Recent years have witnessed a cognitivist reaction against previous views of language learning. It had been held that mere exposure to language is a sufficient condition for language acquisition, whether by hypothesis testing (Katz 1966) or through passive learning (Braine 1971). Symptomatic of this approach were experiments investigating the learning of grammar in which subjects were taught artificial miniature languages without meaning, either through making guesses and receiving feedback from the experimenter (e.g. Hunt 1965) or passively, just by listening (Braine 1971). Although no such claim was explicitly made, language learning was actually treated as if it occurred independently of cognitive development. This one-sided approach has since been corrected by the cognitivists as represented in particular by the Geneva school (Sinclair 1971), who stress the importance of general cognitive development in language acquisition. Experiments with artificial languages bear the imprint of this approach and now involve semantic referents of the linguistic symbols (e.g. Moeser & Bregman 1972, 1973).

The speech of two mothers to their infants at several points between three and eighteen months of age was analysed. Simplicity of the speech, as measured by MLU, was about the same at all ages, and none of the other features of the mothers' speech style showed any abrupt change at the time the children started to talk. The changes that did occur started much earlier, at about seven months. These findings are incompatible with the explanation that mothers speak simply and redundantly in response to cues of attention and comprehension from the child listener. It is suggested that the mothers interacted with their infants using a conversational model, and that the changes in the mothers' speech reflect their children's growing ability to function as conversational partners.

The fundamental frequencies (F0) of infant cries were analysed to determine if: (1) mean cry F0 differed as a function of the sex of the infant, and (2) mean cry F0 differed due to the stimulus evoking the cry. The results of this study indicate that there are no significant differences in mean cry F0 as a function of infant's sex or cry-evoking stimulus. However, there was tendency for male infants to have higher mean F0 than females. The results suggest that the infants' F0 may confuse listeners attempting to make perceptual judgments about the source and nature of the cry.

This paper represents a partial condensation of the results of a study covering 14 months in a Russian-speaking child's phonological development. The original investigation tested a theory of phonological acquisition formulated by Olmsted (1971), finding that – though modifications were necessary to accommodate certain aspects of the Russian data – Olmsted's hypotheses were, by and large, upheld. The present paper gives the evidence in support of the theory and offers in addition some detailed information on the Russian-speaking child's acquisition of specific phones over the months examined.

Language is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional entity which involves symbolic and cognitive aspects, communicative aspects, and structural-linguistic aspects, both syntactic and semantic. The child's task during acquisition is to become aware of, to understand, and to operate according to convention in these three spheres. Analysis of the single-word production of three children revealed developmental changes in the salience of the three aspects and individual differences in functional styles of language acquisition. Use of the multi-dimensional approach also revealed differences in the relations between language, overt action, and a child's tendency to talk about action. Many differences, particularly in communicative style, were related to differences in parent–child interaction.

Fundamental frequency (F0) characteristics of non-distress vocalizations produced by four infants during the first twenty-four weeks of life were examined. This study constitutes the beginning of a longitudinal investigation of phonological development displayed by these children from birth to two years. Vocalization samples were obtained from home and laboratory recordings. Period-by-period F0 melody plots and descriptive statistics for each utterance were derived from computer analysis. Mean F0 centred around 335 Hz, with little variation evidenced when data were pooled. Duration, within-utterance range and variability did show developmental change. Individual F0 fluctuations deviating from the mean were felt to be associated with the infant's state, activity levels, and changing vocal repertoire. Sources of variation among studies of infant F0 characteristics appear to be related to differences in sampling and measurement techniques.

Attitudes towards imitation have been coloured by theoretical disputes about the nature of language. But even if language is rule-governed, children may be helped by imitation to discover the rules. This paper reviews evidence for and against imitation as a factor in the acquisition of syntax. The conclusion reached is that the effects of imitation on children's speech are too pervasive for the process to be dismissed as irrelevant. Many idiosyncratic features of children's speech seem to be traceable to imitation interacting with other simple mechanisms. For the author, the important question is no longer whether imitation can help children to acquire syntax, but precisely how a child gradually extracts grammatical information from the repertoire of imitated sequences at his disposal.

Data are presented which reflect a particular strategy used by a boy from 1; 10 to 2; 2 to manage certain polysyllabic words. Analysis shows that substitution – although probably an impetus for this strategy – was not involved in most or even all of the strategic processes themselves. An interpretation is made in terms of ‘underlying forms’ (Ingram 1970); details of the strategy and its component sub-strategies (‘ruses’) are presented.

Until now, although there has been research on the acquisition of intonation and stress, there has been no systematic study of the acquisition of lexical tone. Based on data collected during eight months of field work with 17 children of Mandarin-speaking families in Taipei, we have found that (1) tone acquisition is accomplished within a relatively short period of time; (2) mastery of tones occurs well in advance of mastery of seg-mentals; (3) the Mandarin high-level and falling tones are acquired before the rising and dipping tones; (4) the rising and dipping tones are substituted for each other throughout the tone acquisition process; (5) unstressed syllables are treated as if they were stressed, the tone assigned to them being an approximation of the phonetically conditioned pitch which they carry; (6) the tone sandhi phenomena associated with the dipping tone in Mandarin are acquired with very little error as soon as propositional utterances begin to be created. Explanations for these facts can be given in terms of the relative ease of learning to control glottal pitch as opposed to articulatory mechanisms, the relative difficulty of rising pitch, and the relative salience of tone in Mandarin.

