Suprasegemental and grammatical control over telegraphic speech in young children

The experiment was designed to test the Brown and Fraser (1963) telegraphic speech hypothesis: that children imitate more content words than function words because of linguistic stress associated with content words in English. Thirty-six children aged 18–36 months were assigned to six treatment groups blocked for linguistic development and were asked to imitate ten simple declarative sentences. In each of five experimental conditions, suprasegmental or grammatical features were systematically manipulated. Results contradicted the Brown and Fraser hypothesis: suprasegmental variables did not influence telegraphic speech production significantly. Imitation strategies were, instead, dependent on grammatical hierarchy.