Purpose: The validity of the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn; Scarborough, 1990) for children who speak African American English (AAE) was evaluated by conducting an item analysis and a comparison of the children's scores as a function of their maternal education level, nonmainstream dialect density, age, and clinical status. Method: The data…

Article supported in part by a grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (VM)

Criticism of much of the previous research into the syntax of children's language. (RD)

This book examines children's acquisition of a first language, the stages they go through, and how they use language as they learn. There are 16 chapters in 4 parts. After chapter 1, "Acquiring Languages: Issues and Questions," Part 1, "Getting Started," offers (2) "In Conversation with Children," (3) "Starting…

A definition of bilingualism can include speakers of different languages as well as those who speak several dialects or several sub-varieties of dialects in the same language. Most speakers are able to practice code-switching, whether it is from language to language or dialect to dialect, and the processes involved in such a capability may be the…

The purpose of this series of four studies was to precisely describe the code and dialect features of the speech of both lower class Negro children and middle class white children. In the first study, 16 white middle class (WMC) children were compared to 16 Negro lower class (NLC) children on both an imitation and a comprehension task. The WMC…

The language a child learns from and attends to is the speech of significant persons in his world, addressed to each other and to him. As the child gradually participates in this social interaction he learns communicative competence, i.e., the nonconscious, tacit knowledge that underlies speech behavior--knowledge of both the language and the…

A collection of essays marking the retirement of Ilse Lehiste, chair of the Department of Linguistics at Ohio State University (1967-71 and 1985-87) includes the following contributions by her colleagues: "On Incomplete Mutations in Breton"; "Perceived P-Center Location in English and Japanese"; "Ordering Paradoxes and…

This bibliography is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students who desire a convenient guide to linguistic scholarship in English, education, linguistics, and related areas. The listing is selective, but the compiler has tried to provide ample coverage of the major fields and topics, with emphasis on works published in the…

The journal of linguistics of the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland) contains information on the programs and faculty and articles in French (F) and English (E). They include: "From Behavioral Psychology to Sociolinguistics: Ten Years of Linguistics Applied to Language Teaching at Neuchatel" (F); "Intonation and Syntax:…

Fifty-three papers on linguistic theory and language research, including a number of prize-winning essays, address these topics: aspects of discourse analysis; bilingualism; Chinese modal verbs; early bilingual speech; linguistic metatheory; music and accent discrepancy; diphthongs; hiatus; vowel patterns; suprasegmentals; neologisms; aspects of…