Diary observations of two-year-olds' over-extended word use have been interpreted as arising from the word's underlying semantic feature structure, retrieval error, or limited vocabulary. The first interpretation was tested by analysing whether the same few features systematically characterized most over-extensions of a word (picture-naming task), and whether the same word was over-extended in comprehension (picture-pointing task). Four instances of over-extended use were studied in each of 5 children aged 1; 9 to 2; 3. A semantic feature interpretation is rejected, as is the view that overextensions are used by the child deliberately, to refer to objects which he knows are not properly named by the words. The need to construct models of early word meaning which reflect the early instability of conceptual organization, the probability of retrieval error in recall tasks, and the developmental history of individual words – particularly parental acceptance or rejection of use – is discussed.

The comprehension ability of 36 children at three stages of telegraphic speech (mean length of utterance 1·45, 2·03, and 2·76 morphemes) was assessed using active behavioural responses to declarative and imperative sentences. Both forms were varied in syntactic and semantic complexity. The responses were scored in terms of objects used by the child, whether or not the child's actions were appropriate, and whether or not appropriate verbalization accompanied the actions. A significant increase in verbal and behavioural appropriateness with age was found for both imperative and declarative forms. Consistent with Shipley, Smith & Gleitman's (1969) results, advanced telegraphic speakers responded most often to adult stimulus forms. However, contrary to Shipley et al.'s findings, all children, even the earliest telegraphic speakers, were more accurate in responding to adult forms than to child forms, suggesting that ability to comprehend adult linguistic forms is present even at the earliest stages of telegraphic speech. The findings imply that re-evaluation of the development of comprehension ability in telegraphic speakers is necessary.

Parents employ a special register when speaking to young children, containing features that mark it as appropriate for children who are beginning to acquire their language. Parental speech in English to 5 children (ages 0; 9–1; 6) and in Spanish to 4 children (ages 0; 8–1; 1 and 1; 6–1; 10) was analysed for the presence and distribution of these features. Thirty-four paralinguistic, prosodic, and interactional features were identified, and rate measures and proportions indicated developmental patterns and differences across languages. Younger children received a higher rate of features that marked affect; older children were addressed with more features that marked semantically meaningful speech. English-speaking parents relied comparatively more on paralinguistic and affective features, whereas Spanish-speaking parents used comparatively more interactional features. Despite these differences, there was a high degree of similarity across parents and languages for the most frequently occurring features.

An experiment on children between 2; 0 and 7; 0 showed that they initially interpret the same X to mean ‘same kind’ in contexts where it actually means ‘same one’. This led to a critical evaluation of Piaget's implicit contention that young children are using determiners anaphorically. Stress is placed on the linguistic rather than conceptual component of children's behaviour in experiments involving questions of the type: Is it the same X? It is argued that language is not only the tool of intelligence for representing ongoing cognitive development, but that it is also a problem area for children within its own right. It is suggested that the importance of young children's processing procedures on the linguistic environment has hitherto been underestimated in Piaget's interactive epistemology.

No reasonably successful theory of the acquisition of negation seems to have yet been proposed. Most studies describe post hoc what has taken place; but they fail to go on to suggest a theory that will predict what will take place. McNeill seems to be the only one to have explicitly aimed at a theory with at least a certain amount of predictive capacity, but his views leave much to be desired. This paper outlines an alternative proposal to cover four very early stages for the acquisition of negation systems in natural languages. It emphasizes the formal linguistic devices as the major variables that determine the various language-specific developmental sequences.

This study examined children's production and comprehension of questions, with the aim of discovering possible patterns in question acquisition. For the production study, questions were collected from 22 children aged 2; 0–3; 11. The data show a high frequency of yes-no, what, and where questions by age 2; 0. Why and how questions were infrequent but they increased with age. Who and when questions were rarely asked by children of any age. From the frequency data a rough chronological order of acquisition was inferred: what, where, why, how, when. In the comprehension study 100 children were tested, aged 3; 0–5; 5. The test controlled syntax and vocabulary and varied specific wh- question-words. The frequency of correct answers increased with the age of the children. When children made mistakes, their answers were not random but appeared to be following certain question-answering strategies. These included attention to semantic features of verbs and especially the placement of verbs in the sentence.

Three investigations of pre-school children's comprehension of younger and older are discussed. The results suggest that children focus on height (or the lack of the same) in their initial hypotheses about the meanings of the terms, ignoring age and/or function cues. The results also suggest that the acquisition of antonyms which may be characterized as marked–unmarked is not necessarily characterized by the child equating the meaning of the marked and unmarked terms prior to learning the correct meaning of the marked term. These findings are discussed in terms of recent theorizing about lexical-meaning acquisition.

In a replication and extension of a study on the pronoun it by Chipman & de Dardel, 61 children aged 3; 1–5; 2 were asked to carry out instructions of the form ‘There is playdough on the table. Give it to me’. They were also asked ‘Give me some’, and ‘Give me the playdough’. The results indicate that children do observe the distinction between definite and indefinite pronouns as it applies to quantity, from the youngest age studied. It is also argued that to the extent that children fail to fully comprehend the implications of using the definite pronoun, their failure applies to definite reference in general, and not the pronoun in particular.

Kewley-Port & Preston (1974) reported that when words beginning with /d/ and /t/ were first observed (about 2; 0 for their subject E4), the characteristics of their voice onset time (VOT) distributions remained constant until at least 4; 6. The present investigation reports data for VOT for /d/ and /t/, from six children at average age 3; 0. Values for /d/ clearly achieve the short voicing lag category of adults, reported by Lisker & Abramson (1964, 1970, 1971). Values for /t/, however, are much more widely dispersed than adult values for /t/, although falling within the category long voicing lag.

The present investigation examines three hypotheses concerning the development of temporal coordination of consonant clusters in the speech of children at four age levels. Results of the investigation reveal that, within the context of the consonant clusters tested, five- and seven-year-olds can be roughly separated from older children and adults on the basis of absolute duration of consonants. The implication appears to be that the timing programme used by children to achieve cluster control is different from that of adults.