title: Preclausal patterns in language acquisition: a study of Spanish-speaking children in Chile.
abstract: Language utterances were recorded in three groups of 1- to 3-yr.-old day care children in Valdivia, Chile. An analysis of the preclausal patterns of language development according to the model outlined by Hubbell (1988) indicated that 4 of 12 major utterances--experiencer-state, action-object, agent-action, and negation-X--accounted for 68% of the total number of utterances recorded. The results suggest that preclausal patterns in language development of Spanish-speaking children are similar to and yet different in some respects from those of children who acquire English as their first language.
authors.affiliation: North Dakota State University, Fargo 58105.
authors.forename: D K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Carson
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Silva
mesh_terms: D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002677:Chile; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics