It is obvious that the growing child manifests an increasing understanding of his language and facility to use it. A major part of the child lan guage literature is concerned with the child's developing linguistic and communicative competence. Scattered evidence also shows, however, that children become progressively more aware of language as Zanguage. It is interesting to consider in what ways the internal structure and mechanisms of language become more accessible. Little is known about linguistic aware ness of this kind, the role it plays, or how it develops. When the new Projektgruppe fUr...