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 by reanalyzing referential pronoun it to include an expletive subtype. This reanalysis takes place when children realize that expletive it never co-occurs with any deictic/anaphoric referent.

This study explores whether children can learn a structural processing bias relevant to pronoun interpretation from brief training. Over three days, 42 five-year-olds were exposed to narratives exhibiting a first-mentioned tendency. Two characters were introduced, and the first-mentioned was later described engaging in a solo activity. In our primary condition of interest, the Gesture Training condition, the solo-activity sentence contained an ambiguous pronoun, but co-speech gesture clarified the referent. There were two comparison conditions. In the Gender Training condition the characters were different genders, thereby avoiding ambiguity. In the Name Training condition, the first-mentioned name was simply repeated. Ambiguous pronoun interpretation was tested pre- and post-training. Children in the Gesture condition were significantly more likely to interpret ambiguous pronouns as the first-mentioned character after training. Results from the comparison conditions were ambiguous: there was a small but non-significant effect of training, but also no significant differences between conditions.

There is a noted advantage of dense neighborhoods in language acquisition, but the learning mechanism that drives the effect is not well understood. Two hypotheses – long-term auditory word priming and phonological working memory – have been advanced in the literature as viable accounts. These were evaluated in two treatment studies enrolling twelve children with phonological delay. Study 1 exposed children to dense neighbors versus non-neighbors before training sound production in evaluation of the priming hypothesis. Study 2 exposed children to the same stimuli after training sound production as a test of the phonological working memory hypothesis. Results showed that neighbors led to greater phonological generalization than non-neighbors, but only when presented prior to training production. There was little generalization and no differential effect of exposure to neighbors or non-neighbors after training production. Priming was thus supported as a possible mechanism of learning behind the dense neighborhood advantage in phonological acquisition.

Explicit verbal comparisons in 53 popular children's books were syntactically and semantically classified. Comparison types found in these books were contrasted with comparisons used as comprehension stimuli in extant developmental research. Although noun-phrase metaphor has been a popular syntactic form in research, it is a rare form in children's literature. Implications for the design of future stimulus sets are discussed.

Previous research has shown that the quality of mother-child interactions between pre-term children and their mothers tends to be poorer than that of full-term children and their mothers (Forcada-Guex, Pierrehumbert, Borghini, Moessinger & Muller-Nix, 2006). Mothers of pre-term children are less responsive and more intrusive in interactions with their children than mothers of full-term children (Forcada-Guex et al., 2006; Ionio, Lista, Mascheroni, Olivari, Confalonieri, Mastrangelo, Brazzoduro, Balestriero, Banfi, Bonanomi, Bova, Castoldi, Colombo, Introvini & Scelsa, 2017; Laing, McMahon, Ungerer, Taylor, Badawi & Spence, 2010). The current research explored differences between mothers of pre-term and full-term children in terms of interactive beliefs and style, and the potential for language development to be differentially predicted by maternal interactive beliefs and styles in pre-term versus full-term children. Independent t-tests were conducted to compare pre-term and full-term groups in relation to the measures of maternal interactive beliefs and styles. A series of multiple regression analyses were then performed separately for each group to examine the shared and unique contributions of maternal interactive beliefs and styles on full-term versus pre-term children's language development. The results showed that mothers of pre-term children were more intrusive-directive than mothers of full-term children; in contrast, mothers of full-term children were more responsive and supportive-directive in interactions with their children. Moreover, predictors of language development were different in full-term versus pre-term children; in full-term children, maternal supportive beliefs and responsiveness were significant predictors of language development evaluated by both the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development and the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory; in the pre-term group, maternal supportive and directive beliefs, as well as supportive and intrusive directiveness, were significant predictors, with the latter being negatively associated with language development indicators. This research can shed light on how to prevent language delay in children and improve mother-child interactions that contribute to language development, which may in turn improve language development in vulnerable children, children born pre-term in particular.

The current study investigates Spanish children's variation between the standard and non-standard forms for second person singular preterit –s (caiste ~ caístes). All second person singular preterit forms were extracted from the spontaneous speech of 78 children in Spain and analyzed for the effects of age, language contact setting, and lexical frequency. Results show that children in contact with Galician and Catalan produce more non-standard than children in non-contact areas like Madrid. Meanwhile, low-frequency verbs (e.g., pillaste) are more likely to occur with the non-standard –s than high-frequency verbs (e.g., fuiste). However, age is not a significant predictor of children's 2sg preterit production. These preliminary findings demonstrate that Spanish children do have the non-standard -s in their speech, and that their 2sg preterit forms are significantly conditioned by language contact and lexical frequency.

