Provides an experimental validation of Landau and Gleitman's (1985) syntactic bootstrapping procedure on how children may use syntactic information to learn new verbs. The children's choice of the correct referent for a given verb versus a nonsense verb in two syntactic structures is explained. (37 references) (GLR)

The author supports the theory that for some disabled readers the nature of the form-schema (syntatic expectations) they make use of in processing text does not result in stable comprehension because their recognition strategies are linked to their past experience in constructing meaning from speech. Implications for instruction are discussed.…

If the basic operations hypothesis (EJ 184 227) is interpreted as a general principle governing acquisition of all movement rules, it may obscure the fact that children distinguish between unbounded and local rules. Error patterns support this distinction, lending credence to theories with separate status for the two rule types. (Author/RD)

The first of three articles on the ways in which people formulate their observations, this paper considers the basic assumptions of both syntactic and paradigmatic models of cognition and their applications in natural (i.e., human) and artificial (i.e., computer) information processing. The analysis begins with background information on the nature…

Examines the role of "routines" and grammatical patterns in first and second language acquisition by children and adults, specifically with regard to syntactic structures. (Author/AM)