bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Acquiring case-marked pronouns in Hebrew: the interaction of linguistic factors
Authors: Rom Anita , Dgani Revital 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTChildren's production of case-marked pronouns in Hebrew was studied with respect to possessive marking, direct-object marking, and ‘on’- locative marking. In each of these three instances the preposition appears in a bound form with a suffixal pronominal. One hundred and five children between 2;0 and 5:5 were tested in a game-like procedure designed to elicit each of the three prepositions with 1st, 2nd and 3rd personal pronouns. Results indicate that general cross-linguistic principles are operating in the acquisition process, while language specific morphophonological complexity affects relative order of acquisition. A developmental sequence may be seen in the five response patterns identified.
Comprehension of Icelandic pronoun gender: semantic versus formal factors
Authors: Mulford Randa 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe ability of Icelandic children (aged 4 to 8 years) to identify referents of gender-marked pronouns was tested under three conditions: (i) referents with natural/semantic gender, (ii) familiar referents with grammatical gender, (iii) unfamiliar referents with grammatical gender. Potential formal information about grammatical gender was held constant across all conditions. Children's correct identification of pronoun referents was most highly related to the familiarity of the referents and the availability of natural gender information, not to formal gender information. The results are discussed in light of contradictory findings from German. It is argued that subtle differences in the formal gender systems of.the two languages may underlie the different experimental results and may lead to different developmental patterns.
Children's acquisition of Warlpiri: comprehension of transitive sentences
Authors: Bavin Edith L. , Shopen Timothy A. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTComprehension test results from children acquiring Warlpiri as a first language in the Yuendumu community indicate that the canonical transitive sentence is one with an ergative-absolutive verb. We hypoth- esize that the acquisition process is influenced by a number of properties of the language, properties including the presence of homophonous forms for some of the case endings, the use of three different case frames, the optional ellipsis of core arguments, and the optionality of case markings in certain conditions.
The emergence of illocutionary skills
Authors: Reeder Kenneth 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTA psycholinguistic experiment elicits highly reliable judgements from young English-speaking children aged 2; 6–3; 0 about illocutionary force of utterances presented in controlled contexts. Puppet play simulated extralinguistic features judged capable of constituting felicity conditions upon the illocutionary acts Request and Offer. The experimental data bear upon two questions: (1) What set of features, linguistic and pragmatic, constitute cues for the discrimination of illocutionary force by young children? (2) What is the lower developmental bound of the emergence of discrimination of illocutionary force for Requests and Offers? While grasp of illocutionary force for Offers was well-established by 2; 6, discrimination skills for Requests probably continues to develop between 2; 6 and 3; 0. Relevant pragmatic features are explicated, and a model of the comprehension of illocutionary force proposed in the light of the results.
Hungarian research on the acquisition of morphology and syntax
Authors: Macwhinney Brian 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis review analyses research on the acquisition of Hungarian morphology and syntax. The specific topics covered are morphological analysis, neologisms, acquisition of the first inflections, morpheme order, word order and agreement. Several lines of evidence suggest that the first unit acquired by the child is the word. Because of the structure of Hungarian, both errors in segmentation of the utterance and errors in the segmentation of the word are minimized. Morphological analysis seems to begin at the semantic level and proceed to the morphological level. Data on acquisition of free word order and early inflections are potentially of great interest, although presently inconclusive.
Satisfying inquisitive adults: some simple methods of answering yes/no questions
Authors: Steffensen Margaret S. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe development of two children's responses to yes/no questions is studied longitudinally. It will be proposed that the children realize that they must verbalize, but do not understand the semantics of the question form or the affirmative and negative particles. Their answers are not appropriate by the conventions of adult speech. In this situation, each child develops his own system, a phenomenon to be called PRAGMATIC VARIATION. Head nodding and shaking show a pattern of development comparable to that of the verbal responses. The options available to children acquiring English are discussed.
Plurals in child speech
Authors: Park Tschang-Zin 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe development of plurals in two German-speaking children was analysed, based on observational data. It was found that (1) plurals were supplied in 90% of the obligatory contexts somewhere between Stage IV and Stage V; (2) plurals were not functionally distinguished from singulars, occurring also in singular contexts; (3) the predominant morphological deviations were of the type in which an additional plural marker was attached to an already correct plural; (4) referring to a single object or event, formally correct plural utterances were often constructed, partly because of as yet unestablished verb conjugation rules. It was argued that the children were learning plurals by rote, conditioned by morphological complexity which cannot be subsumed under any general rule.
