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 'Journal of Child Language' source. Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:08:37 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3351330&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20214842%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Zammit M, Schafer G ABSTRACTTen mothers were observed prospectively, interacting with their infants aged 0 ; 10 in two contexts (picture description and noun description). Maternal communicative behaviours were coded for volubility, gestural production and labelling style. Verbal labelling events were categorized into three exclusive categories: label only; label plus deictic gesture; label plus iconic gesture. We evaluated the predictive relations between maternal communicative style and children's subsequent acquisition of ten target nouns. Strong relations were observed between maternal communicative style and children's acquisition of the target nouns. Further, even controlling for maternal volubility and maternal labelling, maternal use of iconic gestures predicted the ti... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3351330 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3351330 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3351329&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20214843%26dopt%3DAbstract This study investigates the acquisition of word-initial Korean obstruents (i.e. stops, affricates and fricatives). Korean obstruents are characterized by a three-way contrast among stops and affricates (i.e. fortis, aspirated and lenis) and a two-way fricative contrast (i.e. fortis and lenis). All these obstruents are voiceless word-initially. Cross-sectional data were collected from forty Korean children aged 2 ; 6 (year;month), 3 ; 0, 3 ; 6 and 4 ; 0, and the acquisition patterns of Korean obstruents were explored based on productions of mono- and multisyllabic words. Results confirm the universal patterns: stops were acquired before affricates and fricatives. In terms of order of acquisition across different laryngeal types, lenis stops were the last to be acquired. For Korean fricative... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3351329 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3351329 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3351331&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20211046%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Pérez-Pereira M, Resches M ABSTRACTThis paper explores the concurrent and predictive validity of the long and short forms of the Galician version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (IDHC). Forty-two Galician-speaking children were longitudinally evaluated at age 1 ; 6, 2 ; 0 and 4 ; 0. On the first two occasions, the subjects' vocabulary and grammar skills were assessed through the IDHC. Simultaneously, lexical and grammatical measures were obtained from spontaneous speech samples. Standardized measures of general cognitive abilities (WPPSI-R) and receptive and expressive language (RDLS-III) were obtained at age 4 ; 0. Results showed high and significant levels of concurrent and short-term validity of the IDHC. Strong associations were found between lexical development at age 2 ;... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3351331 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3351331 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3339860&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20202289%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Pelham SD ABSTRACTEnglish-acquiring children frequently make pronoun case errors, while German-acquiring children rarely do. Nonetheless, German-acquiring children frequently make article case errors. It is proposed that when child-directed speech contains a high percentage of case-ambiguous forms, case errors are common in child language; when percentages are low, case errors are rare. Input to English and German children was analyzed for percentage of case-ambiguous personal pronouns on adult tiers of corpora from 24 English-acquiring and 24 German-acquiring children. Also analyzed for German was the percentage of case-ambiguous articles. Case-ambiguous pronouns averaged 63.3% in English, compared with 7.6% in German. The percentage of case-ambiguous articles in German was 7... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3339860 Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3339860 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3335798&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20196901%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kidd E, Stewart AJ, Serratrice L ABSTRACTIn this paper we report on a visual world eye-tracking experiment that investigated the differing abilities of adults and children to use referential scene information during reanalysis to overcome lexical biases during sentence processing. The results showed that adults incorporated aspects of the referential scene into their parse as soon as it became apparent that a test sentence was syntactically ambiguous, suggesting they considered the two alternative analyses in parallel. In contrast, the children appeared not to reanalyze their initial analysis, even over shorter distances than have been investigated in prior research. We argue that this reflects the children's over-reliance on bottom-up, lexical cues to interpretation. The impl... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3335798 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3335798 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3267573&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20146831%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hill EL PMID: 20146831 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3267573 Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:10:05 +0100 3267573 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3209375&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20096143%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: VAN Heugten M, Johnson EK ABSTRACTDutch, unlike English, contains two gender-marked forms of the definite article. Does the presence of multiple definite article forms lead Dutch learners to be delayed relative to English learners in the acquisition of their determiner system? Using the Preferential Looking Procedure, we found that Dutch-learning children aged 1 ; 7 to 2 ; 0 use articles during sentence comprehension in a fashion comparable to similarly aged English learners. That is, Dutch learners' sentence processing was impaired when a nonsense (se) as opposed to real article (de, het) preceded target words, much like English learners' sentence processing is disrupted by the use of a nonsense article. At the same time, however, gender cues did not help Dutch learners recog... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3209375 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3209375 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3209374&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20096144%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Dromi E, Zaidman-Zait A ABSTRACTThe Hebrew Parent Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language (HPQ-CEL) was administered by 154 parents of Hebrew-speaking toddlers aged 1 ; 0 to 1 ; 3 (77 boys, 77 girls). The Questionnaire guided parents in observing and rating their toddlers in six contexts at home. The study aimed to identify inter-correlations between toddlers' non-linguistic behaviors that co-occur during the transition to speech. Seven communicative behaviors were extracted from the questionnaire data: Crying, Vocalizations, Collaboration with Adults, Pointing, Words, Joint Engagement in a Peek-a-Boo Game, and Triadic Interaction in Book Reading. Collaboration with Adults and Triadic Interaction in Book Reading yielded more significant correlations than other preli... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3209374 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3209374 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3209373&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20096145%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Iverson JM ABSTRACTDuring the first eighteen months of life, infants acquire and refine a whole set of new motor skills that significantly change the ways in which the body moves in and interacts with the environment. In this review article, I argue that motor acquisitions provide infants with an opportunity to practice skills relevant to language acquisition before they are needed for that purpose; and that the emergence of new motor skills changes infants' experience with objects and people in ways that are relevant for both general communicative development and the acquisition of language. Implications of this perspective for current views of co-occurring language and motor impairments and for methodology in the field of child language research are also considered. PMID... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3209373 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3209373 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3200774&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20092661%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kimbrough Oller D PMID: 20092661 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3200774 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3200774 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3200773&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20092662%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Smith LB PMID: 20092662 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3200773 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3200773 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3194251&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20085669%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Taylor CL PMID: 20085669 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3194251 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3194251 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3194250&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20085670%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Adolph KE, Tamis-Lemonda CS, Karasik LB PMID: 20085670 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3194250 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3194250 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3119225&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20028598%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Adani F ABSTRACTIn a number of studies, the acquisition of restrictive relative clauses (RCs) shows contrasting findings regarding comprehension and production, with the former usually delayed up to the age of five. As previously claimed in the literature, we suggest that this delay is a task artifact and we present a new procedure for the assessment of restrictive RCs. Data from three- to seven-year-old Italian children were collected and results show that children understand object RCs with preverbal subject in an adult-like manner at four years of age, but some of the three-year-old children were already above chance. Subject relatives show at ceiling performance from three years of age. We consider our results as evidence of continuity between early and adult competence gr... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3119225 Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3119225 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3102455&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20003618%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Vasilyeva M, Waterfall H, Gámez PB, Gómez LE, Bowers E, Shimpi P ABSTRACTPrevious research has used cross-linguistic priming methodology with bilingual adults to explore the nature of their syntactic representations. The present paper extends the use of this methodology to bilingual children to investigate the relation between the syntactic structures of their two languages. Specifically, we examined whether the use of passives by the experimenter in one language primed the subsequent use of passives by the child in the other language. Results showed evidence of syntactic priming from Spanish to English: hearing a Spanish sentence containing a passive led to the increase in children's production of the parallel structure in English. However, there was no priming in t... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3102455 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3102455 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3102457&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20003576%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Herr-Israel E, McCune L ABSTRACTIn the period between sole use of single words and majority use of multiword utterances, children draw from their existing productive capability and conversational input to facilitate the eventual outcome of majority use of multiword utterances. During this period, children use word combinations that are not yet mature multiword utterances, termed 'successive single-word utterances' (SSWUs). The language development of five children, observed in play with their mothers, was studied longitudinally across the transitional period (age 1 ; 3 to 2 ; 0). Results demonstrate a common developmental trajectory from single words to SSWUs, formed with the support of conversation, to more independent SSWUs, and finally to majority use of multiword utterance... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3102457 Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3102457 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3102456&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20003577%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Scofield J, Miller A, Hartin T ABSTRACTTwo studies examined whether preschool children preferred to select a moving object over stationary objects when determining the referent of a novel word. In both studies three- and four-year-olds observed three novel objects, one moving object and two stationary objects. In Study 1, children (n=44) were asked to select the object that best matched a novel word. In Study 2, children (n=45) were asked to select the object that best matched a novel fact. Results across the two studies indicated that three- and four-year-olds showed a preference for selecting the moving object and that this preference was similar for both words and facts. These results suggest that preschool children are able to use movement to determine the referent of a no... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3102456 Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3102456 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3072267&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19961658%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, the auditory-visual speech perception, oro-motor and rule abstraction skills of 62 typically developing two-year olds were assessed and contrasted with the accuracy of their spoken phonology. Measures included auditory-visual speech perception, production of isolated and sequenced oro-motor movements, and verbal and non-verbal rule abstraction. Abilities in all three domains contributed to phonological acquisition. However, the use of atypical phonological rules was associated with lower levels of phonological accuracy and a linear regression indicated that this measure of rule abstraction had greater explanatory power than the measures of input processing and output skill. PMID: 19961658 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3072267 Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3072267 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3056425&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19951451%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explores parents' and children's use of and response to direct or indirect behaviour regulation in a family context. Ten families with two children each were divided into two groups depending on the age of the children (6-7 and 10-11 years or 10-11 and 13-14 years). Video-recorded regulatory dinner talk was transcribed, coded and analysed with regard to directness or indirectness in relation to behavioural outcome. Dinner talk was predominantly direct, but younger children were addressed by direct regulators as two-thirds of all regulators, whereas the opposite was seen with older children. Though children also tended to be direct, younger children used three times as many direct regulators as older ones. Compliance appeared in two-thirds of all direct regulators, but almost one... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3056425 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3056425 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3056424&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19951452%26dopt%3DAbstract This study compared 12 adults adopted from Korea to the US as young children (all but one prior to age one year) to 13 participants who had no prior exposure to Korean to examine whether relearning can aid in accessing early childhood language memory. All 25 participants were recruited and tested during the second week of first-semester college Korean language classes. They completed a language background questionnaire and interview, a childhood slang task and a Korean phoneme identification task. Results revealed an advantage for adoptee participants in identifying some Korean phonemes, suggesting that some components of early childhood language memory can remain intact despite many years of disuse, and that relearning a language can help in accessing such a memory. PMID: 19951452 [Pu... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3056424 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3056424 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3036244&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19939328%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explores the form of representational gestures produced by forty-five hearing children (age range 2 ; 0-3 ; 1) asked to label pictures in words. Five pictures depicting objects and five pictures depicting actions which elicited more representational gestures were chosen for more detailed analysis. The range of gestures produced for each item varied from 3 to 27 for a total of 128 gestures. Gestures have been analyzed with the same parameters used to describe signs produced by deaf children: handshape, location and movement. Results show that gestures for a given picture exhibit similarities in many of the parameters across children. Some motor characteristics found in the production of hearing toddlers' gestures are similar to those described for early signs. Implications of thi... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3036244 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3036244 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3000207&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19912671%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Aljenaie K ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the distribution of imperfective and perfective verb inflections in Kuwaiti Arabic. Spontaneous speech of three children (1 ; 8-3 ; 1) was analyzed for accuracy and error types. The results showed that the verbal inflections appeared correct almost all the time (89-97% of the time). Agreement errors appeared 3-11% of the time. The children did not inflect the verb in obligatory contexts in describing ongoing action 2-12% of the time. It is predicted that children acquiring Arabic would select a default form in place of fully inflected forms. The children used a non-finite form which is identical to the imperfective verbal bare stem to describe ongoing action, which is consistent with Benmamoun's argument (1999, 2000) that the imperfec... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3000207 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3000207 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3000206&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19912672%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we investigated how Mandarin-speaking children and adults interpret focus structures like Zhiyou Yuehan chi-le pingguo 'Only John ate an apple' and Shi Yuehan chi-de pingguo 'It is John who ate an apple'. We found that children tended to associate focus operators zhiyou 'only' and shi 'be' with the verb phrase (VP), whereas adults uniquely associated them with the subject noun phrase (NP). To account for this difference, we propose that children initially treat focus operators as adverbials, thus ending up associating them with the VP. In order to assess our proposal, we examined children's understanding of zhiyou-constructions with negation, like Zhiyou Yuehan meiyou chi pingguo 'Only John didn't eat an apple'. It was found that children, like adults, consistently associate... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3000206 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3000206 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2967874&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19889252%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Henderson AM, Sabbagh MA ABSTRACTParents' use of conventional versus unconventional labels with their two- (n=12), three- (n=12) and four-year-old children (n=12) was assessed as they talked about objects that were either known or unknown to them. For known objects, parents provided typical conventional labels casually during the conversation. For unknown objects, parents were less likely to use typical nouns as labels and marked their labels with additional information suggesting that the labels might be unconventional. Parents marked potentially unconventional labels by providing explicit statements of ignorance and paralinguistic cues of uncertainty. These patterns were strongest when the unknown objects were manufactured as opposed to homemade, possibly because manufacture... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2967874 Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2967874 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2947614&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19874639%26dopt%3DAbstract We examined whether preschoolers' ontological knowledge would influence lexical extension. In Experiment 1, four-year-olds were presented with a novel label for either an object with eyes described as an animal, or the same object without eyes described as a tool. In the animal condition, children extended the label to similar-shaped objects, whereas in the tool condition, children extended the label to similar-function objects. In Experiment 2, when four-year-olds were presented with objects with eyes described as tools, they extended the label on the basis of shared function. These experiments suggest that preschoolers' conceptual knowledge guides their lexical extension. PMID: 19874639 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2947614 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2947614 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2947613&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19874640%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Tare M, Gelman SA ABSTRACTThe present studies examined factors that influence children's and adults' interpretation of a novel word. Four factors are hypothesized to emphasize that a label refers to a richly structured category (also known as a 'kind'): generic language, internal property attributions, familiar kind labels and absence of a target photograph. In Study 1, for college students (N=125), internal property attributions resulted in more taxonomic and fewer shape responses. In Study 2, for four-year-olds (N=126), the presence of generic language and familiar kind labels resulted in more taxonomic choices. Further, the presence of familiar kind labels resulted in fewer shape choices. The results suggest that, when learning new words, children and adults are sensitive t... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2947613 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2947613 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2947612&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19874641%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines potential predictors of 'precocious talking' (expressive language 90th percentile) at one and two years of age, and of 'stability' in precocious talking across both time periods, drawing on data from a prospective community cohort comprising over 1,800 children. Logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between precocious talking and the following potential predictors: gender, birth order, birth weight, non-English speaking background, socioeconomic status, maternal age, maternal mental health scores, and vocabulary and educational attainment of parents. The strongest predictors of precocity (being female and having a younger mother) warrant further exploration. Overall, however, it appears that precocity in early vocabulary development is not strongly in... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2947612 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2947612 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2766622&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19726000%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Marchman VA, Fernald A, Hurtado N ABSTRACTResearch using online comprehension measures with monolingual children shows that speed and accuracy of spoken word recognition are correlated with lexical development. Here we examined speech processing efficiency in relation to vocabulary development in bilingual children learning both Spanish and English (n=26 ; 2 ; 6). Between-language associations were weak: vocabulary size in Spanish was uncorrelated with vocabulary in English, and children's facility in online comprehension in Spanish was unrelated to their facility in English. Instead, efficiency of online processing in one language was significantly related to vocabulary size in that language, after controlling for processing speed and vocabulary size in the other language. Th... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2766622 Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2766622 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2758610&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19719886%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Surian L, Tedoldi M, Siegal M ABSTRACTWe investigated whether access to a sign language affects the development of pragmatic competence in three groups of deaf children aged 6 to 11 years: native signers from deaf families receiving bimodal/bilingual instruction, native signers from deaf families receiving oralist instruction and late signers from hearing families receiving oralist instruction. The performance of these children was compared to a group of hearing children aged 6 to 7 years on a test designed to assess sensitivity to violations of conversational maxims. Native signers with bimodal/bilingual instruction were as able as the hearing children to detect violations that concern truthfulness (Maxim of Quality) and relevance (Maxim of Relation). On items involving these... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2758610 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2758610 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2734731&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19698206%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Leonard LB, Deevy P ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to determine whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) are sensitive to completion cues in their comprehension of tense. In two experiments, children with SLI (ages 4 ; 1 to 6 ; 4) and typically developing (TD) children (ages 3 ; 5 to 6 ; 5) participated in a sentence-to-scene matching task adapted from Wagner (2001). Sentences were in either present or past progressive and used telic predicates. Actions were performed twice in succession; the action was either completed or not completed in the first instance. In both experiments, the children with SLI were less accurate than the TD children, showing more difficulty with past than present progressive, regardless of completion cues. The TD children were less a... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2734731 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2734731 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2734730&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19698207%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Weisleder A, Waxman SR ABSTRACTRecent analyses have revealed that child-directed speech contains distributional regularities that could, in principle, support young children's discovery of distinct grammatical categories (noun, verb, adjective). In particular, a distributional unit known as the frequent frame appears to be especially informative (Mintz, 2003). However, analyses have focused almost exclusively on the distributional information available in English. Because languages differ considerably in how the grammatical forms are marked within utterances, the scarcity of cross-linguistic evidence represents an unfortunate gap. We therefore advance the developmental evidence by analyzing the distributional information available in frequent frames across two languages (Spani... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2734730 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2734730 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2734729&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19698208%26dopt%3DAbstract In conclusion, our study established that a partially atypical trajectory emerged in preterms, showing specific long-term effects of preterm birth on language and literacy development. PMID: 19698208 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2734729 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2734729 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2571884&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19570317%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Lee SA, Davis B, Macneilage P ABSTRACTThe phonetic characteristics of canonical babbling produced by Korean- and English-learning infants were compared with consonant and vowel frequencies observed in infant-directed speech produced by Korean- and English-speaking mothers. For infant output, babbling samples from six Korean-learning infants were compared with an existing English babbling database (Davis & MacNeilage, 1995). For ambient language comparisons, consonants and vowels in ten Korean and ten English infant-directed speech (IDS) samples were analyzed. The two infant groups demonstrated similar consonant patterns, but showed different vowel patterns from one another. For both languages, infant vowel patterns were related to those of ambient language IDS. Ambient lan... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2571884 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2571884 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2571883&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19570318%26dopt%3DAbstract This report describes the development of CLEX, a new web-based cross-linguistic database for lexical data from adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. CLEX provides tools for a range of analyses within and across languages. It is designed to incorporate additional language datasets easily, and to permit users to define mappings between lexical items in pairs of languages for more specific cross-linguistic comparisons. PMID: 19570318 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2571883 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2571883 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2571882&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19570319%26dopt%3DAbstract This study compared segmental distribution patterns for consonants and vowels in English infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS). A previous study of Korean indicated that segmental patterns of IDS differed from ADS patterns (Lee, Davis & MacNeilage, 2008). The aim of the current study was to determine whether such differences in Korean are universal or language-specific. Results indicate that consonant distribution patterns of English IDS were significantly different from English ADS. Speakers who used IDS produced fewer fricatives, affricates, nasals and liquids, but more stops and glides, than speakers who used ADS. In terms of vowels, IDS speakers produced more high-back vowels /u / and /I/ diphthongs than ADS speakers. These results indicate both general trend... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2571882 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2571882 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542964&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523260%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kyratzis A, Ross TS, Koymen SB ABSTRACTChildren are believed to construct their causal theories through talk and interaction, but with the exception of a few studies, little or nothing is known about how young children justify and build theories of the world together with same-age peers through naturally occurring interaction, Children's sensitivity to when a pair or group of interlocutors who interact frequently together feel that a justification is needed, is an index of developing pragmatic competence (Goetz & Shatz, 1999) and may be influenced by interactive goals and gender identity positioning. Studies suggest that salient contexts for justifications for young children are disagreement and control (e.g. Veneziano & Sinclair, 1995) but researchers have been less r... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542964 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542964 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542963&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523261%26dopt%3DAbstract This study analyzes the acquisition of relative clauses in Japanese to determine the semantic and functional characteristics of children's relative clauses in spontaneous speech. Longitudinal data from five Japanese children are analyzed and compared with English data (Diessel & Tomasello, 2000). The results show that the relative clauses produced by Japanese children predominantly have stative/attributive predicates. Additionally, early relative clauses in Japanese are often used to identify a referent that is not present in the context of interaction. These findings contrast with Diessel & Tomasello's (2000) English data, and possible explanations include the input that children are exposed to, which reflects typological characteristics of noun modification in Japanese. PMID:... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542963 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542963 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542962&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523262%26dopt%3DAbstract We describe and interpret several regularities in these patterns for two groups of children ('young': three-five-year-olds; and 'older': six-eight-year-olds) and an adult comparison group. The evidence indicates a strong correspondence of adult and child responses to structural complexity, both in terms of global fluency measures and in terms of more detailed indicators of planning load. In addition, we report some specific contrasts in the patterning for children and adults that suggest disparities in processing resources and/or in local planning strategies. PMID: 19523262 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542962 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542962 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542961&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523263%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Jaswal VK ABSTRACTWhen they see a familiar object and an unfamiliar one, and are asked to select the referent of a novel label, children usually choose the unfamiliar object. We asked whether this 'disambiguation effect' reflects an expectation that each object has just one label (mutual exclusivity), or an expectation about the intent of the speaker who uses a novel label. In Study 1, when a speaker gazed at or pointed toward the familiar object in a novel-familiar pair, children aged 2 ; 6 (N=64) selected that object in response to a neutral request, but were much less likely to do so in response to a label request. In Study 2, when a speaker both gazed at and pointed toward the familiar object, toddlers (N=16) overwhelmingly selected the familiar object in response to a lab... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542961 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542961 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542960&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523264%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Glenwright M, Pexman PM ABSTRACTAdults distinguish between ironic remarks directed at targets (sarcasm) and ironic remarks not directed at specific targets. We investigated the development of children's appreciation for this distinction by presenting these speech acts to 71 five- to six-year-olds and 71 nine- to ten-year-olds. Five- to six-year-olds were beginning to understand the non-literal meanings of sarcastic speakers and ironic speakers but did not distinguish ironic and sarcastic speakers' intentions. Nine- to ten-year-olds were more accurate at understanding sarcastic and ironic speakers and they distinguished these speakers' intentions, rating sarcastic criticisms as more 'mean' than ironic criticisms. These results show that children can determine the non-literal me... