Abstract
Young children (mean age 3 years, 11 months) were asked to repeat word strings presented from tape. The strings varied in length from three to five words; in sentencehood in that some were well-formed sentences, some were anomalous, and some were syntactically deviant; and in word types in that some strings contained all real words, some contained real function words plus nonsense items, and some contained real content words plus nonsense items. The results of this experimentation suggest that children's differential imitation of contentives and functors is accounted for by an “identify and retain contentives” strategy and that the principal criteria for the classification “contentive” are phonological form and semantic function.
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