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This cross-linguistic comparison of metalinguistic development in French and English examines early ability to manipulate derivational suffixes in oral language games as a function of chronological age, receptive vocabulary, and year of schooling. Data from judgment and production tasks are presented for children aged between 5 and 8 years in their first, second, or third school year in the United Kingdom and France. The results suggest that metamorphological development is accelerated in French relative to English. The French advantage encompasses knowledge of a broader range of suffixes and a markedly greater facility for generalizing morphological knowledge to novel contexts. These findings are interpreted in relation to the word formation systems of English and French, and the educational context in each country.

Phonological awareness is thought to become increasingly analytic during early childhood. This study examines whether the proposed developmental sequence (syllable[right arrow]onset-rime[right arrow]phoneme) varies according to the characteristics of a child's native language. Experiment 1 compares the phonological segmentation skills of English speakers aged 4;11 (N=10), 5;3 (N=21), and 6;5 (N=23) and French speakers aged 5;6 (N=35), and 6;8 (N=34). Experiment 2 assesses performance in the common unit task using English speakers aged 4;7 (N=22), 5;7 (N=23), and 6;11 (N=22), and French speakers aged 4;7 (N=20), 5;6 (N=35), and 6;7 (N=33). The experiments reveal crosslinguistic differences in the processing of syllables prior to school entry with French speakers exhibiting a greater consistency in manipulating syllables. Phoneme awareness emerges in both languages once reading instruction is introduced and rime awareness appears to follow rather than precede this event. Thus, the emergence of phonological awareness did not show a universal pattern but rather was subject to the influence of both native language and literacy. (Contains 1 footnote.)

French intellectual thought changed during the Napoleonic Era. The effects of the Enlightenment philosophers, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and Romanticism on the development of Napoleon's philosophical outlook are used to illustrate the changes occurring in France as a whole in the early nineteenth century. (AM)

Reports on the goals of France's 1990 civil research and development budget. Industrial research; Increase for aviation and space projects; AIDS research priorities.