Language mixing in bilingual children
Authors: Lindholm Kathryn J. , Padilla A. M. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTLanguage samples of five Spanish/English bilingual children between the ages of 2; 10 and 6; 2 were examined for language mixes. Only 2% of the total utterances examined contained mixes. The most common type of mix involved the insertion of single lexical entries – mostly English nouns into Spanish utterances. Very few phrasal mixes were observed. It was concluded that language mixes do not constitute a major interference in the acquisition of bilingualism since children appear to be able to differentiate their two linguistic systems from an early age.
A test of metaphoric comprehension and some preliminary developmental data
Authors: Pollio Marilyn R. , Pollio Howard R. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe purposes of the present study was to develop a multiple-choice test of figurative language comprehension and to evaluate the development of such comprehension over a wide range of ages and children. To do this, samples of novel and frozen figures were selected from a corpus provided by elementary school children and then administered to 149 different children between 9 and 14 years. Results showed that the test produced was a reliable one, and one that produced meaningful developmental trends. In addition, differences were noted between the comprehension and production of novel and frozen figures of speech. These findings were discussed in terms of their methodological and developmental implications.
The unintelligibility of speech to children
Authors: Bard Ellen Gurman , Anderson Anne H. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTWords artificially isolated from twelve parents' speech to their children (aged 1; 10–3; 0) were significantly less intelligible to adult listeners than words originally spoken to an adult. This effect holds for randomly sampled words and, to a lesser extent, for matched pairs. While parents did not adjust the clarity of word tokens to the linguistic naiveté of the child listeners, they did adjust intelligibility inversely to the observed predictability of the sampled words in their sentence contexts, and words to children proved more redundant in this sense. The relationship of these findings to other work on the clarity of motherese is examined and the implications for the study of children's speech perception outlined.
Individual differences at 20 months: analytic and holistic strategies in language acquisition
Authors: Bretherton Inge , McNew Sandra , Snyder Lynn , Bates Elizabeth 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe study focuses on the language abilities of 30 20-month-old children, using data from two sources: a detailed maternal interview and 90 minutes of videotaped observation. Observed language was coded into the categories used for the interview. Production and comprehension at 28 months (MLU, PPVT and morphology comprehension) were also assessed. Observation and interview data at 20 months were highly intercorrelated. Cluster analyses of both data sets yielded referential, grammatical morpheme and dialogue clusters, providing partial support for the nominal/pronominal and referential/expressive acquisition styles reported in the literature. However, the referential and grammatical morpheme clusters were highly correlated, suggesting that two acquisition strategies are developing in parallel. Only for those children who heavily emphasize one strategy can one speak of a distinctive style. All interview and observation clusters predicted 28-months MLU, but the grammatical morpheme clusters did not predict later performance on a Grammatical Morpheme Test. It is tentatively suggested that holistic processing strategies underlie the pronominal/expressive style.
Children's judgements of transitivity errors
Authors: Hochberg Judith G. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTDiary studies of English, Hebrew and Portuguese have led to debate on whether there is directionality in children's transitivity errors – that is, whether children are as likely to coin intransitives from transitives (*Bert knocked down) as they are transitives from intransitives (*I falled my cup). The judgements made by 3- and 4-year-olds showed a strong bias in favour of innovative transitives in English. It is argued that this bias results from children's preference for prototypical, highly transitive descriptions of events.
Linguistic complexity and performance
Authors: Smith Carlota S. , van Kleeck Anne 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis article reports an experimental investigation of the influence of linguistic factors on linguistic performance. The factors studied were interpretive complexity and surface length; they were expected to affect performance differentially, depending on the demands of the task. The stimulus sentences were three temporal adverbial structures wherein sentences high in interpretive complexity were low in surface length and vice versa. The experiment presented a toy-moving and an imitation task to children aged 3;6–6;0. The results show an interaction between type of linguistic complexity and type of linguistic performance. Sentences high in interpretive complexity were the most difficult in the toy-moving task and the easiest in the imitation task, and vice versa. The experiments suggest that different abilities are tapped by imitation and toy-moving tasks.
