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Many researchers believe that there is a logical problem at the centre of language acquisition theory. According to this analysis, the input to the learner is too inconsistent and incomplete to determine the acquisition of grammar. Moreover, when corrective feedback is provided, children tend to ignore it. As a result, language learning must rely on additional constraints from universal grammar. To solve this logical problem, theorists have proposed a series of constraints and parameterizations on the form of universal grammar. Plausible alternatives to these constraints include: conservatism, item-based learning, indirect negative evidence, competition, cue construction, and monitoring. Careful analysis of child language corpora has cast doubt on claims regarding the absence of positive exemplars. Using demonstrably available positive data, simple learning procedures can be formulated for each of the syntactic structures that have traditionally motivated invocation of the logical problem. Within the perspective of emergentist theory (MacWhinney, 2001), the operation of a set of mutually supportive processes is viewed as providing multiple buffering for developmental outcomes. However, the fact that some syntactic structures are more difficult to learn than others can be used to highlight areas of intense grammatical competition and processing load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments examined phonological priming in children and adults, using a cross-modal picture-word interference task. Pictures of familiar objects were presented on a computer screen, while interfering words (IWs) were presented over headphones. In terms of their relation to target pictures, IWs were either phonologically related, unrelated, neutral (the word go), or identical. Ninety children (30 aged 4;11 to 5;11, 30 aged 6;11 to 7;11, and 30 aged 9;5 to 11;9) and 30 adults were instructed to name the pictures as quickly as possible while ignoring the IWs. In Experiment 1, related IWs shared onset consonants with the names of the pictures. Across ages, participants named pictures faster with related IWs than with unrelated IWs. In Experiment 2, related IWs rhymed with the targets. Here, only the youngest children (five to seven-year-olds) named pictures faster with related IWs than with unrelated IWs. The results indicate that priming effects reach a peak during a time when articulatory information is being consolidated in the output phonological buffer. The disappearance of the rhyme priming effect with age may reflect the gradual emergence of the onset as an organizing structure in speech production. This increased prominence of the onset can be viewed as one component of a just-in-time, incrementalist approach to speech production that allows adults to speak more fluently than children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corpora of child language are essential for research in child language acquisition and psycholinguistics. Linguistic annotation of the corpora provides researchers with better means for exploring the development of grammatical constructions and their usage. We describe a project whose goal is to annotate the English section of the CHILDES database with grammatical relations in the form of labeled dependency structures. We have produced a corpus of over 18,800 utterances (approximately 65,000 words) with manually curated gold-standard grammatical relation annotations. Using this corpus, we have developed a highly accurate data-driven parser for the English CHILDES data, which we used to automatically annotate the remainder of the English section of CHILDES. We have also extended the parser to Spanish, and are currently working on supporting more languages. The parser and the manually and automatically annotated data are freely available for research purposes.

Edwards (1992) presents a set of examples from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) as prototypes of bad transcription practice. Her discussion is based upon four basic confusions. First, Edwards confuses old and discarded versions of CHAT with current CHAT. Second, she confuses the relation between CHAT standards with the implementation of these standards during the process of reformatting older corpora. Third, she confuses transcription for automatic analysis with transcription for documentation. Fourth, she confuses the CHAT guidelines with the larger CHILDES system. We argue that these confusions have misled Edwards into developing an overly rigid set of principles for data analysis which, if followed literally, could choke off progress in the analysis of spontaneous language samples.

In a previous issue of this Journal, MacWhinney & Snow (1985) laid out the basic sketch for an international system for exchanging and analysing child language transcript data. This system--the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES)--has developed three major tools for child language research: (1) the CHILDES database of transcripts, (2) the CHAT system for transcribing and coding data, and (3) the CLAN programs for analysing CHAT files. Here we sketch out the current shape of these three major tools and the organizational form of the CHILDES system. A forthcoming book (MacWhinney, in press) documents these tools in detail.