Stan A. Kuczaj

The Acquisition of Regular and Irregular Past Tense Forms.

The spontaneous speech samples of 15 children were analyzed for appropriate use and inappropriate use and nonuse of the past tense verbal inflection. Using this data base, the following hypotheses were examined: (1) The irregular past tense form is an earlier acquisition than the regular past tense form. (2) The two types of overgeneralization errors (goed vs wented) have acquisitional relevance. (3) Partial regularity blocks overgeneralization errors. (4) The regular rule for the application of -ed is more likely to be overgeneralized to irregular forms such as hit, shut, and put than to other irregular forms. The data provided partial support for the second and third hypotheses, but no support for the first or fourth hypotheses.

The Development of Hypothetical Reference in the Speech of Young Children.

The data obtained in two investigations (one a longitudinal/cross-sectional naturalistic study, the other a quasi-experimental study) demonstrate that preschool age children have the capacity for hypothetical reference. However, the data also indicate that this capacity for hypothetical reference operates within certain constraints, particularly early in the preschool years. Specifically, future hypothetical reference is an earlier acquisition than past hypothetical reference; reference to single hypothetical events appears sometime prior to reference to sequences of hypothetical events; and accuracy is better in self-initiated than other-initiated hypothetical reference. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Young children's overextensions of object words in comprehension and/or production: support for a prototype theory of early object word meaning

That young children overextend the meaning of at least some object words (words used to refer to objects) is well recognized. However, recent research suggests that overextensions in production may not be reflected in comprehension. In order to better determine the relation between overextension in production and overextension in com prehension, six children ranging in age from 1;9 to 2;4 were given a production task and a comprehension task. The data demonstrate that when children are given a number of choices on a comprehension task for a particular word, their initial choice is invariably an appropriate exemplar of the target word. However, the childrens successive choices for each target term are likely to involve overextended objects. It is argued that this pattern supports a prototype account of early object word meaning acquisition.

Children's Use of the Wh Question Modal Auxiliary Placement Rule.

Abstract Three studies assessed childrens knowledge of the wh question modal auxiliary placement rule by asking the children to imitate (and in Study 3 judge the correctness of) grammatical and ungrammatical model wh questions. The results suggest that children learn to apply this rule to questions beginning with one or two wh words, then to questions beginning with another wh word, and so on, rather than to all relevant question types simultaneously, indicating that the acquisition of this syntactic rule is initially relatively specific. However, the results also demonstrate that children overgeneralize the wh question modal auxiliary placement rule to how come questions, indicating that during the course of development this initially specific rule becomes generally productive. The theoretical implications of this specific-to-general developmental pattern are discussed.

Language Play and Language Acquisition

Publisher Summary It has been observed that young children play with language. This activity has two aspects. One involves the use of language as an instrument for play. In such cases, children use language as a means to a goal. The second involves the use of language as both a means and a goal. In such cases, children play with aspects of language not to facilitate some other play activity, but instead actually to play with language, the manipulation of linguistic forms being the play activity. This chapter focuses on the latter type of language play. The primary concern is to consider the nature of this type of language play and the roles of such play in childrens acquisition of their mother tongue. It is concerned with the types of behaviors that constitute language play; the developmental course of these behaviors; where are such behaviors are most likely to occur; the aspects of language children play with; and whether language play is developmentally progressive.

Height, age, and function: differing influences on children's comprehension of ‘younger’ and ‘older’

Three investigations of pre-school childrens 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.

General developmental patterns and individual differences in the acquisition of copula and auxiliary be forms

Childrens acquisition of copula and auxiliary be forms was investigated in order to assess the notion that syntactic development proceeds in a specific to general fashion, with initial specific acquisitions gradually evolving into general productive ones. The results support this view of syntactic development, and highlight the need for more careful con sideration of individual differences in syntactic development.

Deferred imitation and the acquisition of novel lexical items

The role imitation plays in language acquisition has long been a subject of substantial debate. This debate has been fuelled by a lack of agreement as to the nature of imitation itself, as Valentine (1930) initially noted and Bloom, Hood & Lightbown (1974) and Whitehurst & Vasta (1975) have reiterated. One of the findings of Bloom et al. was that some children imitate some lexical items prior to using these same lexical items in their spontaneous (non-imitative) speech, this and other results suggesting that the imitation which does occur in children’s speech is developmentally progressive (see also Bloom 1970, Kuczaj 1982, Slobin 1968). Leonard & Kaplan (1976) viewed the results of Bloom et al. as indicating that imitation may serve to introduce new lexical items to the child’s repertoire (other theorists have also suggested that imitation may be important for the acquisition of lexical items, e.g., Bloom 1973, Nelson 1973). However, Leonard & Kaplan were led by their data to conclude that imitation is not a necessary component of the process which underlies the acquisition of new lexical items. Although the acquisition of lexical meaning is certainly not solely dependent on imitation, the acquisition of lexical items as conventional sounds must

Old and new forms, old and new meanings: the form-function hypotheses revisited

The spontaneous speech of fifteen children was examined in order to test two hypotheses: (1) newly acquired forms are first used to express previously acquired meanings; (2) newly acquired meanings are first expressed by pre viously acquired forms. The data provide support for these hypotheses, but also demonstrate other relations between the acquisition of linguistic forms and meanings. The implications of the findings for theories of language development are briefly considered.

On the search for universals of language acquisition: a commentary on Cziko

The notion of a universal What is meant by the notion of ’a universal of language acquisition’? Cziko fails to specify what the notion of universals means to him, but this oversight is common in the language acquisition literature. Many theorists have considered the possible role of universals in the language acquisition process, but few have actually defined ’universal’. The dearth of definitions may reflect the assumption that the meaning of ’universal’ is self-evident. However, I suspect that much of the controversy surrounding particular hypothesized universals reflects different interpretations of ’universal’. In