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The present study examines the development of the earliest type of complex predicates to emerge in child Hebrew – extended predicate constructions. These constructions take the form of a modal/aspectual operator followed by an infinitival verb form (e.g., roce lesaxek 'want to.play'), and since they serve various discursive functions (e.g., intent, desire, request), their use marks a significant development in toddlers' cognitive, linguistic, and conversational abilities. Focus here is on the three most common modal operators used in extended predicates in early child Hebrew: roce 'want', yaxol 'can', and carix 'need/have.to'. Analyses cover all uses of these three predicates by both children and adults, in longitudinal weekly-recorded speech samples from three Hebrew-acquiring children, starting with the earliest verb forms produced by each child and lasting for a period of over a year (age range: 1;3–2;5). Findings show the following developmental trends: (a) roce 'want' emerges the earliest and continues to be the most frequent of the three predicates throughout the year; (b) children favor using roce, yaxol, and carix as main predicates before they start integrating them in extended-predicate contexts; (c) early adult uses of extended predicates in child-directed speech are almost exclusively in the form of Yes/No verification questions (e.g., ata roce laševet? 'you want to.sit?'); and (d) as children gradually use more extended predicates, adults gradually use fewer Yes/No verification questions, and more prompts that elicit information from the children (e.g., ma ata roce la'asot? 'what (do) you want to.do?') while also expanding more on the children's productions. These concurrent trends show that such complex predicates develop in a piecemeal fashion, promoted by both the gradually evolving relations between children's linguistic productions and their discursive functions, and the supportive contexts provided by their adult interlocutors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines phases in developing specification of grammatical marking of emergent clause-combining (CC) as indicative of children's growing ability to integrate two or more independent predications. To this end, both intra- and inter-clausal analyses were applied to all CC utterances produced by three Hebrew-acquiring children aged 2;0–3;0, covering both child autonomous productions and adult-child co-constructed CC. Based on four phases in CC construction shared by the three children, the following developmental trends were identified for both coordination and subordination in our database. First, children start combining two predications with lexical verbs early on, but these are confined to non-marked or adult-supported constructions. Second, early connective-marked CC involves mainly verbless copular or existential clauses. And autonomously produced lexical-verb combinations marked by connectives emerge several months later. This initial "trade-off" and gradual progression in grammatical specificity to full-fledged, lexically marked CC is interpreted as reflecting the developmental route of children's early clause integration in interactive discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to detect patterns in clause construction structural changes produced by four participants aged 9;5–13;7 (years;months) with motor speech disorders who used speech-generating devices. Sequences of adult–child interactions, drawn from the data of a larger study focused on enhancing vocabulary and grammar skills, were examined. This current study comprises a secondary analysis of a corpus of 29 conversations totalling 808.36 min, analysing clause structures by type, linguistic complexity, and intensity of adult prompts (number of turns). Results show that, over time, the participants' clause structure complexity increased through addition of phrase-internal elements such as inflections, articles, and prepositions. Use of specific grammatical elements followed the developmental stages observed in children with typical development. For all participants, the personal pronoun I (first-person singular) emerged before she, he (third-person singular), and we or they (plural). Participants with the highest number of adult–child co-constructed clauses also had the highest number of well-formed clauses. The intensity of adult prompts increased as clause structures became more complex and as participants needed more support. Implications for practice and theory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]