Inferences about linguistic competence in children are typically based on spontaneous speech. This poses a problem since we know that other factors are also involved in speech production. Children who may use complex object and adverbial NPs do not use complex subject NPs. Is this a competence deficit, a performance problem, or simply a reflection of pragmatic factors? Evidence presented here suggests that children probably do not need complex subjects. An extensive use of pronouns in subject but not object position indicates that pragmatics may account for the distribution of clauses in their speech. A similar pattern in adult speech indicates there is no warrant to conclude children's lack of subject clauses reflects anything more than the nature of spontaneous speech.

Fourteen two-year-olds (M=2; o) were presented with minimal word pairs in a new and highly efficient experimental perception paradigm. The data provide a preliminary view of the relative difficulty of various minimal phonological contrasts for children. The study specifically focuses on perception of some phonological contrasts which usually are actualized and some which usually are not actualized in two-year-old child productions. The data suggest that perceptual difficulties probably play a substantial role in some childhood speech errors, but little, if any, role in others.

The study was aimed at determining the average ages at which children imitate (I), produce (P) and comprehend (C) passive constructions. The results were compared with those obtained from partial studies of the acquisition of the passive voice conducted by researchers such as Fraser, Bellugi & Brown (1963). The finding that imitation precedes comprehension which in turn precedes production (I > C > P), as reported by Fraser et al. (1963) for 12 three-year-olds, is confirmed in this study for children from 3; 0 to 8; 0. The ability to use the passive voice in various tasks was found to be generally greater than that suggested in previous studies.

Acquisition of the words this and thatwas tested by a comprehension and a production task with children of ages 4 and 7. In the comprehension task, children had to choose one of two toys requested by the experimenter. Child and experimenter were seated either side by side or facing one another. It was expected that children would first learn the spatial contrast between the two words and then learn to apply it from the speaker's point of view, according to developmental stages similar to those found in other studies of spatial non-egocentrism. The prediction was confirmed, but comparison with the results of de Villiers & de Villiers (1974) suggests an alternative theoretical analysis, in which non-egocentrism is not necessary for correct use of this and that. A second prediction, that performance would be better on the unmarked word that, was not confirmed for the side-by-side condition. In the production task, only 2 of the 60 children violated the restriction that this can refer only to near objects.

To explore adjective language development and to examine its relationship to seriation, several tasks were given to 40 children aged 4;0 to 8;0. Comprehension and production of various adjective forms were measured: vocabulary, coordination, comparison. The ability to order objects by size was used to assess intuitive-level seriation. In addition to yielding information about children's meanings and use of adjective forms, results indicated that vocabulary and comprehension were more important than language production for distinguishing senators from non-senators. The relevance of findings for Sinclair de Zwart's observations and for the Clarks' hypotheses about adjective development is discussed.

Children aged 2;6–4;0 were asked questions containing comparative and superlative forms of adjectives from pairs designated as unmarked/marked or simply positive/negative. Children's answers required a choice of one out of five objects. Differences in frequency of correct responses were generally greater between unmarked/marked pairs than between simple positive/negative pairs, but the response of ‘greatest extent’ to marked adjective questions was seldom a significantly common error. Linguistic arguments for the unmarked/marked distinction in comparative adjectives are reviewed, and it is concluded that there is no linguistic or behavioural evidence for a marking explanation of children's difficulty with ‘marked’ comparative adjectives.

This review analyses research on the acquisition of Hungarian morphology and syntax. The specific topics covered are morphological analysis, neologisms, acquisition of the first inflections, morpheme order, word order and agreement. Several lines of evidence suggest that the first unit acquired by the child is the word. Because of the structure of Hungarian, both errors in segmentation of the utterance and errors in the segmentation of the word are minimized. Morphological analysis seems to begin at the semantic level and proceed to the morphological level. Data on acquisition of free word order and early inflections are potentially of great interest, although presently inconclusive.

This note describes a method of getting pre-school children to judge whether statements are true or false. The method is based on the argument that young children are likely to make these judgments more readily, and in a way that more fully reflects their opinions, if the statements to be judged are ostensibly made not by an adult but by someone whom the child regards as being less able and less knowledgeable than himself. For this purpose, a ‘talking doll’ is used.