Peters sets up a very useful initial structure for classifying elements which are not yet well-defined morphemes, especially those that seem to be modelled phonologically on adult functors. Some of these primitive elements (pre-morphological items) have neither semantic content nor distributional properties that correspond to any adult morpheme, while the more advanced (protomorphological) items have begun to take on some of the syntactic/semantic characteristics of particular classes of adult-language morphemes.

Our motivation was to examine how toddler (2;6) and adult speakers of American English prosodically realize information status categories. The aims were three-fold: 1) to analyze how adults phonologically make information status distinctions; 2) to examine how these same categories are signaled in toddlers’ spontaneous speech; and 3) to analyze the three primary acoustic correlates of prosody (F0, intensity, and duration). During a spontaneous speech task designed as an interactive game, a set of target nouns was elicited as one of three types (new, given, corrective). Results show that toddlers primarily used H* across information status categories, with secondary preferences for deaccenting given information and for using L+H* for corrective information. Only duration distinguished information status, and duration, average pitch, and intensity differentiated pitch accent types for both adults and children. Discussion includes how pitch accent selection and input play a role in guiding prosodic realizations of information status.

This paper considers cross-linguistic findings concerning the early development of formal, arbitrary, grammatical systems in normal hearing and deaf children and in children with congenital brain abnormalities. The paper reviews evidence showing an early acquisition of grammatical forms. Such learning is typically dissociated from the development of the relevant semantics. Form–function correspondences were not required for the development of morphological paradigms and for certain aspects of formal syntax. This finding held across all the populations studied.

It is hypothesized that the autonomous nature of these formal paradigms accounts for their priority in learning cross-linguistically.

We investigated online early comprehension in Italian children aged 12 and 20 months, focusing on the role of morphosyntactic features (i.e., gender) carried by determiners in facilitating comprehension and anticipating upcoming words. A naturalistic eye-tracking procedure was employed, recording looking behaviours during a classical Looking-While-Listening task. Children were presented with sentences and pictures of two objects representing nouns characterised by either the same gender (determiner was uninformative) or a different gender (determiner was informative). As expected, 20-month-old children recognised the target picture when this was named, and they were faster in the different-gender condition. Interestingly, 12-month-old infants identified the target picture only when presented with an informative determiner (different-gender condition). These results suggest that, as early as 12 months of age and with an improvement seen at 20 months of age, toddlers can extract and use determiner gender features to enhance comprehension and make predictions about upcoming words.

The present study asked three questions. To what extent does the pre-school child use pronouns ambiguously in a naturalistic situation? Under what circumstances is such referential ambiguity likely to arise? How does the pre-school listener respond to such ambiguity? Sixteen pre-schoolers, four pairs of boys and four pairs of girls, were videotaped in a play situation. The results indicate that ambiguity of reference frequently arises, especially when disambiguation can be achieved only by verbal rather than non-verbal information. The presence of such ambiguity did not, however, influence the social responsiveness of the listener.

Twenty-one videotape recorded interactions of 42 preschool children (aged 3;4 to 5;3) in same-sexed dyads were coded and analysed to see how these children used the word no in their interactions. Results showed that while boys and girls used the word no equally frequently, they were found to use the word in different ways. A trend for boys to use no when correcting or prohibiting their playmate's behaviour more often than girls was revealed. Girls were more likely to provide reasons for denying or rejecting their playmate's proposition or suggestion. The overall findings of this study are comparable to previously reported results indicating that males and females employ different styles of speech in order to accomplish the same goal. However, unlike most studies conducted on language and sex, this study offers a unique approach in that it examines how boys and girls use a word that occurs equally frequently in their vocabulary to accomplish different goals.

This paper reports the results of a preliminary study dealing with the ways in which children between six and seven years of age organize spoken language. In particular it deals with aspects of the temporal and segmental structure of polysyllabic English words containing the syllable C/jul/ (e.g. pediculous). On the basis of data presented, it is suggested (a) that in order to meet certain phonological conditions it is the relations between syllable (and not segment) durations which must undergo modification towards the adult duration values, and (b) that the achievement of such values is accompanied by some quasi-systematic alterations in phonological rules.

