What makes a child's language development trajectory have the patterns that it has, and what causes differences across children in those patterns? These fundamental questions have for over half a century been at the heart of research on language development in monolingual children, on the cross-linguistic development of language in children from…

Argues that transportality of sentential and predicate adverbials can be handled by the Generalized Binding theory; discusses how adverbials are represented in phrase markers of perfect sentences, how those representations help Binding theory account for transportability of adverbials in perfect sentences; takes up transportation of adverbs…

In view of the apparent successes achieved with Labovian quantitative methods in the analysis of phonological variation, it is not surprising to find these techniques being extended to include the study of syntax. Sankoff suggests that the extension of probabilistic considerations from phonology to syntax is not a conceptually difficult jump.…

Discusses 'rather than' sentences with tensed or untensed verb in second clause as having underlying form of comparative sentences. Concludes 'rather than' preceding a tensed clause represents the truth-functional connective 'and not' which contradicts claim that this connective cannot be represented lexically in natural language and raises…

In this article the linguistic features of three Italian Sign Language (Lingua Italiana dei Segni, or LIS) registers are analyzed focusing on iconic phenomena. Previous treatments of iconicity and motivation in spoken and signed language are discussed. Iconicity is defined as a regular mapping between expressive form and meaning that can be active…

Examined the influence of working memory on the off-line and real-time sentence comprehension/ processing of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Twelve children with SLI, 12 normally developing children matched for chronological age (CA), and 12 children matched for receptive syntax completed three tasks. Suggests that SLI children…

Examines the history of a construction from later Old English by comparing two approaches to its analysis, one functional and one formal. Both analyses are internally consistent and, at the same time, vulnerable to criticism from both the inside and the outside. (Author/VWL)

Recent research on comparatives in the Muskogean language, Alabama, suggest similar work for Koasati, the language most closely related to Alabama. Koasati has a system parallel to that of Alabama. Although the actual morphemes used for comparative constructions in Koasati are almost identical to the ones used in Alabama, the syntax of such…

Local inversion in English and Chichewa shows remarkable similarities that can be explained by hypothesizing the same underlying argument structures and principles for mapping argument structure roles into syntactic functions. However, profound typological differences between the two languages defy analysis within a widely assumed architecture of…

Discusses the differences between the English native and nonnative speaker's creation and use of nominal compounds. A comparison between English speakers and Japanese native speakers indicates that not only must nonnative speakers acquire rules in order to effectively compound words in English, but that rules must indeed exist, indicating that…

Views the Dutch language as analogous to the polder typical of the Netherlands, an area of low-lying land reclaimed from a body of water and protected by dikes. Phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and stylistic analyses are presented. (MSE)

The core idea that we argued for in the target article was that grammatical processing in a second language (L2) is fundamentally different from grammatical processing in one's native (first) language (L1). Our major source of evidence for this claim comes from experimental psycholinguistic studies investigating morphological and syntactic…

Examines the degree to which Latin words and phrases are integrated into English and American legal texts. Compares introductory and advanced textbooks to legal documents for relative frequency of Latin words and phrases and level of integration into the text. Examples of each level are presented. (Author/LMO)

Discusses results of comparison of immersion and minority language programs. By promoting use of the mother tongue inside and outside of school, providing literacy experiences for children who may not have had them, and using culturally relevant teaching approaches and materials, schools can make education a worthwhile experience for members of…

Most second language texts not only do not emphasize negotiation of meaning, but are also structured to mislead learners in their attempt to express meaning (in the learners' native language). Examples from German, Spanish, and French are used to illustrate the need for second language learning to stand alone and independently from the native…