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542960 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542960 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542967&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19490747%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Fais L, Kajikawa S, Amano S, Werker JF ABSTRACTIn this work, we examine a context in which a conflict arises between two roles that infant-directed speech (IDS) plays: making language structure salient and modeling the adult form of a language. Vowel devoicing in fluent adult Japanese creates violations of the canonical Japanese consonant-vowel word structure pattern by systematically devoicing particular vowels, yielding surface consonant clusters. We measured vowel devoicing rates in a corpus of infant- and adult-directed Japanese speech, for both read and spontaneous speech, and found that the mothers in our study preserve the fluent adult form of the language and mask underlying phonological structure by devoicing vowels in infant-directed speech at virtually the same rate... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542967 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542967 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542966&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19490748%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Chen LM, Kent RD ABSTRACTThe early development of vocalic and consonantal production in Mandarin-learning infants was studied at the transition from babbling to producing first words. Spontaneous vocalizations were recorded for 24 infants grouped by age: G1 (0 ; 7 to 1 ; 0) and G2 (1 ; 1 to 1 ; 6). Additionally, the infant-directed speech of 24 caregivers was recorded during natural infant-adult interactions to infer language-specific effects. Data were phonetically transcribed according to broad categories of vowels and consonants. Vocalic development, in comparison with reports for children of other linguistic environments, exhibited two universal patterns: the prominence of [] and [], and the predominance of low and mid vowels over high vowels. Language-specific patterns we... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542966 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542966 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542965&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19490749%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Krott A, Gagné CL, Nicoladis E ABSTRACTThe present study investigates children's bias when interpreting novel noun-noun compounds (e.g. kig donka) that refer to combinations of novel objects (kig and donka). More specifically, it investigates children's understanding of modifier-head relations of the compounds and their preference for HAS or LOCATED relations (e.g. a donka that HAS a kig or a donka that is LOCATED near a kig) rather than a FOR relation (e.g. a donka that is used FOR kigs). In a forced-choice paradigm, two- and three-year-olds preferred interpretations with HAS/LOCATED relations, while five-year-olds and adults showed no preference for either interpretation. We discuss possible explanations for this preference and its relation to another word learning bias... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542965 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542965 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542968&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19435545%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Tardif T, Fletcher P, Liang W, Kaciroti N ABSTRACTParent report instruments adapted from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) examined vocabulary development in children aged 0 ; 8 to 2 ; 6 for two Chinese languages, Mandarin (n=1694) and Cantonese (n=1625). Parental reports suggested higher overall scores for Mandarin- than for Cantonese-speaking children from approximately 1 ; 4 onward. Factors relevant to the difference were only-child status, monolingual households and caregiver education. In addition to the comparison of vocabulary scores overall, the development of noun classifiers, grammatical function words common to the two languages, was assessed both in terms of the age and the vocabulary size at which these terms are acquired. Whereas age... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542968 Tue, 12 May 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542968 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2320752&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19327196%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Arnon I ABSTRACTChildren find object relative clauses difficult. They show poor comprehension that lags behind production into their fifth year. This finding has shaped models of relative clause acquisition, with appeals to processing heuristics or syntactic preferences to explain why object relatives are more difficult than subject relatives. Two studies here suggest that children (age 4 ; 6) do not find all object relatives difficult: a corpus study shows that children most often hear and produce object relatives with pronominal subjects. But they are most often tested on ones with lexical-NP subjects (e.g. The nurse that the girl is drawing). When tested on object relatives with pronominal subjects (e.g. The nurse that I am drawing), similar to those they actually hear and ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2320752 Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2320752 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2320767&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19323857%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Simon E ABSTRACTThis paper reports the results of a longitudinal case study examining the acquisition of the English voice system by a three-year-old native speaker of Dutch. The study aims to examine whether the child develops two different phonetic systems or uses just one system for both languages, and compares the early L2 acquisition process with L1, simultaneous bilingual and late L2 acquisition. The results reveal that the child successfully acquires the English contrast between short-lag and long-lag stops, but gradually changes the Dutch system, which contrasts prevoiced with short-lag stops, into the direction of the English system. PMID: 19323857 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2320767 Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2320767 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2320763&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19323858%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Aoyama K, Peters AM, Winchester KS ABSTRACTWe investigated developmental changes during the transition from one-word to two-word production, focusing on strategies to lengthen utterances phonologically and to control utterances suprasegmentally. We hypothesized that there is a period of reorganization at the onset of word combinations indicated by decreases in both filler syllables (Fillers) and final syllable lengthening (FSL). The data are from a visually impaired child (Seth) between 1 ; 6.21 and 1 ; 10.26. Seth produced many Fillers until 1 ; 9 when their number decreased for about two weeks after which they changed in nature. FSL was observed until 1 ; 8, but diminished at 1 ; 9. These two regressions coincide with the onset of word combination. PMID: 19323858 [PubMed... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2320763 Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2320763 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2320757&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19323859%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explored the ability of three- and four-year-old children without disabilities to perform tasks involving sequences of graphic symbols. Thirty participants were asked to transpose spoken simple sentences into graphic symbols by selecting individual symbols corresponding to the spoken words, and to interpret graphic symbol utterances by selecting one of four photographs corresponding to a sequence of three graphic symbols. The results showed that these were not simple tasks for the participants, and few of them performed in the expected manner - only one in transposition, and only one-third of participants in interpretation. Individual response strategies in some cases lead to contrasting response patterns. Children at this age level have not yet developed the skills required to ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2320757 Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2320757 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2267242&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19281635%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we examined whether or not infants can access subtle prosodic information such as lexical stress in a word learning task. We tested infants younger than 1 ; 2 to see if they could learn two new word-object associations that differ only in stress pattern (Sww versus wSw). Our results are the first to demonstrate that, even without contextual support, infants at 1 ; 0 succeed at this task, suggesting that the salient acoustic properties associated with lexical stress facilitate word-object associative learning. PMID: 19281635 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2267242 Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2267242 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2256185&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19272209%26dopt%3DAbstract We report on usage of dative constructions with the word bei2 'to give' in 86 parents and 53 three-year-old children during conversations. The parents used more P/SV than ditransitive bei2-datives, and vice versa for the children. Both groups showed a similar usage pattern of optional elements and variant structures in their ditransitive and P/SV bei2-datives. The roles of multiple construction types, optional elements and variant structures in children's learning of bei2-dative constructions are described. PMID: 19272209 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2256185 Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2256185 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2256187&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19272194%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Westergaard M ABSTRACTThis paper discusses different approaches to language acquisition in relation to children's acquisition of word order in wh-questions in English and Norwegian. While generative models assert that children set major word order parameters and thus acquire a rule of subject-auxiliary inversion or generalized verb second (V2) at an early stage, some constructivist work argues that English-speaking children are simply reproducing frequent wh-word+auxiliary combinations in the input. The paper questions both approaches, re-evaluates some previous work, and provides some further data, concluding that the acquisition of wh-questions must be the result of a rule-based process. Based on variation in adult grammars, a cue-based model to language acquisition is prese... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2256187 Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2256187 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2212186&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19232142%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Liu HM, Tsao FM, Kuhl PK ABSTRACTAcoustic-phonetic exaggeration of infant-directed speech (IDS) is well documented, but few studies address whether these features are modified with a child's age. Mandarin-speaking mothers were recorded while addressing an adult and their child at two ages (0 ; 7-1 ; 0 and 5 ; 0) to examine the acoustic-phonetic differences between IDS and child-directed speech (CDS). CDS exhibits an exaggeration pattern resembling that of IDS - expanded vowel space, longer vowels, higher pitch and greater lexical tone differences - when compared to ADS. Longitudinal analysis demonstrated that the extent of acoustic exaggeration is significantly smaller in CDS than in IDS. Age-related changes in maternal speech provide some support for the hypothesis that mothe... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2212186 Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2212186 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2212185&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19232143%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Zapf JA, Smith LB ABSTRACTThis paper reports on partial knowledge in two-year-old children's learning of the regular English plural. In Experiments 1 and 2, children were presented with one kind and its label and then were either presented with two of that same kind (A-->AA) or the initial picture next to a very different thing (A-->AB). The children in A-->AA rarely produced the plural. The children in A-->AB supplied the singular form of A but children in A-->AA did not. Experiment 3 compared the performance of English-speaking and Japanese-speaking children in A-->AA with common and novel nouns. The Japanese-speaking children (learning a language without a mandatory plural) supplied the singular form of A but the English-speaking children did not. The find... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2212185 Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2212185 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2201902&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19224651%26dopt%3DAbstract This study describes how young Spanish-speaking children become gradually more adept at encoding temporality using grammar and discourse skills in intra-conversational narratives. The research involved parallel case studies of two Spanish-speaking children followed longitudinally from ages two to three. Type/token frequencies of verb tense, temporal/aspectual markers and narrative components were analyzed to explore interrelationships among grammatical and discourse skills. Children progressed from scattered unsystematic means of encoding temporality to mastering a basic linguistic system that included devices to mark location of events, temporal relations and aspectual meanings. The consolidation of perfective past tense to express narrative events marked a crucial developmental point whi... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2201902 Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2201902 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2201901&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19224652%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Eigsti IM, Bennetto L ABSTRACTLanguage in autism has been the subject of intense interest, because communication deficits are central to the disorder, and because autism serves as an arena for testing theories of language acquisition. High-functioning older children with autism are often considered to have intact grammatical abilities, despite pragmatic impairments. Given the heterogeneity in language skills at younger ages, this assumption merits further investigation. Participants with autism (n=21, aged nine to seventeen years), matched on chronological age, receptive vocabulary and IQ, to 22 typically developing individuals, completed a grammaticality judgment task. Participants with autism were significantly less sensitive than controls, specifically for third person sing... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2201901 Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2201901 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2195856&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19220923%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Stoll S, Gries ST ABSTRACTIn this paper we propose a method for characterizing development in large longitudinal corpora. The method has the following three features: (i) it suggests how to represent development without assuming predefined stages; (ii) it includes caregiver speech/child-directed speech; (iii) it uses statistical association measures for investigating co-occurrence data. We exemplify the implementation of these proposals with data on the acquisition of the patterning of tense and grammatical aspect of four Russian children. The method, however, is suitable for a wide range of other acquisition questions as well. PMID: 19220923 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2195856 Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2195856 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2195855&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19220924%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kirjavainen M, Theakston A, Lieven E ABSTRACTEnglish-speaking children make pronoun case errors producing utterances where accusative pronouns are used in nominative contexts (me do it). We investigate whether complex utterances in the input (Let me do it) might explain the origin of these errors. Longitudinal naturalistic data from seventeen English-speaking two- to four-year-olds was searched for 1psg accusative-for-nominative case errors and for all 1psg preverbal pronominal contexts. Their caregivers' data was also searched for 1psg preverbal pronominal contexts. The data show that the children's proportional use of me-for-I errors correlated with their caregivers' proportional use of me in 1psg preverbal contexts. Furthermore, the verbs that children produced in me-error ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2195855 Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2195855 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2188559&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19215636%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Slaughter V, Peterson CC, Carpenter M ABSTRACTTwenty-four infants were tested monthly for the production of imperative and declarative gestures between 0 ; 9 and 1 ; 3 and concurrent mother-infant free-play sessions were conducted at 0 ; 9, 1 ; 0 and 1 ; 3 (Carpenter, Nagell & Tomasello, 1998). Free-play transcripts were subsequently coded for maternal talk about mental states. Results revealed that the earlier infants produced imperative gestures, the more frequently their mothers made reference to the infants' own volitional states (want, try, need, etc.) at 1 ; 3. The same relation also emerged using maternal reports of their infants' gestural communication on a standard language development measure. These results indicate that mothers' talk about desires and intentions... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2188559 Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2188559 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2105128&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19138457%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines Lithuanian children's acquisition of gender agreement using an elicited production task. Lithuanian is a richly inflected Baltic language, with two genders and seven cases. Younger (N=24, mean 3 ; 1, 2 ; 5-3 ; 8) and older (N=24, mean 6 ; 3, 5 ; 6-6 ; 9) children were shown pictures of animals and asked to describe them after hearing the animal's name. Animal names differed with respect to familiarity (novel vs. familiar), derivational status (diminutive vs. simplex) and gender (masculine vs. feminine). Analyses of gender-agreement errors based on adjective and pronoun usage indicated that younger children made more errors than older children, with errors more prevalent for novel animal names. For novel animals, and for feminine nouns, children produced fewer errors wit... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2105128 Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2105128 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2102027&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19134231%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Cohen-Mimran R ABSTRACTThe purpose of the present study was to explore the contribution of phonological and general language skills to reading fluency of pointed and unpointed Hebrew scripts. Reading, language and memory tasks were performed by 48 fifth-grade monolingual native Hebrew speakers. Results showed that the most marked predictor for both pointed and unpointed reading texts was the morphological measure, whereas the phonological awareness measure contributed to neither of them. The semantic and syntactic measures contributed only to unpointed text reading fluency. The discussion highlights how readers in script, such as unpointed Hebrew, rely on general language skills in order to achieve fluent reading. PMID: 19134231 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source:... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2102027 Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2102027 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2087657&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19123961%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Valian V, Solt S, Stewart J ABSTRACTSix tests of the spontaneous speech of twenty-one English-speaking children (1 ; 10 to 2 ; 8; MLUs 1.53 to 4.38) demonstrate the presence of the syntactic category determiner from the start of combinatorial speech, supporting nativist accounts. Children use multiple determiners before a noun to the same extent as their mothers (1) when only a and the or (2) all determiners are analyzed, or (3) when children and mothers are matched on determiner and noun types and determiner+noun tokens. (4) Overlap increases as opportunity for overlap increases: children use multiple determiners with more than 50% of nouns used at least twice with a determiner and with 80% of nouns used at least six times with a determiner. (5) Formulae play a limited role i... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2087657 Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100 2087657 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2054077&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19094372%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Edith , Philip PMID: 19094372 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2054077 Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:16:15 +0100 2054077 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2041426&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19079827%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Chetail F, Mathey S ABSTRACTThe aim of the study was to investigate the syllable activation hypothesis in French beginning readers. Second graders performed a lexical decision task in which bisyllabic words were presented in two colours that either matched the syllable boundaries or not. The data showed that the children were sensitive to syllable match and to syllable complexity. In addition, good readers were slowed down while poor readers were speeded up by syllable match. These findings suggest that syllables are functional units of lexical access in children and that syllable activation is influenced by reading level. PMID: 19079827 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2041426 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:00:00 +0100 2041426 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2041425&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19079828%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hickmann M, Taranne P, Bonnet P ABSTRACTTwo experiments compared how French vs. English adults and children (three to seven years) described motion events. Given typological properties (Talmy, 2000) and previous results (Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Hickmann, 2003; Slobin, 2003), the main prediction was that Manner should be more salient and therefore more frequently combined with Path (MP) in English than in French, particularly with four types of 'target' events, as compared to manner-oriented 'controls': motion up/down (Experiment I, N=200) and across (Experiment II, N=120), arrivals and departures (both experiments). Results showed that MP-responses (a) varied with events and increased with age in both languages, but (b) were more frequent in English at all ages with all eve... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2041425 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:00:00 +0100 2041425 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2041424&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19079829%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Salonen T, Laakso M ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to examine what four-year-old children repair in their speech. For this purpose, conversational self-repairs (N=316) made by two typically developing Finnish-speaking children (aged 4 ; 8 and 4 ; 11) were examined. The data comprised eight hours of natural interactions videotaped at the children's homes. The tapes were analyzed using conversation analysis. The children made phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical and non-linguistic self-repairs, and also inserted additional material into their utterances. Finnish-speaking children made more syntactic and fewer morphological self-repairs than the previous research on English-speaking children suggests. Furthermore, most self-repairs were found in talk during pretend ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2041424 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:00:00 +0100 2041424 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2041423&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19079845%26dopt%3DAbstract We report an experiment in which parental report predicts infant performance in a referent identification task at 1 ; 6. Unlike in previous research of this kind (i.e. Houston-Price, Mather & Sakkalou, 2007), infants saw items only once, and image pairs were taxonomic sisters. The match between parental report and infant behaviour provides evidence of the item-level accuracy of both measures of lexical comprehension, and informs our understanding of how British parents interpret standardized Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs). PMID: 19079845 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2041423 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:00:00 +0100 2041423 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2041427&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19079821%26dopt%3DAbstract This article focuses on one important linguistic device children have to learn: connectives. The main questions are: Do connectives emerge in a fixed order? And if so, how can this order be explained? In line with Bloom et al. (1980) we propose to explain similarities in the development in terms of cumulative cognitive complexity: complex relations are acquired later than simple ones. Following a cognitive approach to coherence relations, we expect positive relations to be acquired before negatives and additives before temporals and causals. We develop a multidimensional approach to the acquisition process in order to account for the variation among children. Hypotheses were tested by analyzing data from children aged 1 ; 5-5 ; 6 on the emergence of Dutch connectives. The multidimensional ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2041427 Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:00:00 +0100 2041427 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1961904&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19006600%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Segal O, Nir-Sagiv B, Kishon-Rabin L, Ravid D ABSTRACTThe study examines prosodic characteristics of Hebrew speech directed to children between 0 ; 9-3 ; 0 years, based on longitudinal samples of 228,946 tokens (8,075 types). The distribution of prosodic patterns - the number of syllables and stress patterns - is analyzed across three lexical categories, distinguishing not only between open- and closed-class items, but also between these two categories and a third, innovative, class, referred to as between-class items. Results indicate that Hebrew CDS consists mainly of mono- and bisyllabic words, with differences between lexical categories; and that the most common stress pattern is word-final, with parallel distributions found for all categories. Additional analyses showed t... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1961904 Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1961904 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1956001&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19000333%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines pragmatic differentiation in early trilingual development through a longitudinal analysis of language choice in a developing Tagalog-Spanish-English trilingual child. The child's patterns of language choice with different language users are analyzed at age 1 ; 10 and 2 ; 4 to examine: (1) whether evidence for pragmatic differentiation can be found even before age two and in simultaneous interactions with distinct language users; (2) whether lexical gaps determine the child's choice of one language over another; and (3) whether her patterns of language choice are affected by the interlocutors language use and their responses to mixing. The results indicate that the child was capable of selecting the appropriate language according to the interlocutors' language from the e... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1956001 Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1956001 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1956000&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19000334%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Saylor MM, Carroll CB ABSTRACTThe present study investigated three-year-olds' sensitivity to direct and indirect cues to others' knowledge states for word learning purposes. Children were given either direct, physical cues to knowledge or indirect, verbal cues to knowledge. Preschoolers revealed a better ability to learn words from a speaker following direct, physical cues to their knowledge state. Implications for children's emerging pragmatic competence are discussed. PMID: 19000334 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1956000 Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1956000 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1955999&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19000335%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Stolt S, Haataja L, Lapinleimu H, Lehtonen L ABSTRACTThe emergence of grammar in relation to lexical growth was analyzed in a sample of Finnish children (N=181) at 2 ; 0. The Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory was used to gather information on both language domains. The onset of grammar occurred in close association with vocabulary growth. The acquisition of the nominal and verbal inflections of Finnish differed when analyzed in relation to the lexicon in which they are used: the strongest growth in the acquisition of case form types occurred when the nominal lexicon size was roughly between 50 and 250 words, whereas verb inflectional types were acquired actively from the beginning of the verb lexicon acquisition. The findings extend the previous findin... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1955999 Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1955999 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1860223&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18838011%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Berman RA ABSTRACTThis paper outlines functionally motivated quantifiable criteria for characterizing different facets of discourse - global-level principles, categories of referential content, clause-linking complex syntax, local linguistic expression and overall discourse stance - in relation to the variables of development, genre and modality. Concern is with later, school-age language development, in the conviction that the long developmental route of language acquisition can profitably be examined in the context of extended discourse. Findings are reviewed from a cross-linguistic project that elicited narrative and expository texts in both speech and writing at four age groups: (9-10 years, 12-13, 16-17 and adults). Clear developmental patterns emerge from middle childhoo... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1860223 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:28:32 +0100 1860223 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1860222&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18838012%26dopt%3DAbstract This study investigates whether Dutch, English and French two- to three-year-old children differentiate in their use of determiners between non-specific/specific reference, newness/givenness in discourse and mutual/no mutual knowledge between interlocutors. A brief analysis of the input shows a clear association between form and function, although there are some language differences in this respect. As soon as determiner use can be statistically analyzed, the children show a relatively adult-like pattern of association for the distinctions of non-specific/specific and newness/givenness. The distinction between mutual/no mutual knowledge appears later. Reference involving no mutual knowledge is scarcely evidenced in the input and barely used by the children at this age. The development of a... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1860222 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:28:26 +0100 1860222 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1860221&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18838013%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: VAN Linden S, Vroomen J ABSTRACTIn order to examine whether children adjust their phonetic speech categories, children of two age groups, five-year-olds and eight-year-olds, were exposed to a video of a face saying /aba/ or /ada/ accompanied by an auditory ambiguous speech sound halfway between /b/ and /d/. The effect of exposure to these audiovisual stimuli was measured on subsequently delivered auditory-only speech identification trials. Results were compared to a control condition in which the audiovisual exposure stimuli contained non-ambiguous and congruent sounds /aba/ or /ada/. The older children learned to categorize the initially ambiguous speech sound in accord with the previously seen lip-read information (i.e. recalibration), but this was not the case for the young... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1860221 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:28:21 +0100 1860221 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1860220&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18838014%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Noel M, Peterson C, Jesso B ABSTRACTOral language skills in the preschool years are predictive of children's later reading success and literacy acquisition, and among these language skills, vocabulary and narrative ability play important roles. Children from low socioeconomic families face risks to their language development and because of threats to these skills it is important to identify factors that promote their development among high-risk groups. This preliminary study explored two potential factors that may be related to language skills in 56 low SES mother-child dyads (children aged 2 ; 8-4 ; 10), namely child temperament and parenting stress. Results showed that child temperament and parenting stress were related to children's oral language skills. Child temperament c... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1860220 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:28:16 +0100 1860220 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1860219&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18838015%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Fitneva SA ABSTRACTEvidentials are grammatical source-of-knowledge markers. In Bulgarian they provide information about authorship - whether the speaker has personally acquired the information or not - and modality - whether perceptual or cognitive mechanisms were involved in the information's generation. In two experiments, Bulgarian kindergarteners and third-graders (ages 6 and 9, N=96) had to decide which one of two utterances containing different evidentials to believe. Experiment 1 showed that children draw on modality information in their decisions: Third-graders favored perceptual over cognitive and kindergartners cognitive over perceptual sources. Experiment 2 showed that third-graders can also draw on the authorship information carried by evidentials: they favored fir... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1860219 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:28:11 +0100 1860219 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1860218&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18838016%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Soderstrom M, Blossom M, Foygel R, Morgan JL ABSTRACTThe current study examines the syntactic and prosodic characteristics of the maternal speech to two infants between six and ten months. Consistent with previous work, we find infant-directed speech to be characterized by generally short utterances, isolated words and phrases, and large numbers of questions, but longer utterances are also found. Prosodic information provides cues to grammatical units not only at utterance boundaries, but also at utterance-internal clause boundaries. Subject-verb phrase boundaries in questions also show reliable prosodic cues, although those of declaratives do not. Prosodic information may thus play an important role in providing preverbal infants with information about the grammatically relev... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1860218 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:28:04 +0100 1860218 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1860217&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18838017%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hoff E, Core C, Bridges K ABSTRACTTwo studies test the hypotheses that individual differences in phonological memory among children younger than two years can be assessed using a non-word repetition task (NWR) and that these differences are related to the children's rates of vocabulary development. NWR accuracy, real word repetition accuracy and productive vocabulary were assessed in 15 children between 1 ; 9 and 2 ; 0 in Study 1 and in 21 children between 1 ; 8 and 2 ; 0 in Study 2. In both studies, NWR accuracy was significantly related to vocabulary percentile and, furthermore, uniquely accounted for a substantial portion of the variance in vocabulary when real word repetition accuracy was held constant. The findings establish NWR as a valid measure of phonological memory i... