at 3;6 children are still having difficulty properly managing the introduction of novel nouns.
Children's competence in the specialized register of sportscasting
Authors: Hoyle Susan M. 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThis study reports on four school-age boys' use of the specialized register of sportscasting as performed both spontaneously and when elicited by the researcher, and compares the boys' production of formal register-marking features to adult usage. Like the commentary of professional sportscasters, the boys' commentating is characterized by heavy use of simple-present action verbs, use of constructions lacking elements that are ordinarily grammatically required (the subject pronoun he, an auxiliary verb, or a main verb), and (in the elicited version) frequent occurrence of passives. The boys invest the most ‘ungram-matical’ utterance types (those lacking finite verbs) with a function that is not clearly present in adult sportscasting discourse, that of pointing forward in the discourse.
Intonational differences between the reduplicative babbling of French- and English-learning infants
Authors: Whalen D. H. , Levitt Andrea G. , Wang Qi 
Published: February 2009

ABSTRACTThe two- and three-syllable reduplicative babbling of five French-learning and five English-learning infants (0;5 to 1; 1) was examined in two ways for intonational differences. The first measure was a categorization into one of five categories (RISING, FALLING, RISE-FALL, FALL-RISE, LEVEL) by expert listeners. The second was the fundamental frequency (F0) from the early, middle and late portion of each syllable. Both measures showed significant differences between the two language groups. 65% of the utterances from both groups were classified as either rising of falling. For the French children, these were divided equally into the rising and the falling categories, while 75% of those utterances for the English children were judged to have falling intonation. Proportions of the other three categories were not significantly different by language environment. In both languages, though, three-syllable utterances were more likely to have a complex contour than two-syllable ones. Analysis of the F0patterns confirmed the perceptual assessment. Several aspects of the target languages help explain these intonational differences in prelinguistic babbling.