The contrast between “He showed her the bird seed,” and “He showed her bird the seed,” can be marked by an article and prosody, or by prosody alone. Aural comprehension of such sentences develops between ages 5 and 13, and comprehension of sentences marked by prosody alone is last to emerge [R. J. Scholes, D.C. Tanis, and A. Turner, Lang. Speech19,212–223 (1976)]. We have replicated this finding among a population of 8‐ and 10‐year‐old children, and, in three subsequent experiments, have explored the basis of age‐related changes in use of prosody. The first experiment reveals that age‐related differences in use of prosodic cues extend to another syntactic structure. The second shows that young children's perception of the relevant prosodic cues is superior to their syntactic interpretation of them. The third shows that while emphasis of prosodic cues does not improve comprehension, disruption of either work stress or juncture pause can penalize children's performance, more so for older children than younger ones. Thus it may not be the perception of word stress or juncture pause so much as the syntactic interpretation of them that increases between ages 8 and 10. A further finding is that interpretation of prosodic cues is related to reading ability. Relative to the good readers at each age, the poorer readers possessed equivalent perceptual skills, but their sentence comprehension skills were less mature. [Work supported by Bryn Mawr College, NICHD, and BRS.]