Effects of contingent and noncontingent maternal stimulation on the vocal behaviour of three- to four-month-old Japanese infants
Authors: Masataka Nobuo 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTA total of 48 male infants experienced either conversational turn-taking or random responsiveness of their mothers when aged 0;3 and 0;4. In both periods, the infant's rate of vocalizing was not significantly influenced by the contingency of the mother's response, but contingency altered the temporal parameters of the infant's vocal pattern. Infants tended to produce more bursts or packets of vocalizations when the mother talked to the infant in a random pattern. When the infants were aged 0;3 such bursts occurred most often at intervals of 0·5–1·5 sec whereas when they were aged 0;4 they took place most frequently at significantly longer intervals, of 1·0–2·0. The difference corresponded to the difference between intervals with which the mother responded contingently to vocalizations of the infant at 0;3 and at 0;4. While the intervals (between the onset of the infant's vocalization and the onset of the mother's vocalization) rarely exceeded 0·5 sec when the infant was aged 0;3, they were mostly distributed between 0·5 and 1·0 sec when he was aged 0;4. After vocalizing spontaneously, the infant tended to pause as if to listen for a possible vocal response from the mother. In the absence of a response, he vocalized repeatedly. The intervals between the two consecutive vocalizations were changed flexibly by the infant according to his recent experience of turn-taking with the mother.
Differential responding to two- and three-year-olds' utterances: the roles of grammaticality and ambiguity
Authors: Furrow David , Baillie Constance , McLaren Jennifer , Moore Chris 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTMothers have been found to respond differently to grammatical and ungrammatical utterances in young children's language. However, parents indicate that they are conscious only of responding to communicative aspects of their children's speech, not grammar. Further, researchers have looked to the understandability of utterances to explain the effects of grammaticality on maternal responses. The present study addressed the question of whether it is actually grammatical form that mothers respond to, or whether it is ambiguity in the communicative functions of children's utterances. Three mother-child dyads were videotaped in a free play setting when the children were 2;0 and 3;0. Children's spontaneous comprehensible utterances were rated for grammaticality and ambiguity of function, and mothers' responses to them were noted. Results indicated that mothers responded differentially to both the ambiguity and grammaticality of children's utterances, and that these two factors had some degree of independence in their effects on mothers' responses.
Uses of past forms in the social pretend play of Italian children
Authors: Musatti Tullia , Orsolini Margherita 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTIn different languages children have been found to use past verb forms to express the meaning of ‘unreality’ during social pretend play. In this study, the verb forms used by 14 four-year-old Italian children in their pretend play were investigated. Results show that different Italian past verb forms tend to co-occur with different play activities. The imperfect occurs mainly when children plan and negotiate their pretend activities and marks the transition from a real to a pretend frame of reference. The present perfect occurs mainly when children implement their plans and communicate within a pretend frame that has already been established. Results of this study are discussed in comparison with findings on the pretend language of children speaking other languages.
Continuity in lexical and morphological development: a test of the critical mass hypothesis
Authors: Marchman Virginia A. , Bates Elizabeth 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTSeveral recent studies have demonstrated strong relationships between lexical acquisition and subsequent developments within the domain of morphosyntax. A connectionist model of the acquisition of a morphological System analogous to that of the English past tense (Plunkett & Marchman, 1993) suggests that growth in vocabulary size may relate to the onset of over-regularization errors. However, this model suggests that the relationships between vocabulary size and morphosyntactic development are non-linear. Incremental increases in the number of verbs to be learned result in qualitative shifts in the treatment of both previously learned and novel forms, but only after the size of the lexicon exceeds a particular level (i.e. reaches a ‘critical mass’). In this paper we present parental report data from an extensive study of English-speaking children aged 1;4 to 2;6 using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Toddler form (N = 1130). These data corroborate several findings from previous studies, including the early usage of unmarked verb stems and the correct production of irregular past tense forms. Further, we demonstrate support for the ‘critical mass’ view of the onset of over-regularization errors, focusing on continuity among lexical and morphological developments. In our view, these data suggest that these linguistic milestones may be paced by similar, if not identical mechanisms.
How mothers teach basic-level and situation-restricted count nouns
Authors: Hall D. Geoffrey 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that young children assume, as a default, that a word applied ostensively to an unfamiliar object (e.g. a man riding in a car) is a basic-level count noun (e.g. person) rather than a situation-restricted count noun (e.g. passenger). In this experiment, 14 mothers and their children (mean age 3;7; range 3;0 to 4;6) participated in a story-book reading session in which the mothers taught their children both a basic-level count noun and a situation-restricted count noun for a series of object drawings. An analysis of mothers' spontaneous teaching strategies revealed that, for a given object, they typically taught a basic-level count noun before a situation-restricted count noun. Furthermore, they tended to teach basic-level count nouns exclusively through estensive definition, especially when the objects were unfamiliar. Moreover, they were (1) more likely to use estensive definitions and (2) less likely to provide additional information concerning the application of the word, when teaching basic-level count nouns than when teaching situation-restricted count nouns. The results provide new evidence that word teachers, like young word learners, assume that a basic-level count noun is the psychologically-privileged candidate for an ostensive definition involving an (unfamiliar) object.
