ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the methodological content of the present study of child language in regard to the gathering and transcription of the linguistic data used. It describes the twenty-two children whose speech was recorded. The chapter outlines the conditions under which this speech was recorded and presents commentary on the specific elicitation instruments that were administered. Twenty-two children, ranging in age from three-and-one-half to fourteen years, were selected as subject-informants for this study of Yucatec Maya language acquisition. It presents a description of this cross-sectional sample. The letter designations will be used to identify the children in the present text. The children's real names are cited in the customary Spanish manner. The various imitation tests were used to probe the structure of the children's linguistic systems. Systematic errors in imitation provided a wealth of exemplification of the differences between individual children's linguistic systems and the adult system.
