Children who require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems while they are in the process of acquiring language face unique challenges because they use graphic symbols for communication. In contrast to the situation of typically developing children, they use different modalities for comprehension (auditory) and expression (visual). 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 deal with graphic symbols even though they have mastered the corresponding spoken language structures.

Children 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 thatthe girlis drawing). When tested on object relatives with pronominal subjects (e.g. The nurse thatIam drawing), similar to those they actually hear and produce, Hebrew speakers aged 4 ; 6 show good comprehension (85% accuracy) that matches their production ability. This suggests a different path of relative clause acquisition, one that is sensitive to fine-grained distributional information.

This paper argues for broader consideration of children's language production systems and, in that context, describes research on children's planning of syntactic structures. The research presented here measures non-fluency patterns in elicited utterances of varied syntactic type. 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.

When 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 label request. The expectation that each object has just one label can lead children to discount some individual behavioral cues to a speaker's intent, though it can be overridden given a combination of pragmatic cues.

Children 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 recognizant of ‘situations in which partners verbally assist in the construction of justifications as a means to maintain contact or create solidarity’ (Goetz & Shatz, 1999: 722) as contexts for justifications. The present study examined the spontaneously produced justification constructions in the naturally occurring free play of five friendship groups of preschool-aged children (aged from 3 ; 6 to 5 ; 4), in terms of the motivating context of the justification, marking of the causal relationship with a connective, and causal theories accessed in the talk. Partner expansion (validating justifications) was a salient motivating context for justifications, especially in the talk of friendship groups of girls, and seemed to privilege greater marking of the causal relationship with a connective and less arbitrary reasoning. One group of girls varied their use of validating justifications depending on the theme of play. Results are discussed in terms of the implications of use of validating justifications for children's causal theory building with peers, linguistic development, and pragmatic development.

We 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.

This 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.

To express object transfer, Cantonese-speakers use a ‘ditransitive’ ([V–R–T] or [V–T–R] where V=Verb, T=Theme, R=Recipient), or a more complex prepositional/serial-verb (P/SV) construction. Clausal elements in Cantonese datives can be optional (resulting in ‘full’ versus ‘non-full’ forms) or appear in variant orders (full non-canonical and full canonical). 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.

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.