Morphological cues to verb meaning: verb inflections and the initial mapping of verb meanings
Authors: Behrend Douglas A. , Harris L. Lynn , Cartwright Kelly B. 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThe present studies investigated children's use of verb inflections to guide their initial mapping of verb meanings. Given that children initially apply the progressive-inginflection to verbs denoting actions and the past-edinflection to verbs denoting results of events, two studies were conducted to investigate whether children use these inflections during mapping of novel verb meanings. In both studies, subjects were taught novel verbs and were asked to extend those verbs to events in which the action or result differed from events used to teach the verbs. It was predicted that subjects would be less likely to extend verbs inflected with-ingto events with new actions and would be less likely to extend verbs inflected with-edto events with new results. Eighteeen three- and five-year-olds and 24 adults participated in Experiment 1 in a between-subjects design that produced weak effects for the youngest subjects tested. Experiment 2 tested 16 three-year-olds and 19 five-year-olds in a within-subjects design and produced the predicted effect for three-year-olds, but not for five-year-olds. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for early verb learning and regarding the use of the bootstrapping construct in language acquisition research.
Actionality and mental imagery in children's comprehension of declaratives
Authors: Thibaut Jean-Pierre , Rondal Jean A. , KÄens Anne-Marie 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTPrevious work bas demonstrated that children understand sentences with actional verbs better than nonactional verbs. This ACTIONALITY EFFECT bas been reportee to be restricted to passives and to be independent of experimental context. The present experiment was conducted with 48 French-speaking children aged 5;0–7;11. The actionality effect was studied by systematically varying the voice of the test sentences and the voice of the interpretive requests. Pictures corresponding or not to the predicate—argument structure of the sentences were presented to the subjects, who were independently classified as visualizers or nonvisualizers, in order to investigate the relation between sentence actionality and mental imagery. The interaction between actionality, voice of sentence, and interpretive request revealed that the actionality effect depends on the type of task used in order to assess comprehension, and that it can be reversed in some conditions. Our results also suggest that the actionality effect is linked to mental imagery. Visualizers demonstrated better comprehension of actional sentences than nonvisualizers, whereas the reverse was true for nonactional sentences. Mental image may serve as a support for the computations involved in sentence comprehension.
The relation between index-finger extension and the acoustic quality of cooing in three-month-old infants
Authors: Masataka Nobuo 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTFourteen full-term, healthy, three-month-old infants were observed during a total of 15 minutes spontaneous face-to-face interaction with their mothers. Facial and manual actions, gaze direction and vocalizations were coded. The infants' cooing vocalizations were categorized into syllabic and vocalic sounds. Index-finger extension occurred frequently in sequence with syllabic sounds, which are speech-like vocalizations, but rarely occurred in sequence with vocalic sounds. No other categories of nonvocal behaviours showed such a relationship. In a subsequent experiment, the infants experienced either conversational turn-taking or random responsiveness from their mothers. In the turn-taking condition, the infants produced a higher ratio of syllabic to vocalic sounds, and a higher frequency of index-finger extension. These results suggest a strong connection between speech and the pointing gesture long before the infant can actually talk.
A longitudinal study of infant vocalizations during mother–infant games
Authors: Rome-Flanders Tibie , Cronk Carolyn 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTThis study explored the development of verbal behaviours of infants during two mother–infant games. Twenty-five infants were videotaped as they played peek-a-boo and ball with their mothers at 0;6, 0;9, 1;0, 1;3, 1;6, and 2;0. The frequencies of eight categories of vocal/verbal behaviours were analysed as they evolved over time in both games. Despite differences in the structure and level of difficulty of peek-a-boo and ball, the development of these behaviours proved to be similar in the two games. One category, PRIMITIVE VOCALIZATIONS, which did not change in frequency over time, was seen to have a pragmatic rather than a linguistic function. Another category, PRELEXICAL COMMENT, demonstrated an early capacity for conveying topic and comment together in the form of speech sounds combined with an attentiongetting gesture well before the emergence of multiple-word utterances. The vocal behaviours produced during games were compared with the results of language tests administered during the experimental sessions. Strong correlations were found between the results of these two measures of language. The predictive nature of vocal behaviours during games is discussed.