Some conjunctions simultaneously convey speakers' presuppositions about the validity of propositions uttered and assertions of particular interclausal relations. Because conveys belief, if + indicative, uncertainty and if + subjunctive, disbelief. While all three conjuctions assert positive entailment, unless, which like if + indicative presupposes uncertainty, asserts negative entailment or denial. The relationship between pragmatic knowledge and reasoning was explored by asking 12 males and 12 females at each of three ages (12, 15, adult) to solve written syllogisms containing the four conjunctions and evaluate single sentences for their pragmatic content. In the pragmatic task, belief was easier to detect than uncertainty or disbelief. Positive entailment was easier than negative entailment. Only entailment influenced syllogistic reasoning with unless harder than the positively entailed conjunctions. At each age linguistic comprehension of negative entailment was related to understanding valid implications in unless syllogisms. The relation between comprehension of pragmatic uncertainty and detection of uncertain conclusions in reasoning increased with age.

English has several classes of transitive verbs which can optionally appear without an undergoer. Despite their similar syntactic sub-categorization, there are at least three different semantic subclasses that allow undergoer omission. Information sources based on surface structure, for example, syntactic bootstrapping, cannot inform the child of the semantic representation of these verbs. The focus of this paper is the acquisition of a single English verb, eat. The transcripts of 40 children, who were audiotaped monthly from 1;0 to 3;0, showed that eat was the first member of this verb class to be acquired. Some 1276 eat sentences were analysed for the presence of overt undergoer arguments across levels of cumulative verb lexicon (CVL) size, and two discourse conditions: (1) UNDERGOER ACCESSIBLE and (2) OPEN (to undergoer omission). Results indicate that undergoer omission became associated with discourse conditions when CVL size rose above 75 types, at MLU approximately 2·4 and age approximately 2;3. This suggests that two-year-old children are sensitive to a relationship between undergoer omission and discourse context.

Interface Delay is a theory of syntactic development, which attempts to explain an array of constructions that are slow to develop, which are characterized by being sensitive to discourse-pragmatic considerations of the type associated with the natural semantic class of definites. The theory claims that neither syntax itself, nor the discourse-pragmatic abilities related to executive function and theory of mind themselves are slow to develop. Rather, the claim is that the nexus or interface between the two cognitive domains is slow to develop. We review the development of subjects in child Spanish as an example of this delayed growth trajectory. Further, we review evidence that a delay in the development of tense causes concomitant delays in the seemingly unrelated phenomena of non-nominative case subject pronoun use and un-inverted wh- questions.

This study explores the development of children's knowledge of linguistic and pragmatic aspects of singular and plural in Italian, for definite articles (Experiment 1) and verbs (Experiment 2). Participants aged three to adult were asked to pick objects from two dishes, each with a different number of items on them (one vs. two), following the morphological information. Results show that children understand that singular forms refer to ‘one’ at about age four, whereas they understand that plural forms refer to ‘more than one’ when they are older than six. Moreover, children use singular and plural knowledge in appropriate relation with the referential context only when they are about six.

Children pay more attention to the beginnings and ends of sentences rather than the middle. In natural speech, ends of sentences are prosodically and segmentally enhanced; they are also privileged by sensory and recall advantages. We contrasted whether acoustic enhancement or sensory and recall-related advantages are necessary and sufficient for the salience of grammatical morphemes at the ends of sentences. We measured 22-month-olds’ listening times to grammatical and ungrammatical sentences with third person singular -s. Crucially, by cross-splicing the speech stimuli, acoustic enhancement and sensory and recall advantages were fully crossed. Only children presented with the verb in sentence-final position, a position with sensory and recall advantages, distinguished between the grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Thus, sensory and recall advantages alone were necessary and sufficient to make grammatical morphemes at ends of sentences salient. These general processing constraints privilege ends of sentences over middles, regardless of the acoustic enhancement.

To fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible – e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language – audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input work? Two experiments evaluated the usefulness of audio storybooks in acquiring a more native-like second-language accent. Young children, first- and second-graders in Hong Kong whose native language was Cantonese Chinese, were given take-home listening assignments in a second language, either English or Putonghua Chinese. Accent ratings of the children's story reading revealed measurable benefits of non-interactive input from native speakers. The benefits were far more robust for Putonghua than English. Implications for second-language accent acquisition are discussed.