Pam Shanks describes the stages in the child's development of language and reminds us that the Montessori principle of observation should guide the support of the child with articulation errors. For most children with developmental articulation delays, the directress can implement Montessori materials and use conversational strategies to emphasize…

We present a new feedback strategy implemented in a natural language generation-based e-learning system for German as a second language (L2). Although the system recognizes a large proportion of the grammar errors in learner-produced written sentences, its automatically generated feedback only addresses errors against rules that are relevant at…

A study investigated the development of children's metalinguistic understanding of the meanings of two non-ostensive words beyond the usual semantic acquisition period. The words, whose meanings cannot be associated with an object by pointing, were "pain" and "pretend". Two specific questions were addressed: What types of…

The errors on cloze tests completed by 22 German adults who spoke English and 40 American college students were analyzed to determine whether predictable error patterns occurred. The results indicated predictable error patterns at the independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels for all the adults. The error profiles of the two…

An alternative to the standard theory that language learners always formulate the simplest rule to accommodate data is proposed. This new position states that the system of formulating rules and the generalizations made from it by children and adults in the stages of language learning needs to be more specific. The present theory excludes the use…

Outside the core grammar, the set of "peripheral" or marked properties of a language include exceptions or relaxations of the settings of core grammar and the idiosyncratic features of the language governed by particular lexical items. The core/peripheral distinction has direct implications for grammatical development in children. The…

A study of children's acquisition of the auxiliary verb system in English is reported. The first section describes the operation of the auxiliary system, and proposes that the behavior of auxiliaries is so complicated that if children were to generalize from one auxiliary to another, they would make predictable errors. The second section reviews…

A study investigated whether children expect color similarity to be less important than form similarity in object label extensions. Twenty 2-year-olds and 20 3-year-olds were asked to sort objects similar in either color or form in two different situations: (1) the "No Label" condition where children were asked to help the puppet put objects that…

A study of young children's assignment of nouns to gender categories and general mastery of the Icelandic gender system is reported. An examination of what is involved in the induction of formal categories such as gender introduces the proposal of a "principle of localness." This principle states that the closer in proximity a closed…

This paper discusses error analysis as one source of evidence for an overall theory of second language acquisition. Four related areas which form the context for error analysis are discussed in relation to second language learning and the goals and methodology of error analysis; (1) theories of the nature of language which determine theories of…

This study examined oral-reading characteristics associated with language development in second-grade children, working on the suppositions that oral syntactic proficiency influences a child's use of syntax while reading and that this influence can be seen in oral reading, particularly in the contextual appropriateness of errors. It was also…

Sentences evoked from three- to five-year-olds (N=16), analyzed for errors (particularly copying-without-deletion), showed errors when: the subject noun phrase (NP) contained a relative clause, the relative clause had an object gap, and the relative clause was long. (Author/CB)

The purpose of this presentation is to encourage college teachers of writing, inside and outside Appalachia, to look at dialect-based errors in a more expansive way even as they help students to make better choices about standard usage. The discussion, which is presented within the context of a socio-cultural perspective on bias in perceptions of…

A study examined aspects of the acquisition of spatialized morphology and syntax in American Sign Language (ASL) learned natively by deaf children of deaf parents. Children aged 2 to 8 were shown story books to elicit narratives, and the resulting use of verbs contained morphological forms not appearing in adult grammar. Analysis of the creative…

The distribution of errors in children's responses in four elicitation tests of their color-naming abilities is explored with a view to clarifying states of ignorance. Subjects include 47 Polynesian children ranging in age from 2 to 12 years. The four experiments include a naming task, two identification tasks and a mapping task. Children are…