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1860217 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:28:01 +0100 1860217 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1830017&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18808731%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Zamuner TS ABSTRACTThis research examines phonological neighbourhoods in the lexicons of children acquiring English. Analyses of neighbourhood densities were done on children's earliest words and on a corpus of spontaneous speech, used to measure neighbours in the target language. Neighbourhood densities were analyzed for words created by changing segments in word-onset position (rhyme neighbours as in pin/bin), vowel position (consonant neighbours as in pin/pan/) and word-offset position (lead neighbours as in pin/pit). Results indicated that neighbours in children's early lexicons are significantly more often distinguished in word-onset position (rhyme neighbours) and significantly less often distinguished in word-offset position (lead neighbours). Moreover, patterns in chil... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1830017 Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1830017 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1798898&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18793474%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Taelman H, Durieux G, Gillis S ABSTRACTA longitudinal analysis is presented of the fillers of a Dutch-speaking child between 110 and 27. Our analysis corroborates familiar regularities reported in the literature: most fillers resemble articles in shape and distribution, and are affected by rhythmic and positional constraints. A novel finding is the impact of the lexical environment: particular function words act as words that attract occurrences of schwa fillers after them. The child inserts significantly more schwa fillers in these contexts. The anchor words are among the most frequent words preceding articles in the input, indicating a sharp sensitivity to such distributional regularities. Nasal fillers too are affected by distributional learning, but at the phonological lev... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1798898 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1798898 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1795226&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18789180%26dopt%3DAbstract This study assesses the extent of phonetic continuity between babble and words in four Italian children followed longitudinally from 09 or 010 to 20 two with relatively rapid and two with slower lexical growth. Prelinguistic phonetic characteristics, including both (a) consistent use of specific consonants and (b) age of onset and extent of consonant variegation in babble, are found to predict rate of lexical advance and to relate to the form of the early words. In addition, each child's lexical profile is analyzed to test the hypothesis of non-linearity in phonological development. All of the children show the expected pattern of phonological advance: Relatively accurate first word production is followed by lexical expansion, characterized by a decrease in accuracy and an increase of simi... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1795226 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1795226 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1795225&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18789181%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Gámez PB, Shimpi PM, Waterfall HR, Huttenlocher J ABSTRACTWe used a syntactic priming paradigm to show priming effects for active and passive forms in monolingual Spanish-speaking four- and five-year-olds. In a baseline experiment, we examined children's use of the fue-passive form and found it was virtually non-existent in their speech, although they produced important elements of the form. Children used a more frequent Spanish passive form, the subjectless/se-passive. In a priming experiment, we presented children with drawings described using either active or fue-passive sentences. Children then described novel drawings. Priming was induced for active and passive forms; however, children did not produce the fue-passive provided for them. Instead, children used the subj... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1795225 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1795225 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1786513&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18783633%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explores different frequency effects on children's interpretations of novel nounbag FOR eggshead relations (e.g. sandwich bag (FOR) or egg white (PART-OF)) when explaining the meaning of novel compounds and/or whether they are affected by overall frequency of modifier-head relations in their vocabulary. Children's interpretations were affected by their experience with relations in compounds with the same head, but not by overall relation frequency. Adults' interpretations were affected by their experience with relations in compounds with the same modifier, suggesting that children and adults use similar but different knowledge to interpret compounds. Furthermore, only children's interpretations revealed an overuse of visually perceivable relations. PMID: 18783633 [PubMed - a... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1786513 Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1786513 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1780308&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18778530%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines the perfective past tense of Greek in an elicited production and an acceptability judgment task testing 35 adult native speakers and 154 children in six age groups (age range: 35 to 85) on both existing and novel verb stimuli. We found a striking contrast between sigmatic and non-sigmatic perfective past tense forms. Sigmatic forms (which have a segmentable perfective affix (-s-) in Greek) were widely generalized to different kinds of novel verbs in both children and adults and were overgeneralized to existing non-sigmatic verbs in children's productions. By contrast, non-sigmatic forms were only extended to novel verbs that were similar to existing non-sigmatic verbs, and overapplications of non-sigmatic forms to existing sigmatic verbs were extremely rare. We argue th... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1780308 Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1780308 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1780307&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18778531%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Demuth K, McCullough E ABSTRACTResearchers have long been puzzled by children's variable omission of grammatical morphemes, often attributing this to a lack of semantic or syntactic competence. Recent studies suggest that some of this variability may be due to phonological constraints. This paper explored this issue further by conducting a longitudinal study of five English-speaking one- to two-year-olds' acquisition of articles. It found that most children were more likely to produce articles when these could be produced as part of a disyllabic foot. However, acoustic analysis revealed that one child initially produced all articles as independent prosodic words. These findings confirm that some of the variable production of articles is conditioned by constraints on children's... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1780307 Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1780307 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1755698&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18761756%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Mariscal S ABSTRACTNativist and constructivist accounts differ in their characterization of children's knowledge of grammatical categories. In this paper we present research on the process of acquisition of a particular grammatical system, gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase, in children under three years of age. The design of the longitudinal study employed presents some variations in relation to classical studies. The aim was to obtain a large corpus of NP data which would allow different types of analysis of the children's productions to be carried out. Intra-individual variability in early NP types was analyzed and measured, and an elicitation task for adjectives was used. Results show that the acquisition of NP and gender agreement is a complex process which advan... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1755698 Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1755698 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1755697&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18761757%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Storkel HL ABSTRACTThe influence of phonological (i.e. individual sounds), lexical (i.e. whole-word forms) and semantic (i.e. meaning) characteristics on the words known by infants age 14 to 26 was examined, using an existing database (Dale & Fenson, 1996). For each noun, word frequency, two phonological (i.e. positional segment average, biphone average), two lexical (i.e. neighborhood density, word length) and four semantic variables (i.e. semantic set size, connectivity, probability resonance, resonance strength) were computed. Regression analyses showed that more infants knew (1) words composed of low-probability sounds and sound pairs, (2) shorter words with high neighborhood density, and (3) words that were semantically related to other words, both in terms of the num... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1755697 Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1755697 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1755696&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18761775%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Spenader J, Smits EJ, Hendriks P ABSTRACTMany comprehension studies have shown that children as late as age 66 misinterpret object pronouns as co-referring with the referential subject about half the time. A recent review of earlier experiments testing children's interpretation of object pronouns in sentences with quantified subjects (Elbourne, 2005) also suggests that there is a . In contrast, two experiments addressing English children's pronoun production (Bloom, Barss, Nicol & Conway, 1994; de Villiers, Cahillane & Altreuter, 2006) show almost perfect usage. The aim of this study is to verify this asymmetry between pronoun production and pronoun comprehension for Dutch, and to investigate the effects of coherent discourse and topicality on pronoun production and co... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1755696 Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1755696 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1755695&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18761776%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Winskel H, Luksaneeyanawin S ABSTRACTThai has imperfective aspectual morphemes that are not obligatory in usage, whereas English has obligatory grammaticized imperfective aspectual marking on the verb. Furthermore, Thai has verb final deictic-path verbs that form a closed class set. The current study investigated if obligatoriness of these grammatical categories in Thai and English affects the expression of co-occurring temporal events and actions depicted in three different short animations. Ten children aged four years, five years, six years and seven years, and ten adults as a comparison group from each of the two languages participated. English speakers explicitly expressed the ongoingness of the events more than Thai speakers, whereas Thai speakers expressed the entrance ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1755695 Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1755695 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1743208&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18752702%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Childers JB, Paik JH ABSTRACTThis paper examines children's attention to cross-situational information during word learning. Korean-speaking children in Korea and English-speaking children in the US were taught four nonce words that referred to novel actions. For each word, children saw four related events: half were shown events that were very similar (Close comparisons), half were shown events that were not as similar (Far comparisons). The prediction was that children would compare events to each other and thus be influenced by the events shown. In addition, children in these language groups could be influenced differently as their verb systems differ. Although some differences were found across language, children in both languages were influenced by the type of events show... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1743208 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1743208 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1743207&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18752703%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Chen LM, Kent RD ABSTRACTEarly prosodic development (f0 variation) was systematically measured in Mandarin-learning infants at the transition from babbling to producing first words. Spontaneous vocalizations of twenty-four infants aged 0 ; 7 to 1 ; 6 were recorded in 45-minute sessions. The speech production of twenty-four caregivers was also audio-recorded during caregiver-infant natural daily interactions at home. All recordings were transcribed using broad prosodic patterns. Analysis revealed four major findings: (1) falling f0 contours were more prominently produced than level and rising contours; (2) high prosodic patterns occurred more frequently than mid and low prosodic patterns; (3) these distribution patterns of f0 contours showed significant similarities in babbling... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1743207 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1743207 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561804&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588712%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study we investigate potential relationships between age, fast mapping skills and existing vocabulary knowledge in both languages of developing bilingual preschool children. Participants were twenty-six typically developing children, ages 3 ; 0 to 5 ; 3. All children learned Hmong as their primary home language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). Fast mapping and vocabulary knowledge tasks were administered in L1 and L2. For vocabulary knowledge, scores were comparable in L1 and L2; for fast mapping, scores were somewhat greater in L1 than L2. In contrast to previous findings with monolingual children, fast mapping performance was not related to age or existing vocabulary knowledge in either Hmong or English. There were, however, significant positive and negative cross-lang... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561804 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:26 +0100 1561804 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561803&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588713%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Goodman JC, Dale PS, Li P ABSTRACTStudies examining factors that influence when words are learned typically investigate one lexical category or a small set of words. We provide the first evaluation of the relation between input frequency and age of acquisition for a large sample of words. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory provides norming data on age of acquisition for 562 individual words collected from the parents of children aged 0 ; 8 to 2 ; 6. The CHILDES database provides estimates of frequency with which parents use these words with their children (age: 0 ; 7-7 ; 5; mean age: 36 months). For production, across all words higher parental frequency is associated with later acquisition. Within lexical categories, however, higher frequency is related to... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561803 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:21 +0100 1561803 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561802&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588714%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Dabrowska E, Tomasello M ABSTRACTRapid acquisition of linguistic categories or constructions is sometimes regarded as evidence of innate knowledge. In this paper, we examine Polish children's early understanding of an idiosyncratic, language-specific construction involving the instrumental case - which could not be due to innate knowledge. Thirty Polish-speaking children aged 2 ; 6 and 3 ; 2 participated in a elicited production experiment with novel verbs that were demonstrated as taking nouns in the instrumental case as patients. Children heard the verbs in sentences with either masculine or feminine nouns (which take different endings in the instrumental case), and were tested with new nouns of the same and of the opposite gender. In both age groups, a substantial majority ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561802 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:19 +0100 1561802 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561801&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588715%26dopt%3DAbstract This study seeks further understanding of the processes that support this behavior by examining a previous finding that three-year-old children are also biased to generalize novel names for objects made from deformable materials by shape, even after the materials are made salient. In two experiments, we examined the noun generalizations of 72 two-, three- and four-year-old children with rigid and deformable stimuli. Data reveal that three-year-old, but not two- or four-year-old, children generalize names for deformable things by shape, and that this behavior is not due to the syntactic context of the task. We suggest this behavior is an overgeneralization of three-year-old children's knowledge of how rigid things are named and discuss the implications of this finding for a developmental ac... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561801 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:17 +0100 1561801 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561800&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588716%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Lee S, Davis BL, Macneilage PF ABSTRACTSegmental distributions of Korean infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) were compared. Significant differences were found in both consonant and vowel patterns. Korean-speaking mothers using IDS displayed more frequent labial consonantal place and less frequent coronal and glottal place and fricative manner. They showed more use of mid and low central vowels in IDS as well as more use of language-specific Korean phonemes. Mothers produced significantly more fortis and geminate and less lenis consonant phonemes in IDS than in ADS. Findings suggest that Korean mothers speaking to infants in the IDS speech style use sounds that more closely match infant production propensities as well as highlighting perceptually salien... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561800 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:15 +0100 1561800 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561799&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588717%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Bleses D, Vach W, Slott M, Wehberg S, Thomsen P, Madsen TO, Basbøll H ABSTRACTThe main objective of this paper is to describe the trajectory of Danish children's early lexical development relative to other languages, by comparing a Danish study based on the Danish adaptation of The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) to 17 comparable CDI-studies. The second objective is to address the feasibility of cross-linguistic CDI-comparisons. The main finding is that the developmental trend of Danish children's early lexical development is similar to trends observed in other languages, yet the vocabulary comprehension score in the Danish children is the lowest across studies from age 1 ; 0 onwards. We hypothesize that the delay is related to the nature of Da... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561799 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:12 +0100 1561799 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561798&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588718%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Bleses D, Vach W, Slott M, Wehberg S, Thomsen P, Madsen TO, Basbøll H ABSTRACTThis paper presents a large-scale cross-sectional study of Danish children's early language acquisition based on the Danish adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI). Measures of validity and reliability imply that the Danish adaptation of the American CDI has been adjusted linguistically and culturally in appropriate ways which makes it suitable for tapping into Danish children's language acquisition. The study includes 6,112 randomly selected children in the age of 0 ; 8 to 3 ; 0, and results related to the development of early gestures, comprehension and production of words as well as grammatical skills, are presented. PMID: 18588718 [PubMed - in proces... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561798 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:09 +0100 1561798 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561797&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588719%26dopt%3DAbstract Early perception-late comprehension of grammar? The case of verbal - s: a response to de Villiers & Johnson (2007). J Child Lang. 2008 Aug;35(3):671-6 Authors: Soderstrom M ABSTRACTTwo recent papers (de Villiers & Johnson, 2007; Johnson, de Villiers & Seymour, 2005) have claimed that children have difficulty with verbal -s until five-six-years-old. This contrasts with perceptual studies showing evidence for sensitivity to the grammatical properties of verbal -s as young as 1; 4. These apparently conflicting findings can be reconciled by differentiating between early perceptual grammatical knowledge and later semantic comprehension. PMID: 18588719 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561797 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:06 +0100 1561797 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561796&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588720%26dopt%3DAbstract This article reviews the proliferation of terms that have been coined to denote the language environment of the young child. It is argued that terms are often deployed by researchers without due consideration of their appropriateness for particular empirical studies. It is further suggested that just three of the dozen or more available terms meet the needs of child language researchers in most instances: child-directed speech, infant-directed speech and exposure language. The phenomena denoted by these terms are then considered. The term register is generally borrowed for this purpose from sociolinguistics. However, close inspection of this concept reveals that the notion of register needs to be constrained, in specified ways, in order to be of any real value within the field of child lan... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561796 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:04 +0100 1561796 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561795&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588721%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Bavin EL, Prior M, Reilly S, Bretherton L, Williams J, Eadie P, Barrett Y, Ukoumunne OC ABSTRACTThe Macarthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) have been used widely to document early communicative development. The paper reports on a large community sample of 1,447 children recruited from low, middle and high socioeconomic (SES) areas across metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Regression analyses were conducted to determine the extent to which communicative behaviours reported at 0 ; 8 and 1 ; 0 predicted vocabulary development at 1 ; 0 and 2 ; 0. In support of previous findings with smaller, often less representative samples, gesture and object use at 1 ; 0 were better predictors of 2 ; 0 vocabulary than were gesture and object use at 0 ; 8. At 1 ; 0, children ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561795 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:02 +0100 1561795 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1561794&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18588722%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Murphy VA, Dockrell J, Messer D, Farr H ABSTRACTChildren with word finding difficulties (CwWFDs) are slower and less accurate at naming monomorphemic words than typically developing children (Dockrell, Messer & George, 2001), but their difficulty in naming morphologically complex words has not yet been investigated. One aim of this paper was to identify whether CwWFDs are similar to typically developing children at producing inflected (morphologically complex) words. A second aim was to investigate whether the dual-mechanism model could account for the use of morphology in a sample of CwWFDs, exemplifying the notion that regular inflections are part of a rule-based system and computed on-line, while irregular inflections are retrieved directly from the associative system (... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1561794 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:27:59 +0100 1561794 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519929&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416859%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: McDonald JL This paper examines the role of age, working memory span and phonological ability in the mastery of ten different grammatical constructions. Six- through eleven-year-old children (n=68) and adults (n=19) performed a grammaticality judgment task as well as tests of working memory capacity and receptive phonological ability. Children showed early mastery of some grammatical structures (e.g. word order, article omissions) while even the oldest children differed from adults on others (e.g. past tense, third person singular agreement). Working memory capacity and phonological ability accounted for variance in grammaticality judgments above and beyond age effects. In particular, working memory capacity correlated with structures involving verb morphology and word order; ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519929 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519929 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519928&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416860%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study we test whether children understand where to mean route or absolute location and whether the size of the space or elevation made a difference. Previous research has documented developmental changes over the preschool years in children's non-verbal spatial reasoning. Forty-eight children between two and five years of age were interviewed. We asked them to point in response to where questions about an object, rooms on the same floor and on a different floor. All children pointed to the location of the hidden objects. The youngest children pointed to the route to rooms while the oldest children were more likely to point to the location of rooms. With age, the children gradually used more spatial location terms than deictic terms in response to where. These results suggest that c... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519928 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519928 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519927&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416861%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Göksun T, Küntay AC, Naigles LR How might syntactic bootstrapping apply in Turkish, which employs inflectional morphology to indicate grammatical relations and allows argument ellipsis? We investigated whether Turkish speakers interpret constructions differently depending on the number of NPs in the sentence, the presence of accusative case marking and the causative morpheme. Data were collected from 60 child speakers and 16 adults. In an adaptation of Naigles, Gleitman & Gleitman (1993), the participants acted out sentences (6 transitive and 6 intransitive verbs in four different frames). The enactments were coded for causativity. Causative enactments increased in two-argument frames and decreased in one-argument frames, albeit to a lesser extent than previously... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519927 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519927 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519926&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416862%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Brandt S, Diessel H, Tomasello M This paper investigates the development of relative clauses in the speech of one German-speaking child aged 2 ; 0 to 5 ; 0. The earliest relative clauses we found in the data occur in topicalization constructions that are only a little different from simple sentences: they contain a single proposition, express the actor prior to other participants, assert new information and often occur with main-clause word order. In the course of the development, more complex relative constructions emerge, in which the relative clause is embedded in a fully-fledged main clause. We argue that German relative clauses develop in an incremental fashion from simple non-embedded sentences that gradually evolve into complex sentence constructions. PMID: 18416862... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519926 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519926 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519925&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416863%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we examined all the repetitions used in spontaneous conversations by 41 French adult-child dyads, with children aged 2 ; 3 and 3 ; 6, to test the hypotheses that adults repeat to establish that they have understood, and that children repeat to ratify what adults have said. Analysis of 978 exchanges containing repetitions showed that adults use them to check on intentions and to correct errors, while children use them to ratify what the adult said. With younger children, adults combine their repeats with new information. Children then re-repeat the form originally targeted by the adult. With older children, adults check on intentions but less frequently, and only occasionally check on forms. Older children also re-repeat in the third turn but, like adults, add further informa... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519925 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519925 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519924&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416864%26dopt%3DAbstract The objectives were to explore the often reported noun advantage in children's language acquisition using a picture naming paradigm and to explore the variables that affect picture naming performance. Participants in Experiment 1 were aged three and five years, and in Experiment 2, five years. The stimuli were action and object pictures. In Experiment 1, action pictures produced more errors than object pictures for the three-year-olds, but not the five-year-olds. A qualitative analysis of the errors revealed a somewhat different pattern of errors across age groups. In Experiment 2 there was no robust difference in accuracy for the actions and objects but naming times were longer for actions. Across both experiments, imageability was a robust predictor of object naming performance, while sp... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519924 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519924 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519923&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416865%26dopt%3DAbstract This study investigates when and how French-learning children acquire the main grammatical constraint on the noun category, i.e. the obligatory use of a preceding determiner. Spontaneous speech samples coming from the corpora of twenty children in each of three age groups, 1 ; 8, 2 ; 6, 3 ; 3, were transcribed and coded with respect to morphosyntactic, lexical and length properties of nouns. Results indicate that noun grammaticalization is a gradual process which involves early transitional procedures, as well as an increasing diversity in the content and contexts of determiner use. In support of prosodic hypotheses, noun length effects (in favor of monosyllabic nouns) mostly occurred at 1 ; 8. Animacy effects supporting the lexical hypothesis (in favor of inanimate nouns) occurred at 2 ; ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519923 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519923 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519922&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416866%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Taelman H, Gillis S Fikkert (1994) analyzed a large corpus of Dutch children's early language production, and found that they often add targetless syllables to their words in order to create bisyllabic feet. In this note we point out a methodological problem with that analysis: in an important number of cases, epenthetic vowels occur at places where grammatical morphemes (e.g. plural and diminutive suffixes) may be expected. Hence, the seemingly targetless syllables may represent grammatical morphemes. A reanalysis of Fikkert's original data reveals that her rhythmic explanation cannot be maintained if those cases are excluded from the analysis. PMID: 18416866 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519922 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519922 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519921&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416867%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Rabin J, Deacon H The study reported here examined the manner in which children represent morphologically complex words in the lexicon. Children in grades 1 to 5 completed a fragment completion task to assess the priming effects of morphologically related words. Both inflected and derived words (e.g. needs and needy, respectively) were more effective primes than control words (e.g. needle) that share similar orthography and phonology with the target word (e.g. need). These effects were consistent across the developmental period studied. Further, equivalent priming effects from the inflected and derived forms suggest that these word types are represented similarly in the developing lexicon. PMID: 18416867 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519921 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519921 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519920&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18416868%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Lin HL, Tsay JS This case study is based on the longitudinal data of a girl (LYC, 1 ; 2-3 ; 3) acquiring Taiwan Southern Min (TSM) as her first language, and it aims to discover the overgeneralization pattern of children acquiring causatives in TSM. Among the three types of causative, the errors found in other languages are mostly with lexical causatives; however, in TSM, the errors occur with morphological and analytic causatives. Being an analytic language, TSM tends to spell out the causative meaning through morphological and analytic causatives and thus most errors occur with these two types. In contrast, lexical causatives, which contain a semantic element CAUSE, were acquired late; in the data collected (1 ; 2-3 ; 3) lexical causatives were not yet found. This case study... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519920 Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100 1519920 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519940&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300427%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Seidl A, Johnson EK Past research has indicated that English-learning infants begin segmenting words from speech by 7-5 months of age (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995). More recent work has demonstrated, however, that 7-5-month-olds' segmentation abilities are severely limited. For example, the ability to segment vowel-initial words from speech reportedly does not appear until 13.5 to 16 months of age (Mattys & Jusczyk, 2001; Nazzi, Dilley, Jusczyk, Shattuck-Hufnagel & Jusczyk, 2005). In this paper, we report on three experiments using the Headturn Preference procedure that investigate both phonetic and phonological factors influencing 11-month-olds' segmentation of vowel-initial words from speech. We replicate earlier findings suggesting that infants have difficulty segment... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519940 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519940 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519939&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300428%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Pawłowska M, Leonard LB, Camarata SM, Brown B, Camarata MN The aim of this study was to uncover factors accounting for the ability of children with specific language impairment (SLI) to learn agreement morphemes in intervention. Twenty-five children with SLI who participated in a six-month intervention program focused on teaching third person singular -s or auxiliary is/are/was showed a wide range of use of the target morpheme after intervention. Regression analyses showed that age and two factors expected to be related to agreement--the use of noun plural -s and subject/verb constructions prior to intervention--significantly predicted progress in the acquisition of agreement morphemes. In contrast, the pretreatment use of morphemes hypothesized to be unrelated to agreem... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519939 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519939 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519938&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300429%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Pine JM, Conti-Ramsden G, Joseph KL, Lieven EV, Serratrice L The Agreement/Tense Omission Model (ATOM) predicts that English-speaking children will show similar patterns of provision across different tense-marking morphemes (Rice, Wexler & Hershberger, 1998). The aim of the present study was to test this prediction by examining provision rates for third person singular present tense and first and third person singular forms of copula BE and auxiliary BE in longitudinal data from eleven English-speaking children between the ages of 1;10 and 3;0. The results show, first, that there were systematic differences in the provision rates of the different morphemes; second, that there were systematic differences in the rate at which all of the three morphemes were provided with pro... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519938 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519938 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519937&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300430%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Friend M, Keplinger M Early language comprehension may be one of the most important predictors of developmental risk. The need for performance-based assessment is predicated on limitations identified in the exclusive use of parent report and on the need for a performance measure with which to assess the convergent validity of parent report of comprehension. Child performance data require the development of procedures to facilitate infant attention and compliance. Forty infants (20 at 1;4 and 20 at 1;8) acquiring English completed a standard picture book task and the same task was administered on a touch-sensitive screen. The computerized task significantly improved task attention, compliance and performance. Reliability was high, indicating that infants were not responding ran... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519937 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519937 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519936&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300431%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined the spontaneous production of determiners by two French-speaking children aged 1;5-2;5. It found that determiners were produced earlier with monosyllabic words, and later with disyllabic and trisyllabic words. This suggests that French-speaking children's early determiners are prosodically licensed as part of a binary foot, with determiners appearing more consistently only once prosodic representations become more complex. This study therefore provides support for the notion that grammatical morphemes first appear in prosodically licensed contexts, suggesting that some of the early variability in morphological production is systematic and predictable. PMID: 18300431 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519936 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519936 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519935&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300432%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Theakston AL, Lieven EV Children pass through a stage in development when they produce utterances that contain auxiliary BE (he's playing) and utterances where auxiliary BE is omitted (he playing). One explanation that has been put forward to explain this phenomenon is the presence of questions in the input that model S-V word order (Theakston, Lieven & Tomasello, 2oo3). The current paper reports two studies that investigate the role of the input in children's use and non-use of auxiliary BE in declaratives. In Study 1, 96 children aged from 2;5 to 2;10 were exposed to known and novel verbs modelled in questions only or declaratives only. In Study 2, naturalistic data from a dense database from a single child between the ages of 2;8 to 3;2 were examined to investigate the ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519935 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519935 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519934&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300433%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined information about adjective meanings available in adults' spoken discourse in the original 27 CHILDES corpora of typically developing English-speaking children. In order to increase the probability that adjectives would be novel to children to whom they were addressed, only RARE adjectives were examined (those that occurred < or =5 times in the corpus, N=878). Contexts surrounding adjectives (+/-3 utterances on either side of the target) were scored for linguistic clues to meaning, including related language, compare/ contrast and evaluative information. Linguistic contexts contained more information in adult-child conversations than in adult-adult conversations. There were differences among information categories. For example, explicit definitions were relatively ra... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519934 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519934 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519933&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300434%26dopt%3DAbstract This study sought to determine why American parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds communicate in different ways with their children. Forty-seven parent-child dyads were videotaped engaging in naturalistic interactions in the home for ninety minutes at child age 2;6. Transcripts of these interactions provided measures of child-directed speech. Children's vocabulary comprehension skills were measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at 2;6 and one year later at 3;6. Results indicate that: (I) child-directed speech with toddlers aged 2;6 predicts child vocabulary skill one year later, controlling for earlier toddler vocabulary skill; (2) child-directed speech relates to socioeconomic status as measured by income and education; and (3) the relation between socioeconomic sta... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519933 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519933 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519932&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300435%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Brooks R, Meltzoff AN We found that infant gaze following and pointing predicts subsequent language development. At ages 0;10 or 0;11, infants saw an adult turn to look at an object in an experimental setting. Productive vocabulary was assessed longitudinally through two years of age. Growth curve modeling showed that infants who gaze followed and looked longer at the target object had significantly faster vocabulary growth than infants with shorter looks, even with maternal education controlled; adding infant pointing strengthened the model. We highlight the role of social cognition in word learning and emphasize the communicative-referential functions of early gaze following and pointing. PMID: 18300435 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519932 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519932 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519931&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300436%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Patael S, Diesendruck G The present study investigated the roles of pattern detection capacities and understanding of intentions in children's learning of linguistic rules. We taught two-year-olds a Hebrew morphological distinction between noun and verb forms using two different training protocols. The protocols were identical in all parameters except that only in an Intentional, but not in a Control condition, were children introduced to the stimuli in an intentional communicative context. We found that children learned the morphological rule only in the Intentional condition. Thus, besides their pattern detection capacities, children's understanding of intentions substantially boosts their learning of meaningful rules. PMID: 18300436 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Sourc... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519931 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519931 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519930&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18300437%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Booth J, Vitkovitch M Two groups of children were given pictures of animals to name as quickly as they could. The groups comprised 40 nursery aged children (mean age 3; 11) and 40 Year 2 children (mean age 6;9) attending primary school in London. The 30 animals were presented one by one, on cards, and any errors made by the children were noted. Consistent with a similar object naming study with adults (Vitkovitch, Kirby & Tyrrell, 1996) and a study with children (Gershkoff-Stowe, 2002), picture naming errors referred to earlier named objects. However, while adults showed below-chance interference from objects that had only just been named (Lag 1), children were most susceptible to interference from very recently named objects (see also Gershkoff-Stowe, 2002). Furthermore, ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519930 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100 1519930 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519949&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062356%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Houston-Price C, Mather E, Sakkalou E Two experiments are described which explore the relationship between parental reports of infants' receptive vocabularies at 1 ; 6 (Experiment 1a) or 1;3, 1;6 and 1;9 (Experiment 1b) and the comprehension infants demonstrated in a preferential looking task. The instrument used was the Oxford CDI, a British English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (Words & Gestures). Infants were shown pairs of images of familiar objects, either both name-known or both name-unknown according to their parent's responses on the CDI. At all ages, and on both name-known and name-unknown trials, preference for the target image increased significantly from baseline when infants heard the target's label. This discrepancy suggests that parental report under... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519949 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519949 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519948&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062357%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Laakso A, Smith LB Assessing whether domain-general mechanisms could account for language acquisition requires determining whether statistical regularities among surface cues in child directed speech (CDS) are sufficient for inducing deep syntactic and semantic structure. This paper reports a case study on the relation between pronoun usage in CDS, on the one hand, and broad verb classes, on the other. A corpus analysis reveals statistical regularities in co-occurrences between pronouns and verbs in CDS that could cue physical versus psychological verbs. A simulation demonstrates that a simple statistical learner can acquire these regularities and exploit them to activate verbs that are consistent with incomplete utterances in simple syntactic frames. Thus, in this case, surfa... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519948 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519948 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519947&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062358%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Snow D Previous studies have suggested that intonation development in infants and toddlers reflects an interaction between physiological and linguistic influences. The immediate background research for this study, however, was based on vocalizations that were only one syllable in length. By extending the analysis to polysyllabic utterances, the present study evaluated a broader range of physiological constraints on intonation production than the maximally simple context of monosyllabic utterances had permitted. The width and direction of pitch change across one- and two-syllable nuclear tones were acoustically analyzed in utterances produced by 60 children between the ages of 0;6 and 1;11. The results showed that the children controlled the characteristic intonation pattern of... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519947 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519947 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519946&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062359%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we analyze this process for parent and child, with data from 40 dyads, to show how adults initiate joint attention in talking to young children (mean ages 1;6 and 3;0). Adults first get their children's attention with a summons (e.g. Ready?, See this?), but cease using such forms once children give evidence of attending. Children signal their attention by looking at the target object, evidence used by the adults. Only at that point do adults begin to talk about the object. From then on, they use language and gesture to offer information about and maintain attention on the target. The techniques adults rely on are interactive: they establish joint attention and maintain it throughout the exchange. PMID: 18062359 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Journal of Child Lan... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519946 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519946 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519945&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062360%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Redford MA, Gildersleeve-Neumann CE The study evaluated whether durational and allophonic cues to word boundaries are intrinsic to syllable production, and so acquired with syllable structure, or whether they are suprasyllabic, and so acquired in phrasal contexts. Twenty preschool children (aged 3;6 and 4;6) produced: (1) single words with simple and complex onsets (e.g. nail vs. snail); and (2) two-word phrases with intervocalic consonant sequences and varying boundary locations (e.g. this nail vs. bitty snail). Comparisons between child and adult control productions showed that the durational juncture cue was emergent in the four-year-olds' productions of two-word phrases, but absent elsewhere. In contrast, the allophonic cue was evident even in the three-year-olds' producti... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519945 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519945 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519944&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062361%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Shimpi PM, Huttenlocher J Parents' object labels can be distinguished by whether the child is already attending to the object (follow-in) or not (lead-in). Lead-in labels have been found to be associated with low vocabulary. The current study examines whether the relation between lead-in labels and child vocabulary is influenced by whether the child's attention is redirected. Eighteen mother-infant dyads were videotaped at 1;2, 1;6 and 1;10. Results indicate that parents' use of successful lead-in labels is positively correlated with children's vocabulary, whereas use of unsuccessful labels is negatively correlated. Finally, use of gesture is associated with the redirective success of lead-in labels. PMID: 18062361 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Journal of Child L... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519944 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519944 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519943&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062362%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hohenstein J, Akhtar N Previous research has examined children's ability to add inflections to nonsense words. The current experiments were designed to determine whether children, ranging in age from 1;9 to 2;10 (N = 34), could demonstrate productivity by dropping verbal inflections. In Experiment 1, children added -ed and -ing to novel stems, and dropped them from novel inflected forms and did so largely appropriately. In Experiment 2, they dropped -ing from verbs, but not from nouns, suggesting that when young children drop inflections they tend to do so appropriately, and not simply for ease of pronunciation. PMID: 18062362 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519943 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519943 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519942&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062363%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Scofield J, Behrend DA When presented with a pair of objects, one familiar and one unfamiliar, and asked to select the referent of a novel word, children reliably demonstrate the disambiguation effect and select the unfamiliar object. The current study investigated two competing word learning accounts of this effect: a pragmatic account and a word learning principles account. Two-, three- and four-year-olds were presented with four disambiguation conditions, a word/word, a word/fact, a fact/word and a fact/fact condition. A pragmatic account predicted disambiguation in all four conditions while a word learning principles account predicted disambiguation in the word/word and fact/word conditions. Results indicated that children disambiguated in word/word and fact/word condition... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519942 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519942 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519941&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D18062364%26dopt%3DAbstract This study analyzes data from children for whom two sampling stages were available; the first corresponding to a vocabulary size as close as possible to 200 words (mean 217, range 167-281), the second to a vocabulary size ranging from 400 to 650 words (mean 518, range 416-648). The children's vocabulary composition was analyzed by calculating, for each sampling stage, the percentage of common nouns, verbs and closed-class words. The increase in percentage points of the various lexical items between the first and second sampling stages was also analyzed. Data confirmed the predominance of nouns over verbs and closed-class words at both sampling stages, while verbs and closed-class words showed a higher percentage increase than nouns. The results provide evidence that children who reached th... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519941 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519941 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519959&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822135%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Szagun G, Stumper B, Sondag N, Franik M The acquisition of noun gender on articles was studied in a sample of 21 young German-speaking children. Longitudinal spontaneous speech data were used. Data analysis is based on 22 two-hourly speech samples per child from 6 children between 1;4 and 3;8 and on 5 two-hourly speech samples per child from 15 children between 1;4 and 1;10. The use of gender marked articles occurred from 1;5. Error frequencies dropped below 1o% by 3;0. Definite and indefinite articles were used with similar frequencies and error rates did not differ in the two paradigms. Children's errors were systematic. For monosyllabic nouns and for polysyllabic nouns ending in -el, -en and -er errors were more frequent for nouns which did not conform to the rule that such... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519959 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519959 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519958&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822136%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Levorato MC, Roch M, Nesi B The relation between text and idiom comprehension in children with poor text comprehension skills was investigated longitudinally. In the first phase of the study, six-year-old first graders with different levels of text comprehension were compared in an idiom and sentence comprehension task. Text comprehension was shown to be more closely related to idiom comprehension than sentence comprehension. The follow-up study, carried out eight months later on less-skilled text comprehenders, investigated whether an improvement in text comprehension was paralleled by an improvement in idiom comprehension. The development of sentence comprehension was also taken into account. Children who improved in text comprehension also improved in idiom comprehension; t... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519958 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519958 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519957&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822137%26dopt%3DAbstract This study investigated the repertoire of classifiers produced by 492 Cantonese-speaking preschoolers in three age groups (3;0, 4;0 and 5;0). Spontaneous utterances produced in 30-minute toy-play contexts were collected and transcribed. Analyses identified a productive repertoire of 73 classifiers in the utterances, which could be appropriately classified into the typology proposed in the present study. An age-related increase in the number of classifier types per child as well as the repertoire size of each group was found. [symbol: see text] go3 (CL) was widely used as the general classifier by the young children. It was also discovered that the three-year-olds were already showing signs of grasping the basic syntax of classifiers. Cognitive, linguistic and contextual influences presumed... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519957 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519957 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519956&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822138%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Flynn V, Masur EF Twenty mothers' provision of responsive, supportive behavioural directive, and intrusive behavioural and attentional directive speech was investigated during interactions with their children at ages 0;10, 1;1, 1;5 and 1;9 in two natural contexts, free play and bathtime. Issues examined included developmental change, contextual differences, consistency across contexts and stability over time. Analyses revealed increases in frequencies of maternal responsive and supportive directive utterances and decreases in maternal intrusive directives with age. Differences between contexts included more speech and supportive directiveness during play than bath. Responsiveness and intrusive attentional directiveness demonstrated considerable consistency and stability. Mothe... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519956 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519956 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519955&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822139%26dopt%3DAbstract We present data on one verb, decide, that yields data that not only differs from the data for other similar verbs with the same children, but does not lend itself easily to either type of account. Data from a sentence elicitation task conducted with 20 typically-developing children (4;o-7;11), along with 3 case studies illustrate that children may not be assigning a referent for PRO in an adult-like manner for particular verbs. Instead they may be overgeneralizing the use of non-finite complements to finite contexts. PMID: 17822139 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519955 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519955 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519954&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822140%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kirby S, Becker M The purpose of this study was to determine the natural order of acquisition of the proform it, comparing deictic pronoun it, anaphoric pronoun it and expletive it. Files from four children (Adam, Eve, Nina and Peter) aged 1;6-3;0 in the CHILDES database were coded for occurrences of NP it (here it is) and expletive it (it's raining). Occurrences of NP it were coded for whether they followed an overt discourse anaphor (anaphoric it) or not (deictic it). All children examined produce deictic and anaphoric pronoun it from the very first files, but do not produce expletive it until 2-7 months later. Following Inoue's (1991) lexical-semantic reanalysis account of the acquisition of expletive there after locative there, we propose that children acquire expletive it... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519954 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519954 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519953&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822141%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines the mental processes involved in children's on-line recognition of inflected word forms using event-related potentials (ERPs). Sixty children in three age groups (20 six- to seven-year-olds, 20 eight- to nine-year-olds, 20 eleven- to twelve-year-olds) and 23 adults (tested in a previous study) listened to sentences containing correct or incorrect German noun plural forms. In the two older child groups, as well as in the adult group, over-regularized plural forms elicited brain responses that are characteristic of combinatorial (grammatical) violations. We also found that ERP components associated with language processing change from child to adult with respect to their onsets and their topography. The ERP violation effects obtained for over-regularizations suggest that ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519953 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519953 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519952&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822142%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Luyster R, Lopez K, Lord C Characterizing early communicative development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is valuable for understanding profiles of ability in this population. The current investigation was modeled on Charman, Drew, Baird & Baird (2003b). Analyses explored parent report of early vocabulary, non-verbal communication, functional object use and play skills on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) in 93 children with ASD, 31 children with developmental delay (DD) and 29 typically developing children. Results were generally consistent with those of Charman and colleagues (2003b), suggesting that skills improve with increasing non-verbal mental age and chronological age but that most children with ASD are delayed in recept... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519952 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519952 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519951&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822143%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined the effects of being born very preterm on children's early language development using prospective longitudinal data from a representative regional cohort of 90 children born very preterm (gestational age <33 weeks and/or birth weight <1,500 grams) and a comparison sample of 102 children born full term (gestational age 38-41 weeks). The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (CDI-WS) was used to assess children's language development at age 2;0 (corrected for gestational age at birth). Clear linear relationships were found between gestational age at birth and later language outcomes, with decreasing gestational age being associated with poorer parent-reported language skills. Specifically, children born extremely preterm (<28 we... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519951 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519951 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519950&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17822144%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Grassmann S, Tomasello M German children aged 2;1 heard a sentence containing a nonce noun and a nonce verb (Der Feks miekt). Either the noun or the verb was prosodically highlighted by increased pitch, duration and loudness. Independently, either the object or the action in the ongoing referential scene was the new element in the situation. Children learned the nonce noun only when it was both highlighted prosodically and the object in the scene was referentially new. They did not learn the nonce verb in any condition. These results suggest that from early in linguistic development, young children understand that prosodic salience in a sentence indicates referential newness. PMID: 17822144 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519950 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519950 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519968&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17542156%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines infants' joint attention behavior and language development in a rural village in Nigeria. Participants included eight younger (1 ;0 to 1 ;5, M age = 1 ;2) and eight older toddlers (1 ;7 to 2;7, M age= 2;1). Joint attention behaviors in social interaction contexts were recorded and coded at two time points six months apart. Analyses revealed that these toddlers were producing more high-level joint attention behaviors than less complex behaviors. In addition, the quality and quantity of behaviors produced by these Nigerian children was similar to those found in other cultures. In analyses of children's noun and verb comprehension and production (in relation to the number of nouns or verbs on a parental checklist), parents reported proportionally more verbs than nouns, per... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519968 Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519968 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519967&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17542157%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hurtado N, Marchman VA, Fernald A Research on the development of efficiency in spoken language understanding has focused largely on middle-class children learning English. Here we extend this research to Spanish-learning children (n=49; M=2;0; range= 1 ;3-3; 1) living in the USA in Latino families from primarily low socioeconomic backgrounds. Children looked at pictures of familiar objects while listening to speech naming one of the objects. Analyses of eye movements revealed developmental increases in the efficiency of speech processing. Older children and children with larger vocabularies were more efficient at processing spoken language as it unfolds in real time, as previously documented with English learners. Children whose mothers had less education tended to be slower a... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519967 Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519967 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519966&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17542158%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Cameron-Faulkner T, Lieven E, Theakston A The study investigates the development of English multiword negation, in particular the negation of zero marked verbs (e.g. no sleep, not see, can't reach) from a usage-based perspective. The data was taken from a dense database consisting of the speech of an English-speaking child (Brian) aged 2;3-3;4 (MLU 2.05-3.1) and his mother. The focus of the study was the emergence and usage of negators in the child's and mother's speech (e.g. no, not, can't, won't, don't). Two analyses were conducted: firstly, the emergence and usage of all negators in Brian's speech and in the input were calculated in order to present an overall picture of negator usage across the sample. The findings indicate a gradual and systematic development of negator s... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519966 Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519966 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519965&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17542159%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Stolt S, Klippi A, Launonen K, Munck P, Lehtonen L, Lapinleimu H, Haataja L, This paper focuses on the aspects of the lexicon in 66 prematurely born very-low-birth-weight and 87 full-term Finnish children at 2;0, studied using the Finnish version of the MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory. The groups did not differ in vocabulary size. Furthermore, the female advantage in vocabulary size was not seen in preterm children. The overall shapes of the trajectories for the main lexical categories as a function of vocabulary size were highly similar in both groups and followed those described in the literature. However, there were significant differences in the percentage of nouns and grammatical function words between the two groups. The results suggest that prematurity ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519965 Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519965 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519964&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17542160%26dopt%3DAbstract We present data on the language of space in Hungarian individuals with Williams syndrome (WS; 19 in the first, 15 in the second study, between 8; and 21; 11) and a verbal control (VC) group of typically developing (TD; 19 in the first, 15 in the second study, between 3;5 and 10;7) children from: (1) a study of elicited production and comprehension of spatial terms; and (2) a sentence completion task on case markers in their spatial and non-spatial use. The first study showed poorer performance in the WS group, but similar performance patterns and a special difficulty of SOURCE terms in both groups. We did not find overall group differences in the second study. We argue that WS performance patterns reflect WS spatial abilities and seem to be constrained by the same factors in WS as in TD. R... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519964 Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519964 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519963&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17542161%26dopt%3DAbstract We report four act-out experiments testing the sensitivity of adults and three- to five-year-old children to the distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses in English. Specifically, we test knowledge of the fact that restrictive relative clauses cannot modify a proper name head, and of the fact that relatives introduced by that (as opposed to a wh-pronoun) are obligatorily restrictive. Both children and adults show knowledge of these properties. No support was found for the hypothesis that children extend the block on proper name heads to wh-relatives. Both children and adults are sensitive to the syntactic context (double object vs. existential) in which the relative clause is embedded. However, adults differ from children in four respects. First, in the double o... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519963 Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519963 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519962&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17542162%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Matthews D, Lieven E, Theakston A, Tomasello M Using the weird word order methodology (Akhtar, 1999), we investigated children's understanding of SVO word order in French, a language with less consistent argument ordering patterns than English. One hundred and twelve French children (ages 2; 10 and 3; 9) heard either high or low frequency verbs modelled in either SOV or VSO order (both ungrammatical). Results showed that: (1) children were more likely to adopt a weird word order if they heard lower frequency verbs, suggesting gradual learning; (2) children in the high frequency conditions tended to correct the ungrammatical model they heard to the closest grammatical alternative, suggesting different models activated different grammatical schemas; and (3) children were less li... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519962 Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519962 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1519961&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D17542163%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Shulman C, Guberman A The ability to extract meaning through the use of syntactic cues, adapted from Naigles' (1990) paradigm, was investigated in Hebrew-speaking children with autism, those with specific language impairment (SLI) and those with typical language development (TLD), in an attempt to shed light on similarities and differences between the two diagnostic categories, both defined by primary language deficits. Thirteen children with autism and 13 with SLI were matched on chronological age, level of language functioning and gender, and 13 children with TLD were matched to the children in the two clinical groups according to language level, as measured by the CELF-P. Children with autism and children with TLD learned novel words using the syntactical cues in the senten... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1519961 Tue, 01 May 2007 04:00:00 +0100 1519961