Prosody plays a variety of roles in infants' communicative development, aiding in attention modulation, speech segmentation, and syntax acquisition. This study investigates the extent to which parents also spontaneously modulate prosodic aspects of infant directed speech in ways that distinguish semantic aspects of language. Fourteen mothers of…

A pair of speaking and listening studies investigated the prosody of sentences with temporary Object/Clause and Late/Early Closure ambiguities. Speakers reliably produced prosodic cues that allowed listeners to disambiguate Late/Early Closure sentences, but only infrequently produced prosody that disambiguated Object/Clause sentences, as shown by…

Two experiments offer clear support for an interactive view of sentence comprehension; semantic factors do interact with syntactic factors. (RL)

Argues that intonation is best analyzed as an overt marking of the focus structure of a sentence. The linguistic level of f-structure in which both topic and focus are identified provides the link between context, interpretation, syntax, and intonation. (Author/VWL)

Analyzes the written syntax of a group of profoundly deaf English children aged 10 to 11 years, utilizing a controlled elicitation sampling method used earlier with a single child. Demonstrates and describes the structured nature of deaf children's syntax, which shows similarities with 2 to 2 1/2-year-old hearing children's syntax. (Author/MES)

Two experiments examined whether young and older adults differ in comprehending sentences that contain temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Experiment 1 examined age-related differences using the Auditory Moving Window (AMW) task, in which sentences were presented in a segment-by-segment self-paced fashion. Experiment 2 examined age-related…

The results of study examining several indices of language use of normal and retarded children show the greatest difference between groups in sentence complexity and diversity. (TO)

Three experiments are reported that showed effects of "structure priming," the tendency to repeat syntactic structure across successive sentences. These effects were demonstrated in Dutch, a previously untested language. All experiments studied spoken sentence production. (Author/JL)