ABSTRACT
Current work on how children acquire language tells us that caregivers, particularly mothers, are highly instrumental in this process. This is accomplished in several ways: mothers simplify their syntax, reduce their utterance length, reduce their vocabulary, repeat and paraphrase their utterances, when speaking to young childen (Ferguson, 1977; Snow, 1972,1977,1979; Newport, 1976; Cross, 1975, 1977).
