MedWorm.com provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest items from the 'First Language' source. Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:18:54 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5372502&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F31%2F4%2F508%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5372502 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5372502 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5372501&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F4%2F480%3Frss%3D1 This article reports on data obtained through the Quebec-French adaptation of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories – Words and Sentences (N = 826). Results from parent questionnaires show a steady increase in expressive vocabulary and the use of morphology and syntax with age, as well as links between the three components. Strong correlations between parent reports and sample analysis confirm the concurrent validity of the parental reports. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5372501 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5372501 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5372500&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F4%2F461%3Frss%3D1 This study proposes a new methodology for determining the relationship between child-directed speech and child speech in early acquisition. It illustrates the use of this methodology in investigating the relationship between the morphological richness of child-directed speech and the speed of morphological development in child speech. Both variables are defined in terms of mean size of paradigm (MSP) and estimated in a set of longitudinal spontaneous speech corpora of nine children and their caretakers. The children are aged 1;3–3;0, acquiring nine different languages that vary in terms of morphological richness. The main result is that the degree of morphological richness in child-directed speech is positively related to the speed of development of noun and verb paradigms in child s... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5372500 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5372500 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5372499&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F4%2F442%3Frss%3D1 What are the evolutionary and developmental origins of linguistic creativity? Cross-species comparison of the clade consisting of bonobo, chimpanzee, and human suggests that creative word combinations arise from conversation. Analysis of conversational data shows that novel symbol combinations are initially dependent upon conversational input – through the processes of deferred imitation and joint construction – for a bonobo and a chimpanzee exposed to a humanly devised symbol system, as well as for a human child. In all three species, reliance on conversational input for novel symbol combinations fades with development, as novel symbol combinations come to be constructed more independently. These findings resolve the controversy between the claim that ape language is limited t... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5372499 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5372499 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5372498&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F4%2F425%3Frss%3D1 Potential phonological contributions to the inconsistent use of regular noun plural –s were examined in two groups of children who were inconsistent in their use of plural –s: 26 children with specific language impairment and 26 younger, typically developing children with comparable mean lengths of utterance. The children’s degree of plural –s use in spontaneous speech was examined according to the stem-final phoneme type (vowel, consonant, or consonant cluster), and the type of context that immediately followed the obligatory context for –s in the child’s utterance (vowel-initial word, consonant-initial word). Both groups of children had greater inflection accuracy when noun stems ended in a vowel as compared to a consonant or in a consonant cluster. (S... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5372498 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5372498 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5372497&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F4%2F404%3Frss%3D1 This study explores the effects of discourse context on a child’s ability to generalize transitively trained novel verbs in an experimental setting and the ability to diversely use intransitive constructions in everyday talk. Two- and three-year-olds participated in novel verb training and play sessions. An effect of discourse context was found; novel verbs were used most often in training, rather than elicitation. Thirty percent of the children generalized a transitively trained novel verb to an intransitive construction. The generalizing children differed from non-generalizers in the proportion with which they used familiar intransitive verbs diversely during play. Thus, the process through which children come to generalize verbs may be influenced by their everyday verb usage on a ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5372497 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5372497 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5372496&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F4%2F379%3Frss%3D1 Research suggests children beginning school around age five years show similar long-term reading achievement as children who start later, at seven years. To shed light on this phenomenon, this article presents cross-sectional data examining the oral narrative, phonemic awareness and non-word decoding skills of three groups of children at the beginning of state schooling (age 5), the beginning of Waldorf schooling (age 7) and children who attended state schooling, but were of a similar age to the Waldorf sample (age 7) (N = 103). Key covariates of receptive vocabulary, home literacy environment, sex, ethnicity and maternal education were included. Analyses suggested language development – including story memory and narrative quality and phoneme awareness – improved with age but ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5372496 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5372496 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5067673&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F31%2F3%2F373%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5067673 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5067673 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5067672&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F31%2F3%2F368%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5067672 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5067672 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5067671&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F31%2F3%2F364%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5067671 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5067671 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5067670&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F3%2F342%3Frss%3D1 This article reviews general trends in phonological development and compares them with the latest studies on children acquiring Finnish. The main goal is to explore the course and timing of the development in children acquiring Finnish by bringing together recent research from phonemic inventories and phonotactics, including word length acquisition. Key developmental steps of phonological development are identified and directions for future research are recommended. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5067670 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5067670 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5067669&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F3%2F326%3Frss%3D1 Four studies examined whether two-year-olds could successfully learn a novel word in conditions in which joint attention was not present. Study 1 examined whether children could learn a novel word while the speaker, but not the child, attended to the target object. Study 2 examined whether children could learn a novel word while the child, but not the speaker, attended to the target object. Study 3 examined whether children could learn a novel word while the child and the speaker attended to two different target objects. Study 4 examined whether children could learn a novel word while neither the child nor the speaker attended to the target object. Findings showed that successful word learning occurred in each of the four studies. These results suggest that joint attention may play an impo... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5067669 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5067669 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5067668&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F3%2F300%3Frss%3D1 Communicative combinations of two bonobos (Pan paniscus) and a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) are compared. All three apes utilized ordering strategies for combining symbols (lexigrams) or a lexigram with a gesture to express semantic relations such as agent of action or object of action. Combinatorial strategies used by all three apes revealed commonalities with child language, spoken and signed, at the two-year-old level. However, many differences were also observed: e.g., combinations made up a much smaller proportion and single symbols a much larger proportion of ape production compared with child production at a similar age; and ape combinations rarely exceeded three semiotic elements. The commonalties and differences among three sibling species highlight candidate combinatorial capacit... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5067668 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5067668 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5067667&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F3%2F280%3Frss%3D1 This article offers a closer look at the relationship between object omission in child language and the acquisition of object clitics. The study isolates a context in French where the use of an object clitic is not only possible, or optimal, but mostly obligatory in the adult grammar, namely the clitic left-dislocation context. In addition, the article contrasts French with English, a language that requires a null element in a similar context, topicalization. By exploring the topicalization structures, the study separates the acquisition of object clitics from object omission phenomena. The results confirm those obtained from other experimental methods and from naturalistic observation: French children, in contrast to adults, uniformly prefer null objects across different domains; they con... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5067667 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5067667 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5067666&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F3%2F253%3Frss%3D1 The study investigates the development of determiner use in three children acquiring French, Austrian German and Dutch, from the onset of language until age 3;0. Noun constructions (determiner omission, correct bare nouns, filler and determiner uses) in the children and in their inputs are analysed, providing evidence of similarities in developmental shape as well as differences in frequencies and timing. As expected, determiner use was delayed in the Germanic languages as compared to French. Differences between the Austrian and the Dutch child were explained by language properties and by child characteristics. Modelling dynamic input–output relations provided evidence of styles of long-term parental adaptation (accommodation for the French and complementarity for the Dutch and Austr... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5067666 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5067666 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4882271&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F31%2F2%2F248%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4882271 Mon, 30 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4882271 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4882270&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F31%2F2%2F245%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4882270 Mon, 30 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4882270 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4882269&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F31%2F2%2F240%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4882269 Mon, 30 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4882269 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4882268&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F2%2F222%3Frss%3D1 The acquisition of dual and plural nominal marking was examined. Forty-four Kuwaiti Arabic-speaking children aged 4–9 years were presented with a set of pictured stimuli of real and nonsense words and were asked to provide the plural and dual form. The results showed that Feminine Sound Plural (FSP) was used early on and more frequently than the Masculine Sound Plural (MSP) and the Broken Plural (BP). FSP was noticeably employed as the default form by younger children before differentiation gained ground, and it was often overgeneralized to MSP and BP. The children showed higher accuracy in using the dual than the plural forms. Finally, young children tended to use non-conventional ways to express number marking before acquiring target forms. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4882268 Mon, 30 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4882268 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4882267&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F2%2F214%3Frss%3D1 The present study was conducted to investigate whether Iranian preschoolers display a bias in their responses to both affirmative and negative yes/no questions. The sample comprised 168 2-to 6-year-old children, who were asked a set of yes/no questions about eight everyday objects. The results showed that children of different ages are influenced differently by the question format. The findings suggest that yes/no questions carry some suggestibility load and impose some restrictions upon children’s responses. The influence of yes/no questions seems to grow weaker as children develop. Nevertheless, the use of such questions may affect task outcomes, especially when used with younger children. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4882267 Mon, 30 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4882267 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4882266&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F2%2F195%3Frss%3D1 Two studies investigated discussions of the meaning of unusual vocabulary encountered during shared book reading. In Study 1 parent–child dyads were observed longitudinally in senior kindergarten through grade 2 reading short storybooks below, at and just above the child’s reading level. Here children did most of the reading. In Study 2 a second sample of parents of children in grade 1 all read the same book to their child. This book had numerous unfamiliar words, allowing an investigation of the characteristics of the words themselves that might influence whether parents and children discuss their meaning. In both studies a striking percentage of novel words encountered were not explained. Unusual words appearing last on a page’s text were more likely to be discussed tha... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4882266 Mon, 30 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4882266 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4882265&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F2%2F164%3Frss%3D1 Prevalence of delayed language vs. normative language was examined in impoverished preschool children. On the basis of vocabulary, syntax comprehension, and syntax expression, 336 4-year-olds attending Head Start preschools in the US were assigned to five language status categories. A majority of these children living in poverty demonstrated clinically significant language delays, and this held true equally for Majority (White European) and Minority (here African-American or Latino) children. Many of the children living in poverty showed delays that place them in Strong Delay or Moderate Delay status rather than Mild Delay status. Moreover, as children’s language status declined from High Language to Low-Average Language to the three increasingly strong language delays, their academi... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4882265 Mon, 30 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4882265 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4882264&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F2%2F139%3Frss%3D1 This study examined variations in reading acquisition according to socioeconomic background. Word reading speed and accuracy, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness were assessed among 199 native Hebrew-speaking children from high and low SES in the second, fourth, and sixth grades. The study further investigated the possible mediating role of phonological and morphological awareness in predicting reading of vowelized vs. unvowelized Hebrew scripts. Results indicated that despite an overall pattern of development in word reading found for both high SES and low SES children, the development was slower among children of low SES. A discrepancy emerged between children of high and low SES regarding levels of phonological and morphological awareness; this discrepancy increased with... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4882264 Mon, 30 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4882264 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4500795&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F31%2F1%2F133%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4500795 Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4500795 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4500794&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F1%2F109%3Frss%3D1 This article provides evidence for one metric by which the ‘lightness’ of early-learned verbs might be measured: the number of objects with which they are associated (in adult judgment) or co-occur (in speech to and by children). The results suggest that early-learned light verbs and heavy verbs differ in the breadth of the objects they are associated with: light verbs have weak associations with specific objects, whereas heavy verbs are strongly associated with specific objects. However, there is an indication that verbs have narrower associations to objects in speech to children. The methodological usefulness of this metric is discussed as are the implications of the patterns of distributions for children’s learning of common verbs. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4500794 Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4500794 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4500793&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F1%2F83%3Frss%3D1 The study examined parent, child, and dyadic gender effects in parent reports of words and MLUs. Mothers and fathers from 113 families completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Toddlers when the toddlers were 1;7; half completed a follow-up at 2;0. Child gender differences in words and MLUs increased over time and parent gender differences decreased. Dyadic analyses revealed bidirectional influences. At 1;7, dyadic scores for words and MLUs displayed a descending pattern from mother—daughter, to mother—son, to father—daughter, to father—son dyads. At 2;0, the most and fewest words were reported in mother—daughter and mother—son dyads, respectively; and the longest and shortest MLUs in father—daughter and father—son dyads, r... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4500793 Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4500793 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4500792&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F1%2F67%3Frss%3D1 This study investigates the development of German word formation as an important step in mastering complex lexical items for the language learning child. Thirty mother— child dyads participated. Means of word formation and resulting word categories were analyzed in children’s spontaneous speech at ages 1;9, 1;11, 2;6, and 3;0. In contrast to the acquisition of English, the results show simultaneous development of compounds and derivations. German toddlers produce more verbal than nominal derivations and more compounds based on verbs than on nouns. The findings suggest that (1) there are cross-linguistic differences in the development of word formation devices, and (2) children rely heavily on verbs in word formation. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4500792 Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4500792 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4500791&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F1%2F47%3Frss%3D1 The present study investigates the appearance of certain phonetic, phonological, and prosodic aspects of Italian in the early language of native speakers; a longitudinal analysis of babbling and word production in 11 Italian children ranging in age from 0;10 to 2;0 is reported. It focuses in particular on the syllabic frequency of babbling utterances and the distribution of consonant sounds in relation to their place of articulation in babbling and first words. It analyzes also the role of phonotactic characteristics and accentual patterns of word targets in production correctness and word shape constraints. Results show that the relationships with the frequency characteristics of the Italian lexicon become increasingly evident in language production from age 0;11 on. The data also provide... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4500791 Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4500791 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4500790&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F1%2F23%3Frss%3D1 According to Racine and Carpendale’s constructivist theory, the acquisition of shared linguistic practice is grounded in the development of competence in shared forms of activity such as joint attention which are naturally embedded in socio-emotional engagement. The present study investigated the relationships among socio-emotional engagement, joint attention, imitation, and conversation skill by establishing a model of these relationships in 94 typically developing children (M age = 5;4) and further assessing this model in another group of 93 typically developing children (M age = 5;1) and 30 children with specific language impairment (M age = 5;3). Joint attention and imitation were found to mediate the relationship between socio-emotional engagement and conversation skill. (Source... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4500790 Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4500790 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4500789&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F31%2F1%2F3%3Frss%3D1 An important question in verb learning is how children extend new verbs to new situational contexts. In Study 1, two-and-a-half-year-old children were shown a complex event followed by new events that preserved only the action from the initial event, only the result, or no new events. Children seeing events that preserved either the action or the result produced appropriate verb extensions at test while children without this information did not. In a follow-up study, children hearing new verbs produced more extensions than did children hearing non-labeling speech. These studies suggest that attention to related events is helpful to young verb learners, perhaps because they structurally align these events during verb learning. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4500789 Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4500789 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170911&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F508%3Frss%3D1 Discourse topic management and discussion skills are central for intersubjectivity, learning and education, yet there is little understanding of how such skills develop.The reported research comprises two studies, which examined the skills of discourse topic maintenance, shading and hierarchicalization during middle childhood. Each study compared the performances of same-age and same-sex dyads of 4, 6 and 9 years of age (Study 1: 28 dyads; Study 2: 43 dyads) across two tasks. Overall, topic maintenance varied according to age and task. Study 1 found that task structure constrained the interactions of older children while supporting those of younger children. Older children, but not 4-year-olds maintained topics through collaborative discussion. Study 2 examined these differences further by... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170911 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170911 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170910&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F493%3Frss%3D1 The present study examined assertiveness and responsiveness in two different conversational contexts: children with specific language impairment (SLI) interacting with an age-matched peer with typical language development (TLD) and children with SLI interacting with a language-matched peer with TLD.The dialogues where the 10 participating children with SLI interacted with an age peer were characterized by a higher degree of responsiveness and coherence.The age peers tended to dominate the interaction with the children with SLI. The dialogues where children with SLI interacted with a language peer were characterized by less responsiveness and less coherence and the child with SLI was likely to be more dominant in the interaction. Thus children with SLI take different roles in verbal interac... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170910 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170910 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170909&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F473%3Frss%3D1 Prior research by M. H. Goodwin (1990) found that preadolescent African-American girls socialized one another towards ‘egalitarian’ forms of social organization in task activities, but preferred forms that differentiated group members in other contexts. The present study examines how a friendship group of middle-class Turkish girls followed ethnographically (through videorecording of spontaneous free play conversations in their preschool classroom) socialized one another about gender and affect through directive usage and sanctioning in peer group conversations. The directive use of three group members who participated in different play contexts was examined. Group members explicitly sanctioned one another not to differentiate themselves, and used egalitarian forms of directive... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170909 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170909 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170908&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F461%3Frss%3D1 This article reports on two studies investigating the effect of contextual variables on young children’s language use in conversation. In Study 1, 20 children between age 1;5 and 2;2 were recorded in conversation with their mothers in three settings: mealtime, toy play, and book reading. In Study 2, 16 children between age 1;9 and 3;0 were recorded in dyadic toy play interaction with three different conversational partners: a 5-year-old older sibling, an 8-year-old older sibling, and their mother. Both studies found effects of the contextual variable on children’s vocabulary use and discourse cohesion.The children used a richer vocabulary and produced more topic-continuing contributions in book reading than in other contexts, and they used a richer vocabulary and produced more ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170908 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170908 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170907&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F440%3Frss%3D1 This study examines explanations in children’s natural peer talk, as they emerge in collaborative interaction among children, in two cohorts: preschoolers (aged 4—5) and preadolescents (aged 9—10). The study examined 322 explanations for the diversity of their content-components, their modes of emergence, and social functions. Quantitative analysis revealed a wide range of explanation topics in both cohorts, with a shift with age from the immediate to the more distant. Discourse analysis of explanatory sequences demonstrated a high sensitivity to conversational notions of expectedness and an effective use of explanations for a rich array of pragmatic and social functions, as well as the affordances of peer talk explanations as a potential site for learning and developing ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170907 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170907 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170906&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F421%3Frss%3D1 This article presents the results of a study of conflict strategies in 96 two- and three-year-old children in multiethnic childcare centers. The main question was whether young children’s use of psychologically complex strategies in conflict management depends on language development. It is hypothesized that 2-year-olds rely on verbal adaptive modification strategies less often than 3-year-olds; and that children with a home language different from the dominant one in the childcare center also use verbal modification strategies less often. The overall conclusion is that the use of psychologically complex strategies in conflict management does not totally depend on language development. Age seems to contribute most to the use of psychologically and linguistically complex modification ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170906 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170906 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170905&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F403%3Frss%3D1 This study examines verbal justifications in conversations between children and adults in four cases from the CHILDES database, from the age of 2;6 to 4;11 longitudinally. Monthly transcripts were searched for justifications, which were coded for their discourse context and divided into three age groupings. Adults produced more justifications than children during the 2;6 to 2;11 age grouping, but by 3;0 to 3;11, there was no significant difference between them. Conflicts were an important discourse context for justifications during the 2;6 to 2;11 age grouping, during the third year, questions as the discourse motivators increased, and during the 4;0 to 4;11 age grouping, justifications were mostly self-expansions. There were few sequences of justifications from 2;6 to 2;11; this changed i... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170905 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170905 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170904&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F375%3Frss%3D1 Young (1;9—2;4) children’s use of third person clitic subject pronouns in natural dialogues was examined in both longitudinal and cross-sectional data. Considering that young children mainly use pronouns in the context of referential continuity, this study aims at identifying some of the factors that affect this use. Two possible dialogical factors are examined: (1) the use of clitic pronouns can be interpreted as a reproduction of the adult’s discourse, either by taking up whole utterances containing a pronoun or by taking up only the clitic pronouns without reproducing the adult’s utterance. (2) The use of pronouns could be driven by pragmatic-discursive factors. In order to assess this hypothesis the use of clitic pronouns was observed in the context of dialogica... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170904 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170904 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170903&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F354%3Frss%3D1 This study examined the conversational repair skills of 2- and 3-year-old French— English bilingual children and monolingual French-speaking children. While the ability to respond to requests for clarification has been well researched in monolingual children, it has not been investigated among bilingual children except to examine their ability to repair breakdowns due to the use of a language not spoken by their interlocutor. The present study provides a direct comparison of bilingual and monolingual children’s repairs of the types of breakdowns in conversations that are experienced by both populations, e.g., breakdowns due to ambiguity, choice of words, mispronunciations, inaudible utterances, and so on. A methodology of stacked requests for clarification was used to examine t... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170903 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170903 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170902&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F329%3Frss%3D1 Repair initiated by parents provides their children with corrective feedback of the children’s developing talk.To investigate how the interactive repair process is constructed, this study looked at five mother—child pairs during play interaction, focusing on mother-initiated repair sequences (N = 163). The mothers used many types of repair initiators from the general ‘What?’ to the more specific interrogatives. They also offered candidate understandings, and made other-corrections. Repair sequences usually comprised of three parts: the child’s turn, the mother’s repair initiation in the next turn, and the child’s response in the third turn. In more than 90% of the cases the children responded to their mothers’ repair initiations. Thus, after ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170902 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170902 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170901&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F312%3Frss%3D1 This study documents one typically developing child’s experience of, and response to, neutral repair initiation by the mother (e.g., hm?) during playtime conversation over a 2-month period spanning MLU Stage I. Weekly video recordings were analysed using the method of conversation analysis to examine turns and turn sequences in detail. Distinct results separated Early from Late MLU Stage I data. Overall, the child’s trouble-source turns were sequence-initiating and linked to topic movement. Repair response turns were relevant for early grammatical development in ways governed by the local sequential context of conversation. The findings are compared to other types of maternal repair initiation in the same data corpus. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170901 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170901 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170900&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F287%3Frss%3D1 This article examines the production of early verbs by two children acquiring French as their first language. The study focuses on the developmental period during which verbs are produced in one form only. Child-directed speech (CDS) and conversational contingencies (CC) occurring around these verbal forms were analysed up to the moment when some verbs are produced in two different forms. Results show that children’s use of a single form per verb can also be found in CDS by adults where the majority of verbs are used in one morphophonological form only. Moreover, the particular form children use for a given verb corresponds to the one adults predominantly use in CDS. At the same time, child-produced verb forms are reinforced in the CC occurring in adult—child exchanges. When tr... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170900 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170900 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170899&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F270%3Frss%3D1 Parents’ potential contributions to children’s developing understanding of conventionality in word meanings were investigated by examining how parents label objects for their children (12-, 18-, and 24-month-olds) in a free-play session with different types of toys. The study asks whether parents give subtle clues that names for things are conventions that must be discovered through conversation with other people (i.e., labels are ‘in the minds’ of others) or alternatively, that words are somehow more readily apparent (‘located’ in the object). Results showed a developmental relationship between children’s productive vocabulary and parents’ labeling patterns that imply labels are ‘in the mind.’ These findings suggest that conversa... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170899 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170899 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170898&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F250%3Frss%3D1 This study examined the offers in book-reading interactions for 48 dyads (parents and children aged 2- to 5-years-old). The parents relied on fixed syntactic frames, final position, and emphatic stress to highlight unfamiliar words. As they talked to their children about the referent objects, events, or scenes, they also linked new words to other terms in the pertinent semantic domain, thereby presenting further information about possible meanings. Children attended to new words, often repeating them in the next turn, and, as they got older, they too related new words to familiar terms as they talked about their referents with their parents. These data add further evidence that interaction in conversation supports the process of language acquisition. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170898 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170898 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4170897&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F3-4%2F241%3Frss%3D1 This editorial introduction summarizes the background to, and contents of, a special issue devoted to children’s development of conversational skills and their relation to language acquisition and use. The centrality of conversation to language development is well recognized and this introduction identifies two key approaches to research: the impact of conversational processes on language acquisition itself, and the ways in which basic language skills are put to use in conversational interactions. The articles included in this issue were organized according to these themes and are outlined accordingly. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4170897 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4170897 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3584533&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F2%2F219%3Frss%3D1 This study examined preschoolers’ establishment of mutual knowledge, which may contribute to the success of their script-based interactions. Script-based play sessions of dyads of 4- to 5-year-olds were analyzed. When discourse partners held equal levels of script knowledge they used mutual knowledge strategies most at the beginning of the interaction, when the need was greatest. Older preschoolers were more skilled at this than were younger preschoolers. Moreover, use of mutual knowledge strategies enhanced some dimensions of children’s communication on subsequent turns. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3584533 Thu, 20 May 2010 16:40:20 +0100 3584533 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3584532&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F2%2F199%3Frss%3D1 This study adapted a well-known tool, the MacArthur—Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCDI), to Irish (ICDI), in order to measure vocabulary and grammatical development longitudinally across a sample of 21 children. Results from the parent checklists were validated against spontaneous language samples. Correlations demonstrated high concurrent validity for ICDI reported vocabulary with measures of lexical diversity derived from the spontaneous samples. In addition, ICDI measures of grammar also correlated highly with various indices of grammar from the spontaneous samples. Although both ICDI and spontaneous vocabulary measures were highly correlated, the ICDI checklist includes a broader range of language skills and so would seem to capture the range of language ability mo... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3584532 Thu, 20 May 2010 16:40:19 +0100 3584532 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3584531&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F2%2F175%3Frss%3D1 This study introduces a new metric for assessing the inflectional diversity of morphologically analyzed language transcripts. The proposed metric is based on the intuitive notion of mean size of paradigm (MSP) and makes extensive use of random sampling procedures for normalization purposes. This approach is systematically evaluated on the basis of large sets of Dutch acquisition corpora, including both child speech and child-directed speech. It is shown to be an efficient way of controlling for sample size in the measurement of inflectional diversity, as well as a suitable method for assessing inflectional development in longitudinal data. MSP is compared with ID (inflectional diversity) introduced by Malvern, Richards, Chipere, and Durán (2004). (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3584531 Thu, 20 May 2010 16:40:19 +0100 3584531 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3584530&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F2%2F155%3Frss%3D1 The study investigates schoolchildren’s command of proverbs as a facet of figurative language, testing their ability to go beyond the referential content of the linguistic message and their familiarity with established non-literal sayings as indicative of lexical development. The tasks involved (1) interpretation of unfamiliar proverbial sayings that are non-conventionalized in Hebrew — in context-free and contextualized conditions — and (2) recall of established traditional Hebrew proverbs. Participants were 4th- and 8th-graders from three populations: typically developing children of high and low SES backgrounds respectively and a group of high SES language-impaired children. Results show a clear rise in performance with age and schooling on both tasks, with greater suc... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3584530 Thu, 20 May 2010 16:40:19 +0100 3584530 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3584529&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F2%2F139%3Frss%3D1 This article reports on a study focusing on mother—child interactions during e-book reading compared to print book reading. Two different types of e-books were used, commercial and educational. Forty-eight kindergarten children and their mothers were assigned randomly to one of four groups, reading: (1) the printed book Just grandma and me; (2) the electronic commercial book Just grandma and me; (3) the printed book The tractor in the sandbox; and (4) the electronic-educational book The tractor in the sandbox. Compared to the printed book reading, e-book reading yielded more discourse initiated by the child and more responsiveness to maternal initiations. Printed book reading yielded more initiations and responses of mothers. Discourse during printed book reading compared to the digi... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3584529 Thu, 20 May 2010 16:40:19 +0100 3584529 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3305739&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F30%2F1%2F131%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3305739 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:37 +0100 3305739 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3305738&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F30%2F1%2F129%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3305738 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:37 +0100 3305738 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3305737&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F30%2F1%2F126%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3305737 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:37 +0100 3305737 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3305736&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F1%2F102%3Frss%3D1 This study examines lexical differentiation in early trilingual development through an analysis of the translation equivalents (TEs) produced by a Tagalog—Spanish—English trilingual child. The child’s cumulative vocabulary between 1;4 and 2;0 was reconstructed through diary records and audio-recordings, and the extent to which phonetically distinct equivalent doublets and triplets were represented in her cumulative lexicon was examined. The results indicate that TEs were produced from early on, similarly to bilingual children. However, the amount of input heard in each language determined the number and types of equivalents acquired. Also, learning a second TE took less time than learning a first, suggesting that the initial differentiation of the lexicon as evidenced by ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3305736 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:37 +0100 3305736 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3305735&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F1%2F79%3Frss%3D1 Lexically based learning and semantic analogy may both play a role in the learning of grammar. To investigate this, 5-year-old German children were trained on a miniature language (nominally English) involving two grammatical constructions, each of which was associated with a different semantic verb class.Training was followed by elicited production and grammaticality judgement tests with ‘trained verbs’ and a ‘generalization’ test, involving untrained verbs. In the ‘trained verbs’ judgement test the children were above chance at associating particular verbs with the constructions in which they had heard them. They did this significantly more often with verbs which they had heard especially frequently in particular constructions, indicating lexically bas... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3305735 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:37 +0100 3305735 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3305734&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F1%2F56%3Frss%3D1 This study presents experimental evidence corroborating the author’s earlier finding that Quechua-speaking children’s overgeneralization errors observe the same asymmetry. The transitive variants of change-of-state verbs were elicited from 30 Peruvian children, aged 2;8—4;11. The ensuing discussion considers how Quechua-speaking children recover from this pattern of overgeneralization in light of constraints that have been proposed for children acquiring English, which is typologically very different from Quechua. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3305734 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:37 +0100 3305734 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3305733&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F1%2F27%3Frss%3D1 The study investigates the distribution and use of adjectives in 252 texts produced by 63 Hebrew-speaking children, adolescents, and adults who were asked to tell and write a story about a personal fight or a quarrel, and to present a talk and write an expository text on the topic of school violence. All adjective types and tokens in each text were identified, counted, classified, and analyzed using semantic, morphological, and syntactic criteria. Findings show that the adjective class grows larger, richer, and more diverse with age and schooling — in lexicon, morpho-semantics, and syntax. Also, adjectives configure by text genres and modalities in ways that provide independent support for text type classification from spoken narratives, on the one hand, to written expositories, on t... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3305733 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:37 +0100 3305733 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3305732&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F30%2F1%2F3%3Frss%3D1 Development of noun phrase structure and use is analyzed as an important facet of syntactic acquisition from middle childhood to adolescence. Noun phrases occurring in narrative and expository texts produced in both speech and writing by 96 native speakers of English and Hebrew were identified and examined by a set of specially devised criteria including length in words, syntactic depth, abstractness of head nouns, and nature of modifiers. Results reveal a clear and consistent developmental increment in NP complexity from age 9 to 12, and particularly from age 16 years; written expository texts emerge as a favored site for use of syntactically complex constructions; and nominal elements play a more central role in the discursive syntax of Hebrew than English. Findings are discussed in term... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3305732 Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:36 +0100 3305732 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2841698&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F4%2F427%3Frss%3D1 Present syntax acquisition tasks are not optimal for studying how children learn a new syntactic constraint and generalize it in sentence production. To address this issue, this study modified Akhtar’s production task where novel word orders were learned, so that it was more socially natural. Three- and four-year-old children were tested in this new task and the role of input factors was assessed. The new task was more effective at eliciting the novel word order, but the role of input factors differed from earlier studies. To trace the source of these differences, the study manipulated the social features directly in a second experiment. The results suggest that social knowledge contextualizes the influence of input factors in syntax acquisition. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2841698 Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2841698 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2841697&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F4%2F401%3Frss%3D1 This study provides a first in-depth examination of preschoolers’ peer-to-peer conversational initiations. The snack-time conversations of a class of 25 preschool children were videotaped bi-weekly for 21 weeks; 507 conversational initiations were identified and classified according to a detailed coding scheme that included utterance type (e.g., comment, question), person or object referent, person referenced (e.g., self, listener), and, of particular interest, reference to mental states. Of all initiations, 77.5% referenced persons (41.2% listener) and almost 30% referenced mental states, suggesting preschoolers are using their developing understanding of mind in finding common ground with peers. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2841697 Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2841697 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2841696&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F4%2F373%3Frss%3D1 This article presents new findings for the acquisition of the focus particle auch (‘also’) in German-learning children. In a longitudinal study with 11 children between 1;00 and 3;00 years of age complemented by two experiments with children aged 2;4 and 2;8, the authors investigated children’s production of the accented and unaccented auch. The results confirm earlier findings of a temporal delay between the first occurrences of both auch-variants. Based on the empirical findings, an account for this asymmetry is proposed that relates it to a more general developmental tendency that is characterized by a growing linguistic explicitness in embedding a given utterance in its discourse context. It is suggested that the observed delay is caused by the type of relation betwee... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2841696 Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2841696 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2841695&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F4%2F347%3Frss%3D1 This study tested the effectiveness of a telephone-mediated language intervention on enhancing young children’s recontextualization processes in narrative expression. A four-week training program was incorporated into a primary school language-arts curriculum to investigate whether telephone experience designed to heighten listener awareness would augment oral and written narrative skill development. Findings supported predictions that telephone experience would affect both oral and written narrative expression. The telephone intervention enhanced oral psycholinguistic and narrative productivity over the face-to-face comparison treatment. Older students wrote significantly more sophisticated stories than younger students and the telephone enriched the written narratives of older chil... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2841695 Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2841695 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2597302&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F29%2F3%2F340%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2597302 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2597302 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2597301&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F3%2F313%3Frss%3D1 This article aims to explain these omissions by investigating the emergence of infinitival-to, and its production/omission in obligatory contexts. A series of corpus analyses were conducted on the naturalistic data from one to 13 children between the ages of approximately 2;0 and 3;1 testing three hypotheses from two theoretical viewpoints. The data suggest that the errors are associated with different verb sequences (e.g., going-to and going-X) and their frequencies in the language to which children are exposed. The article concludes that these constructions compete for output when children are producing those verbs and that this supports the usage-based/constructivist account of the omission errors. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2597301 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2597301 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2597300&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F3%2F289%3Frss%3D1 The act of categorization and labeling is fundamental in human cognition and language development. By studying numeral classifier acquisition, researchers are able to examine how children learn to categorize and label objects in their environment using a constrained framework. The current study investigated the acquisition of eight shape-based numeral classifiers in Malay through an elicited production task in 140 6- to 9-year-old children. The aim was to examine the developmental patterns observed in the production of Malay shape-based numeral classifiers. Results indicated that the ability to produce the correct numeral classifiers is a relatively prolonged process that involves an interaction of a variety factors, including semantic complexity, input frequency, and the formal teaching o... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2597300 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2597300 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2597299&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F3%2F266%3Frss%3D1 In this study, the influence of parental input on the acquisition of discourse connectives was investigated. Three factors were hypothesized to play a role in contributing to the course of language acquisition: first, an increase in age, and hence, an increase in conceptual abilities; second, short-term frequency effects (effects of parental input in the space of one recording); and third, long-term frequency effects (effects of the cumulative parental input over a longer period of time). The authors developed a growth curve analysis and used this to analyze data from a dense longitudinal corpus of a German boy aged 1;11.12—2;11.27. Results show that each factor has a significant effect on the acquisition of the German connectives aber `but,' damit `so that,' und `and,' weil `because... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2597299 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2597299 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2597298&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F3%2F243%3Frss%3D1 This study examined the participation of preschool children (mean age 5;1) in two literacy-related activities — talking about a book with their mothers and subsequent independent retelling of the story. Sixty-two mother—child dyads from low-income families participated. Analysis of bookreading and story retelling transcripts revealed wide variability in extratextual talk during bookreading by both children and mothers. Children's responsive, but not spontaneous, extratextual book talk was closely associated with maternal types of talk. Children's story retelling skills were not related to the types of talk they produced during bookreading, but were predicted by the extent to which mothers encouraged their active participation during joint bookreading. Implications for bookreadi... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2597298 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2597298 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2338585&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F2%2F228%3Frss%3D1 This study investigated whether children learned, disambiguated, and extended words presented via video. Eighteen 2-year-olds saw a series of short videos. Each video depicted a novel target object that was labeled with a novel word. Then the target object was replaced on screen with a pair of objects (which varied by condition) and children were asked to select the object that best matched a novel word. In the baseline and disambiguation conditions, children saw the target and a novel distracter. In the extension condition, children saw an exemplar of the target and a novel distracter. Results showed that children selected the target at above chance levels in the baseline condition and the exemplar at above chance levels in the extension condition. Results also showed that children's sele... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2338585 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2338585 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2338584&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F2%2F208%3Frss%3D1 This article describes two experiments examining how 6- and 7-year-old Standard American English-speaking children interpret 3rd person present —s as a tense marker, as compared to lexical items and past tense —ed. Because —s corresponds to multiple meanings, unlike —ed, it may result in later acquisition. Using an offline picture-choice task (Experiment 1), the study found that while all children successfully comprehended —ed, only the 7-year-olds successfully comprehended —s. Eye-tracking measures (Experiment 2) revealed that the 6-year-olds are actually sensitive to —s, but that it is not yet a particularly strong cue for them. The article argues that offline tasks may underestimate children's developing knowledge. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2338584 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2338584 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2338583&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F2%2F192%3Frss%3D1 In referential communication tasks, preschoolers' messages often fail. Children appear to produce `nonconventional' messages involving `idiosyncratic' or `private' meanings. The aim of this study was to examine whether some nonconventional messages are analogies that function to permit children to communicate in the absence of possessing a conventional name for an intended referent. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds were presented a classical referential communication task consisting of `easy-' and `difficult-to-name' sets of items. As predicted, children at both ages produced conventional messages to refer to `easy' stimuli and analogies to refer to the `difficult' stimuli. A second experiment ruled out the possibility that the use of analogies was in fact due to an erroneous categoriza... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2338583 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2338583 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2338582&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F2%2F166%3Frss%3D1 The analysis of conversational repair provides one route into understanding how young children learn the skills required for participating in talk. One key aspect of repair is the ability to respond appropriately to other participants. Employing a longitudinal case study approach, this article examines in detail the conversational repair skills of one child during the period where she is acquiring core conversational abilities and competencies (from 1;0 to 3;10). Focusing on the development of other-related conversational repair skills, 163 instances of other-related repair were examined and analysed. Extracts highlight the skills the child employed in self-repairs in response to others, as well as when repairing or correcting other people's conversation. The findings indicate that during ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2338582 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2338582 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2338581&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F2%2F147%3Frss%3D1 Two experiments used an elicited speech-production paradigm to explore children's acquisition of noun case-marking inflections. Russian (N = 24, 2;10— 4;6 years) and Serbian children (N = 24, 2;10—4;11) were asked to produce prepositional phrases requiring genitive or dative inflections of masculine and feminine, familiar and novel, simplex (vaza [Ru/Se: vase]) and diminutive (Ru: vazochka, Se: vazica) nouns. Across languages, children produced fewer case-marking errors with familiar compared to novel nouns, and diminutive compared to simplex nouns. The diminutive advantage occurred despite a markedly lower frequency of diminutive usage in Serbian than Russian child-directed speech. This suggests that in acquiring richly inflected languages, children most readily construct low-... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2338581 Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2338581 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2143197&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F1%2F113%3Frss%3D1 This study examined the relationship between phonological and morphological awareness in kindergarten, and their respective influence on learning to read in first grade, through an experimental training design with three groups of children. One experimental group received phonological awareness training while the other received morphological awareness training. The control group did not receive any training. Both training sessions were efficient since the largest pre- and post-test improvements were observed in the trained domains. Reciprocal influence analysis indicated that morphological awareness improved phonological sensitivity, but not the explicit manipulation of phonemes. In addition, phonological awareness training helped children to segment morphemes, but not to derive complex wo... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2143197 Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2143197 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2143196&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F1%2F81%3Frss%3D1 Research indicates that morphological awareness contributes to success in literacy acquisition and consolidation, since morphology links together phonological and semantic facets of language. The role of morphology is especially important in Hebrew, a highly synthetic Semitic language. The current study aimed to investigate the impact of an intervention program on knowledge and awareness of morphology in Hebrew-speaking grade-schoolers. Two three-month intervention programs were conducted in two groups of 4th-grade children: a metalinguistic morphological intervention program using linguistic humor, and a parallel intervention program using nonverbal humor. A morphological awareness test was administered to the two groups prior to and following the intervention period. The results demonstr... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2143196 Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2143196 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2143195&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F1%2F65%3Frss%3D1 This study investigated understanding of language ambiguity as a source of individual differences in children's reading comprehension skill, and the role of peer metalinguistic discussion in fostering comprehension improvement. Twenty-four 7- to 9-year-old children worked in pairs to discuss and resolve ambiguities in joking riddles. Their reading comprehension increased significantly more than a group of 24 no-treatment controls. Analysis of the children's discussions shows that comprehension improvement was associated with increases over training sessions in frequency of metalinguistic comments about the text ambiguities, and in particular with the simultaneous explanation of two meanings. We discuss individual differences in metalinguistic and metacognitive capabilities and their role i... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2143195 Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2143195 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2143194&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F1%2F51%3Frss%3D1 Children with SLI (Specific Language Impairment) display language deficits in the absence of frank neurological lesions, global cognitive deficits or significant clinical hearing loss. Although these children can display disruptions in both receptive and expressive grammar, the intervention literature has been largely focused on expressive deficits. Thus, there are numerous reports in the literature suggesting that expressive language skills can be improved using focused presentation of grammatical targets (cf. conversational recast; Camarata, Nelson & Camarata, 1994), but there have been few investigations addressing the remediation of receptive language skills in SLI for those children with receptive language deficits. The purpose of this study was to examine whether focused grammati... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2143194 Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2143194 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2143193&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F1%2F15%3Frss%3D1 We describe a study of syntactic intervention administered to a 12;2-year-old individual with syntactic SLI, who had difficulties in the comprehension and production of structures containing syntactic movement such as relative clauses, object questions, topicalization sentences, and sentences with verb movement. The intervention, comprised of 16 sessions, was based on syntactic theory and included explicit teaching of syntactic movement, relying on a type of syntactic knowledge that was intact — the argument structure of the verb. The participant's performance was assessed before and after treatment, and for some of the tests also during the treatment and 10 months later. The performance was assessed using various tasks that targeted comprehension, repetition and elicitation of seman... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2143193 Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2143193 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2143192&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F1%2F5%3Frss%3D1 The Special Issue is themed on intervention programs which set educational and clinical goals and use explicit language instruction to achieve them. This introduction to the Special Issue explores the non-obvious relationship between intervention, metalinguistics and the study of developmental psycholinguistics. Intervention is typically designed to remedy and accelerate processes that are assumed to be naturally occurring under optimal circumstances. Beyond employing intervention to test hypotheses in developmental cognitive science, most intervention studies are explicitly constructed to improve impaired or non-optimal language skills. The introduction reviews the two major themes of this issue: the problematic yet uniquely efficacious role of intervention studies in gauging the variable... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2143192 Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2143192 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1877915&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F28%2F4%2F445%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1877915 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1877915 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1877914&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F28%2F4%2F443%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1877914 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1877914 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1877913&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F4%2F431%3Frss%3D1 The aim of the present study was to investigate how young children reduce a yes bias, the tendency to answer `yes' to yes-no questions. Specifically, we examined three possible factors: verbal ability, inhibitory control and theory of mind. Results revealed that verbal ability and inhibitory control were strongly associated with a yes bias even after controlling for age. Regression analyses revealed that these two factors significantly predicted a yes bias. Theory of mind was not significantly correlated with a yes bias. The results indicate that young children may have to inhibit a dominant `yes' response when they are supposed to respond `no'. The development of verbal skills may reduce young children's yes biases. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1877913 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1877913 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1877912&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F4%2F403%3Frss%3D1 This article presents two studies based on a corpus of American English speech by and to five children from 2 to 5 years old. The first study investigates frequency of antonym co-occurrence in speakers' turns. The second examines the discourse-functional properties of those co-occurrences, with comparison to adult-directed adult English. We find: (1) children know/use antonyms at earlier ages than experimental studies have shown; (2) children use antonyms for mostly the same discursive purposes as adults do; (3) children can be categorized as being either `heavy' or `light' antonym users, and `heaviness' of antonym use seems to correlate to other aspects of antonym behaviour. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1877912 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1877912 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1877911&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F4%2F375%3Frss%3D1 The purpose of this study was to conduct a detailed examination of the ways mothers use mental verbs in conversations with three- and four-year-old children, and to link these usages to the children's developing understanding of mental verbs and a theory of mind. Sixty three- and four-year-olds, either attending preschool (PS) or not (NPS) were given tasks assessing mental verb distinctions and false belief. Their mothers' mental verb use was coded for (a) frequency, (b) type of utterance, (c) type of subordinate clause, (d) the person of the subject of the verb, and (e) the certainty of think. Within the three-year-olds, the NPS children performed significantly better on the mental verb comprehension task; moreover, compared to the PS mothers, the NPS mothers were found to use: (1) less s... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1877911 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1877911 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1877910&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F4%2F355%3Frss%3D1 In this study, the pragmatic use of pronominal and nominal forms of reference in written stories was considered instead as a mark of literacy development in deaf and hearing students. Participants in the study were 17 deaf high-school students, 17 school-age matched hearing controls, and 16 hearing second-graders (novice writers) who were asked to write a picture-story, Frog, Where are you?, for a hearing reader who was unacquainted with it. Results revealed that deaf students appear to use the same variety of referential devices as hearing students when writing and, in most cases, these devices are used appropriately. However, the referential strategies of the deaf students were more nominal and less anaphoric than those of their hearing peers. It is concluded that the referential strateg... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1877910 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1877910 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1650852&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F28%2F3%2F349%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1650852 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1650852 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1650851&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F3%2F329%3Frss%3D1 The aim of the present study was to reveal the criteria of conversational appropriateness displayed to children (age range: 3;01—4;09 and 5;0—6;05) through adults' metapragmatic comments in preschool and kindergarten settings. The study focused on two categories of comments: violation of a discourse maxim and discourse management. The results indicate a distinct pattern of use of metapragmatic comments by the adults. Teachers tend to conduct the discourse mainly by allocating turns to the children and to indicate the violation of the degree of informativeness (maxim of quantity), signaling to the children the shortcomings of their responses. Considering the differences between the educational frameworks of the two age groups (preschool vs. kindergarten) we expected to find that... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1650851 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1650851 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1650850&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F3%2F313%3Frss%3D1 The delay markers (DMs) uh and um are often used by adult English speakers to indicate that an upcoming pause is due to a speech disruption, not the end of a conversational turn. Moreover, uh and um indicate different degrees of disruption (Clark & Fox Tree, 2002). Thus, it appears that children must learn how to use DMs appropriately. In the current study we examined DM use in elicited speech samples from 24 3- and 4-year-old children. We found that pauses following DMs were longer than those not following a DM, but that there was no difference between the pauses following uh and um. Children at this age, then, appear to understand the basic use of DMs, but do not yet differentiate between them. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1650850 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1650850 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1650849&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F3%2F281%3Frss%3D1 Discussion centers on the implications of these findings for theories of early communication development and mental state awareness. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1650849 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1650849 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1650848&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F3%2F259%3Frss%3D1 The growth rate and the development of the composition of the receptive and expressive lexicon were studied in a longitudinal sample of 35 Finnish children. The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory was used to gather data of the receptive lexicon at 0;9, 1;0 and 1;3, and the expressive lexicon at 0;9, 1;0, 1;3, 1;6 and 2;0. The receptive lexicon was acquired earlier, at a faster rate and with higher individual variation than the expressive lexicon. A gender difference was found in expressive vocabulary, but not in receptive vocabulary. The growth trajectories of semantic lexical categories detected in both lexicons resembled each other. Verbs were acquired more readily in receptive lexicons. Results support a ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1650848 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1650848 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1650847&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F28%2F3%2F258%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1650847 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1650847 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1362816&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F2%2F237%3Frss%3D1 The repertoire and timing of gestures accompanying speech were compared in children with specific language impairment (SLI), aged 5—10 years, in typically developing peers (CA), individually matched on age and nonverbal IQ, and in younger language-matched (LM) children. They were videotaped in two tasks, recounting a cartoon and describing their classroom. Three types of gestures were coded — iconics, deictics and beats — and the synchrony of these gestures with speech was examined in terms of number of words encompassed, grammatical speech category at gesture onset, and relationship of iconic gestures to the concept expressed in speech. All groups used more deictic gestures in the classroom description task. SLI children differed from the comparison children only in thei... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1362816 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1362816 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1362815&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F2%2F200%3Frss%3D1 This study explores how French adults and children aged four and six years talk and gesture about voluntary motion, examining (1) how they encode path and manner in speech, (2) how they encode this information in accompanying gestures; and (3) whether gestures are co-expressive with speech or express other information. When path and manner are equally relevant, children's and adults' speech and gestures both focus on path, rather than on manner. Moreover, gestures are predominantly co-expressive with speech at all ages. However, when they are non-redundant, adults tend to gesture about path while talking about manner, whereas children gesture about both path and manner while talking about path. The discussion highlights implications for our understanding of speakers' representations and th... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1362815 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1362815 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1362814&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F2%2F182%3Frss%3D1 Children vary widely in how quickly their vocabularies grow. Can looking at early gesture use in children and parents help us predict this variability? We videotaped 53 English-speaking parent-child dyads in their homes during their daily activities for 90-minutes every four months between child age 14 and 34 months. At 42 months, children were given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). We found that child gesture use at 14 months was a significant predictor of vocabulary size at 42 months, above and beyond the effects of parent and child word use at 14 months. Parent gesture use at 14 months was not directly related to vocabulary development, but did relate to child gesture use at 14 months which, in turn, predicted child vocabulary. These relations hold even when background factor... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1362814 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1362814 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1362813&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F2%2F164%3Frss%3D1 We examined gesture and speech production in Italian and US children between the onset of first words and the onset of two-word combinations. We found differences in the size of the gesture repertoires produced by the Italian vs. the American children, differences that were inversely related to the size of the children's spoken vocabularies. Despite these differences in gesture vocabulary, in both cultures we found that gesture + speech combinations reliably predicted the onset of two-word combinations, underscoring the robustness of gesture as a harbinger of linguistic development. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1362813 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1362813 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1362812&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F2%2F141%3Frss%3D1 Pragmatic language skills (e.g., communicative intention) have traditionally been difficult to measure consistently in young children. This challenge makes it difficult to establish links between early productive speech/ language behaviors (e.g., intonation) and communicative intentions, which may prove to be useful for early diagnosis of speech and language impairment. The current study proposes a methodology for observing and measuring language produced by children in the single-word developmental stage that does not rely on usual linguistic cues (e.g., lexical meaning). The goals of this study were: (1) to determine whether young children (i.e., ages 1;0—1;11) coordinated their nonverbal and verbal behavior directions; and (2) to determine whether there were any into-national and ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1362812 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1362812 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1362811&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F2%2F116%3Frss%3D1 This article provides an overview on the gestural signalling of monkeys and apes to enable a comparison with gestures in pre- or just-linguistic children. Implications for the evolution of language are discussed. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1362811 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1362811 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1362810&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F2%2F107%3Frss%3D1 What does hand movement have to do with language and communicative development? This Introduction proposes that language acquisition researchers have at least four reasons to be interested in gesture and communicative development. First, children begin to gesture before talking. Second, children continue to gesture even after they start to talk, and through to adulthood. Third, recent theoretical perspectives on language acquisition have advanced a functional approach to communicative development in which usage is crucial in language acquisition. Fourth, the argument that spoken language evolved from gestures raises intriguing questions about the relationship between phylogenesis and ontogenesis. We outline different developmental trajectories for different kinds of gestures, developmental... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1362810 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1362810 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1362809&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F28%2F2%2F106%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1362809 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1362809 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1193258&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F1%2F87%3Frss%3D1 Non-object terms including color, number and time words pose a challenge for word learning due in part to non-obvious word-referent mappings. Finding early word-word knowledge for such terms, Shatz has suggested that exposure to them in varied conversational contexts might facilitate word-word mappings. To address whether input feasibly carries such information, we examined longitudinal transcripts from the CHILDES database for the frequency and uses of subsets of color and number words in mothers' speech to toddlers and of time words to preschoolers. All the mothers studied made varied uses of the terms from these lexical categories. The findings support the argument that varied conversational input provides useful data for children to create early word-word mappings for non-object terms.... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1193258 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1193258 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1193257&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F1%2F71%3Frss%3D1 Based on data from the Danish Longitudinal CDI study on 182 Danish children, we analyse aspects of variation in the children's first 100 words (produced). First, we demonstrate the effect of gender and birth order (number of siblings) on acquisition times of first words by identifying single words which are significantly earlier in the productive repertoire of, for instance, girls versus boys. We also investigate the effect of the same factors on the composition of the vocabulary where the definition of categories (word classes) is based on the CDI's thematic categorization. Finally, we investigate the individuality of the lexicon's composition and find time-persistent differences between children for some word classes at this early stage. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1193257 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1193257 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1193256&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F1%2F55%3Frss%3D1 Communicative breakdowns were created in response to toddlers' single-word requests by means of two feedback conditions: one involving goal substitution, the other stating explicitly that the speaker was not understood (i.e., `I don't know what you mean'). Participants were 15 children, ages 17—25 months. Children typically abandoned their original requests in response to goal substitution but revised or repeated their requests when confronted with `I don't know what you mean.' Thus, in the early stages of language development, toddlers' response persistence appeared to depend in large part upon motivation for goal attainment. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1193256 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1193256 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1193255&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F1%2F35%3Frss%3D1 The current study sought to assess development differences in children's learning of irregular nouns and verbs under conditions of negative and positive evidence. Fifty-five 3-, 4- and 5-year-old children learned nonsense nouns and verbs and were later asked to produce plural forms for the nouns and past tense forms for the verbs. Forms were constructed to be irregular, and half were provided through negative evidence and half through positive evidence. Age, form (noun vs. verb) and evidence type (negative vs. positive) interacted: 3-year-olds learned more nouns through negative evidence t(15) = 2.76, p = 0.014, r2 = 0.34, while 5-year-olds learned more verbs through negative evidence t(16) = 2.281, p = 0.04, r2 = 0.25. Four-year-olds showed equal learning across the two conditions. These ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1193255 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1193255 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1193254&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F28%2F1%2F5%3Frss%3D1 In this study, early pragmatic development in a trilingual child is addressed from the perspective of the language dynamics of a multilingual family. How young children learn to adjust their speech to their interlocutors can be seen clearly in the language choices and the mixing patterns of the trilingual two-year-old. The child selected language(s) not only from the language(s) spoken to her but also with attention to her interlocutor's linguistic proficiencies and the language context in which she found herself along a monolingual to trilingual continuum. She shifted languages in family dinner conversations according to the norms established in the home. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1193254 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1193254 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988846&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F4%2F443%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988846 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988846 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988845&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F4%2F441%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988845 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988845 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988844&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F4%2F439%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988844 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988844 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988843&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F4%2F436%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988843 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988843 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988842&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F4%2F431%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988842 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988842 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988841&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F4%2F421%3Frss%3D1 This study investigated the situations in which children say `yes' in response to yes-no questions. Japanese-speaking children aged 2;0—3;11 (N=38) were asked yes-no questions by their own mothers at home. Children showed a strong yes bias. The results, combined with those of earlier studies, suggest that a yes bias is a general phenomenon. In addition, young Japanese children showed Japanese-specific response tendencies. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988841 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988841 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988840&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F4%2F407%3Frss%3D1 Children aged 2 through 6 years and adults were shown a series of pictures including `normal' referents (e.g., cat or car), and unfamiliar combination tokens (e.g., a clock with a telephone handset), which they were asked to identify. There were age-dependent differences in terms of naming (i.e., the number of words and morphemes and linguistic constructions) and criteria for category membership. The older participants used more morphemes and sophisticated linguistic strategies (e.g., descriptive phrases) than the younger participants, and the younger children showed a greater tendency to rely on holistic shape as a category determiner. These disparities suggested that the participants not only employed different strategies by age, but that they also had different criteria for categorizati... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988840 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988840 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988839&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F4%2F385%3Frss%3D1 The study tested epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness in junior kindergarten, senior kindergarten and first-grade Hebrew native speaking children (N= 115). The primary aim was to investigate whether children's epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness was affected by the position of the target phoneme (initial vs. final). Two epilinguistic phonological awareness tasks (initial and final phoneme recognition) and two metalinguistic tasks (initial and final phoneme isolation) were used. The findings showed that, while epilinguistic awareness for initial phonemes was higher than that for final phonemes, the opposite was true for metalinguistic awareness. The results imply that Hebrew native speaking children's metalinguistic awareness is predicated on a languag... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988839 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988839 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988838&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F4%2F361%3Frss%3D1 Using the Danish adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI), first language acquisition of 183 Danish children has been studied longitudinally on a monthly basis (8—30 months). Focussing on production, we study early lexical development from the very first word until roughly 100 words are produced, dividing this period into the stages of first-1, -10, -25, -50 and -100 words. We analyse Danish children's first words with respect to semantic-pragmatic content, sound structure, and composition of the early lexicon based on formal linguistic categories. Comparing Danish results crosslinguistically reveals both the overall typicality of Danish children's first words as well as striking differences for some single words. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988838 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988838 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988837&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F4%2F347%3Frss%3D1 The CV syllable or reduplicative word is seen as an essential structure in early speech development, and word-initial consonants are seen to be a part of the optimal syllable in the speech of young children. The aim of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of the CV(CV) structure for a description of the first words of Joel (1;1—1;6), who is acquiring Finnish. Among his first 50 words, many words were produced with a (C)VC:V structure instead of a CVCV structure. An overused geminate template gives support for the saliency of the medial position. The saliency of the medial position is supported by the fact that word-initial consonant omission is common in the speech of Finnish children despite the word stress being on the first syllable. Additional support comes from the reduction... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988837 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988837 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988836&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F4%2F329%3Frss%3D1 This study also analysed turn-taking interaction structure and the children's prelinguistic development. The results show differences between the interactive patterns of term and preterm mother-infant dyads. In particular, mother-preterm infant conversations were characterized by high maternal responsiveness and lack of activity on the part of the infant. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988836 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988836 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=988835&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F4%2F315%3Frss%3D1 Early language skills vary considerably across children, especially before the age of about two years. Thus, it can be difficult to distinguish between `late bloomers' and children who show a language delay or impairment. Here we present the results of a longitudinal study wherein toddlers' performance on a looking-time-based `Switch' task of word-object association (Stager & Werker, 1997) was related to the children's later language skills. Word-object association performance at 17 or 20 months was significantly related to scores on some standardized tests of language comprehension and production up to two and a half years later. The implications of these results for further early identification research are discussed. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=988835 Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0100 988835 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=758262&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F3%2F297%3Frss%3D1 In this study 2-year-olds were presented with novel words in the absence of a speaker and therefore in the absence of a referential context. Findings revealed that word learning was successful across the experimental trials at rates greater than chance and at rates greater than in the control trial. Findings demonstrated that the absence of a speaker and the referential context provided by a speaker did not result in unsuccessful word learning. It is concluded that a referential context is not necessary for successful word learning. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=758262 Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:00:00 +0100 758262 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=758261&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F3%2F279%3Frss%3D1 This research explores the development of pragmatic comprehension within the framework of relevance theory. Participants were 210 typically developing Finnish children aged from 3 to 9 years. The children were asked questions targeting the pragmatic processes of reference assignment, enrichment and implicature, as proposed by relevance theory. Results indicate that increasing ability to use contextual information in comprehension is related to age. The largest increase in correct answers occurred between the ages of 3 and 4 years. Answering reference assignment questions was not problematic for any of the age groups. Answering enrichment and implicature questions reflected the children's increasing ability to use more complex contextual information in the comprehension process. This suppor... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=758261 Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:00:00 +0100 758261 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=758260&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F3%2F251%3Frss%3D1 This paper examines Welsh-speaking children's productive command of mutation — a set of morphophonological changes, conditioned by lexical and syntactic environments, that affect the initial consonants of words. In Welsh, grammatical gender is marked by mutations, and the mapping between mutation and gender is opaque. Using a Cloze-type procedure, Experiment 1 presented children between the ages of 41/2 and 9 years with a distant gender-marked context, and Experiments 2 and 3 presented similar-aged children with triggering contexts for mutation that were not conditioned by gender. Results suggest that children's ability to mark gender categories is not limited by their underlying knowledge of the mutation system in general, but the course of development is protracted and complex. (So... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=758260 Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:00:00 +0100 758260 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=758259&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F3%2F227%3Frss%3D1 This paper explores the early lexicon development of 548 monolingual French-speaking infants aged 8;0—16;0. Vocabulary acquisition was followed using the French adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development: Words and Gestures (Fenson et al., 1993). The results generally concur with those reported for other languages. There were striking individual variations in both terms of onset and rate of lexical growth. However, the total vocabulary scores increased steadily in all sections with chronological age. Girls showed superior scores in terms of labelling behaviours and lexical production. Nouns were predominant in both production and comprehension from 8 to 16 months regardless of the lexicon size. Predicates were the second most represented category, followed by functio... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=758259 Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:00:00 +0100 758259 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=758258&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F3%2F203%3Frss%3D1 This study analysed the responses of a large stratified sample of 6- to 11-year-old children to a forced-choice picture selection task testing a common type of idiomatic expression: verb+particle constructions such as `look up' and `call off'. Effects for frequency were found in children's comprehension of particular verb+particle constructions. Furthermore, distractor analysis revealed that children may not have been applying simple decompositional semantic strategies in their attempts to comprehend unfamiliar verbs. It seemed that syntactic features of the verbs were also taken into account, and that children made use of contextual information only in certain circumstances. It is argued that children's choices of distractors indicated that they employed a holistic rather than an analytic... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=758258 Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:00:00 +0100 758258 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=574673&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F2%2F194%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=574673 Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:00:00 +0100 574673 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=574672&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F2%2F191%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=574672 Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:00:00 +0100 574672 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=574671&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F2%2F175%3Frss%3D1 The present study investigated the contributions of sociodemographic factors, literacy experiences and child attention in predicting 2- to 5-year-olds' adaptive communication. In infancy, children participated in a habituation procedure, and length of their first look at a novel stimulus was used as an index of information processing. When children were 2—5 years of age, information about children's literacy experiences was gathered, and communication was assessed using the Communication Domain of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Path analyses revealed direct effects for first look, reading per week and number of trips to the library for Adaptive Communication and the subdomain of Expressive Communication. Indirect effects of mother's education through first look, reading per w... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=574671 Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:00:00 +0100 574671 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=574670&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F2%2F159%3Frss%3D1 This study compares early grammatical and lexical acquisition in 323 preterm and 166 full-term children at 24 months. The French MacArthur-Bates parental report was employed for analysis. Gestational age and birth order showed a significant effect on vocabulary size and grammatical distribution. Preterm children showed fewer words and produced more games, routines and animal noises words. Except for the group of extremely premature children, first-born children in each gestational age group produced more words than second-born. In contrast, first-born children exhibited more predicates than second-born children. It is concluded that preterm children show delayed rather than deviant language development. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=574670 Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:00:00 +0100 574670 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=574669&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F2%2F133%3Frss%3D1 The acquisition of temporal relations in the narratives of Thai children (aged 4 years, 6 years and 9 years) and of adults as control was investigated. Narratives were elicited using the `frog story'. Results revealed common and language-specific developmental patterns: (1) a developmental progression from relating events at a local to a more global level; (2) use of fewer forms that have a broader range of functions in the younger children; (3) acquisition of least restricted forms prior to more restricted forms; (4) qualified support for the acquisition of sequentiality prior to simultaneity. In the youngest children there was a greater reliance on usage of grammatical aspect; subsequently, as children acquired the ability to use bi-referential reference, temporal connectives played a mo... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=574669 Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:00:00 +0100 574669 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=574668&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F2%2F099%3Frss%3D1 Recent studies of child Russian have offered some interesting insights into the phenomenon of Root Infinitives (RIs) in early child language. This paper offers a new perspective on the RI phenomenon in child Russian by arguing that the RI production consists of three developmental stages, which cannot be accounted for by the theories that propose optional projection of Tense/Agreement (Wexler, 1998) or underspecification of NumberP (Hoekstra, Hyams & Becker, 1997) or AspectP (Gavruseva, 2003). It is proposed that stage 1 results from underspecification/open value of AspP, TP and ModalP, while stage 2 results from underspecification/open value of ModalP only. Full specification of ModalP during stage 3 accounts for decrease in RI production. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=574668 Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:00:00 +0100 574668 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=405623&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F1%2F91%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=405623 Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:00:00 +0100 405623 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=405622&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F27%2F1%2F89%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=405622 Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:00:00 +0100 405622 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=405621&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F1%2F75%3Frss%3D1 This paper compares the proportions of different word classes present in 30 Italian children at two specific stages of vocabulary development (200 and 500 words). The Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory and spontaneous speech samples produced during an observation session were both used to examine the extent to which these children produce quantitatively different vocabulary compositions. Both methods revealed a greater presence of nouns than other word classes in the sample studied, although significant differences were found in the noun/other word class proportions. (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=405621 Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:00:00 +0100 405621 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=405620&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F1%2F53%3Frss%3D1 Despite the theoretical importance of the processes of generalization to the development of morphological rules, not much is known about the basic developmental trend or the relevant processes. The present study seeks to answer the question: at what age are children able to generalize the plural to new nouns. In a six-week longitudinal study, children aged 17.5 to 28 months participated in a spontaneous production task in which they were either provided with the singular form of common and novel nouns and asked to generate the plural form, or given the plural form of those nouns and asked to generate the singular form. The results suggest that very young children do generalize the plural to novel forms. The data also strongly ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=405620 Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:00:00 +0100 405620 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=405619&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F1%2F29%3Frss%3D1 This paper reports on two studies investigating children's and adults' processing of sentences containing ambiguity of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment. Study 1 used corpus data to investigate whether cues argued to be used by adults to resolve PP-attachment ambiguities are available in child-directed speech. Study 2 was an on-line reaction time study investigating the role of lexical and referential biases in syntactic ambiguity resolution by children and adults. Forty children (mean age 8;4) and 37 adults listened to V-NP-PP sentences containing temporary ambiguity of PP-attachment. The sentences were manipulated for (i) verb semantics, (ii) the definiteness of the object NP, and (iii) PP-attachment site. The chi... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=405619 Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:00:00 +0100 405619 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=405618&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F27%2F1%2F5%3Frss%3D1 The tendency of children to apply a novel label to a novel object rather than to a familiar one, or to resist applying multiple labels to the same object, has often been interpreted as evidence of a ‘mutual exclusivity’ constraint on word learning. We offer evidence that the mutual exclusivity effect is not specific to word learning but is rooted in a tendency to conserve general cognitive resources. In the current research, 3-year-olds learned and produced two different novel labels for the same object when doing so allowed them to maximize their reward. However, when producing multiple labels afforded no apparent benefit, children tended to produce a single label. An identical pattern of responses was see... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=405618 Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:00:00 +0100 405618 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=268191&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F26%2F4%2F441%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=268191 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0100 268191 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=268190&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F26%2F4%2F439%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=268190 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0100 268190 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=268189&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F4%2F421%3Frss%3D1 A longitudinal correlational design was used to examine whether fast-mapping mediates the relationship between attention-following and vocabulary size in a group of 29 young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Attention-following was measured at the initial visit. Fast-mapping as well as comprehension and production of noun vocabulary were measured six months later. Attention-following had a significant predictive association with fast-mapping and with both vocabulary outcomes. Fast-mapping had a significant concurrent association with vocabulary and met all the criteria for mediating the association between attention-following and the number of nouns children understood and said at the follow-up. These findings... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=268189 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0100 268189 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=268188&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F4%2F403%3Frss%3D1 The present studies investigated 3-year-olds' ability to adapt their communication based on their parents' knowledge state when requesting familiar and novel objects. Children participated in a toy retrieval game during which their parent was present or absent during toy introductions. In Study 1, children used more specific requests and cue combinations in the parent-absent group versus parent-present group when requesting familiar labelled objects. In Study 2, a similar game was administered with adaptations to reduce cognitive demands. Children produced more specific requests in the parent-absent group compared with the parent-present group when requesting an unlabelled novel object. The results indicate that three-... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=268188 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0100 268188 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=268187&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F4%2F381%3Frss%3D1 Morphology, one of the organizing principles of the mental lexicon, is especially important in Hebrew, where word structure expresses a rich array of semantic notions. The current study focuses on morphological skills in Hebrew-speaking gradeschoolers from high-and low-SES backgrounds: 152 high-SES children and 167 low-SES children (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th graders) were administered an analogy task, which required reading complex words and eliciting morphological components from them. Results indicate an early and robust ability of Hebrew-speaking children to perform morphological analogies using both root and pattern morphemes. Most of the erroneous responses in both populations involved morphological strategies rather ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=268187 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0100 268187 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=268186&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F4%2F363%3Frss%3D1 Consistency in maternal support and children's involvement in conversations was examined in this case study by observing the interaction of one mother and her triplet sons individually in conversations about past experiences and during group book reading. The mother demonstrated consistent use of elaborations and affirmations across memory conversations, but she varied in her use of utterances that gained the boys' involvement. Although the children were similar in the content of their memory reports, they varied in their need for repeated queries and their responsiveness to questions. The children's responsiveness to questions when reminiscing was mirrored by the questions they responded to during reading. Results of ... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=268186 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0100 268186 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=268185&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F4%2F347%3Frss%3D1 An experiment with 64 twelve-month-olds investigated the influence of object naming on their formation of novel object categories. Stimuli were constructed to represent 2 broad categories consisting of 3 narrow categories each. Objects representing the same narrow or broad category were presented with either a labelling or non-labelling phrase in a modified word extension procedure. Only infants in the narrow category-level condition who heard labelling phrases demonstrated categorization, and categorization performance in the narrow label condition was superior to that in the narrow no-label condition. Consistent with studies utilizing conventional objects, results indicate that object naming can facilitate infants' f... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=268185 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0100 268185 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=268184&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F26%2F4%2F346%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=268184 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:00:00 +0100 268184 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=162680&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F26%2F3%2F342%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=162680 Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 +0100 162680 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=162679&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F26%2F3%2F339%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=162679 Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 +0100 162679 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=162678&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F3%2F317%3Frss%3D1 This study investigates the production of Quechua relative clauses by Peruvian adults and children, aged 2;8–4;7. Quechua relative clauses may be internallyheaded, externally-headed or headless. Previous studies (e.g., O'Grady, 2003), suggested two outcomes: children will have less difficulty producing subject-gap relative clauses than other types; and, compared with adults, children will produce more headed relatives, especially internally-headed relative clauses. A procedure was used to elicit production of two relative clauses for each of four types: subject-gap, direct object-gap, non-direct object-gap, possessor-gap. Participants produced all types with equal ease, although children produced more errors; chi... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=162678 Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 +0100 162678 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=162677&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F3%2F299%3Frss%3D1 Mothers, fathers and caregivers in 29 families completed the Infant and Toddler Forms of Dutch adaptations of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) for the same children at 1;1 and 1;8, respectively. We computed CDI Cumulative Scores, which credit the child with the best score for each item on the CDI as checked by any single reporter. We then computed comprehension and production scores for each reporter and for the cumulative score. Different reporters assess a particular child's communicative abilities differently. Mothers', fathers' and caregivers' comprehension scores intercorrelated, as did their production scores. Reporters' comprehension and production scores were lower than their respective... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=162677 Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 +0100 162677 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=162676&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F3%2F281%3Frss%3D1 The purpose of this research was to investigate the manner in which reference time becomes integrated into the child's emerging systems of temporal reference. The longitudinal data from six children learning English and six children learning Polish were analyzed within the period from about 1;6 to 5;0. The temporal reference within an event time and a reference time system was evaluated. Regarding reference time constructions, we traced the acquisition of the following terms: (1) English,when, then, before, after, yesterday, today and tomorrow, and (2) Polish,potem ‘then’,jak (simultaneous ‘when’),jak (sequential, ‘after’),przed ‘before’,po ‘after&... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=162676 Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 +0100 162676 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=162675&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F3%2F259%3Frss%3D1 Using a parent report instrument, the development of vocabulary and grammar was examined in 333 German-speaking children aged between 1;6 and 2;6. Grammar scales measured sentence complexity and inflectional morphology. Results indicate that vocabulary increased faster than sentence complexity and inflectional morphology. Within inflectional paradigms, noun plural and gender marking were acquired faster than case marking and verb inflections. Modals and copula were acquired most slowly. There was extensive variability on all language scales. The different language skills were strongly related, with grammatical development increasing non-linearly in dependence on vocabulary. There was a mild effect of gender favouring girls. Th... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=162675 Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 +0100 162675 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=162674&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F26%2F3%2F258%3Frss%3D1 (Source: First Language) First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=162674 Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 +0100 162674 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=17621&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F2%2F233%3Frss%3D1 Interpretation of single dynamic event words through the lens of motion-event semantics yields a picture of continuity across development. A claim of continuity from children's pre-linguistic cognition through the single-word period to first sentences might seem to imply a reliance on early ‘concepts’. In contrast, the cognitive structure of the sensorimotor period is characterized here as nonconceptual, with children dependent on language to mold this consistent early cognition toward concepts. Single dynamic event words comprise the same basic domains across languages, but vary in their analysis of those domains in response to characteristics of the ambient language. Dynamic event word meanings based on p... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=17621 Mon, 24 Apr 2006 06:00:00 +0100 17621 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=17620&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F2%2F207%3Frss%3D1 This study examines whether language-specific input influences children's nonlinguistic spatial cognition as they acquire their first language. Recent research on infant cognition has shown that preverbal infants can make a distinction between tight-fit and loose-fit containment relations. This distinction is systematically made in Korean (kkita‘fit tightly’), but not in English (in). Using a preferential-looking method, this study tested sensitivity to the distinction in English and Korean learners at different ages: English learners were tested at 18, 24, 29 and 36 months, and Korean learners at 29 and 36 months of age. Results showed that while English learners weaken their sensitivity to the distinction... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=17620 Mon, 24 Apr 2006 06:00:00 +0100 17620 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=17619&cid=s_15176_52_f&fid=15176&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffla.sagepub.com%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F26%2F2%2F187%3Frss%3D1 English-learning toddlers of 21 and 22 months were taught a novel spatial word for four actions resulting in a tight-fit spatial relation, a relation that is lexically marked in Korean but not English (Choi & Bowerman, 1991). Toddlers in a control condition viewed the same tight-fit action events without the novel word. Toddlers' comprehension of the novel word was tested in a preferential-looking paradigm. Across four videotaped pairs of action events, a tight-fit event was paired with a loose-fit event. Only toddlers who were taught the novel spatial word looked significantly longer at the tight-fit events during the test trials that presented the novel word than during control trials that presented neutral lingu... First Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=17619 Mon, 24 Apr 2006 06:00:00 +0100 17619