Research in Language Development: Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

It is very nice indeed to have been invited to your birthday party! Trained as I was at your sister institution just to the North, I have always had a neighborly interest in the constant stream of stimulating and provocative research which has emerged from the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station. Perhaps, this interest has been somewhat akin to sibling rivalry, for I well remember in my graduate student days what a real threat I felt upon reading a preliminary abstract of Madorah Smith's (21) dissertation on sentence formation. Such is the naivete of the beginner who becomes so deeply involved in his own research he cannot foresee the wealth of knowledge to be discovered in the same general area. Although I almost came to Iowa in i929 to spend my postdoctoral National Research Council fellowship year working on infant vocalizations (and goodness knows what might have happened if I had), my only previous visit to your wonderful campus was at the organization meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development held during a cold Christmas vacation about 1933 when the snow was knee high. Reminiscences are permissible, I think, on the occasion of an anniversary such as this, and I should like to pay brief tribute today to your first chief, Bird T. Baldwin, whose Psychology of the Preschool Child (3) written in collaboration with Lorle I. Stecher, was the standard reference on the young child in my student days. Although I knew Bird Baldwin only by sight, I felt a real personal loss at the time of his death, for he was a pioneer in my chosen field. My first glimpse of his successor, George D. Stoddard, who will address us this evening, was at the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection in 1930. When the young, newly-appointed