In a comparative study of American English speakers and British English speakers, it was examined whether segmental effects can be used in speech production as cues to syntactic structure. American speakers could use the segmental cues in syntax perception, while British speakers could not. Speakers of British English who were long-term residents…

Results of a study indicated that adults reading for retention spent more time focusing on syntactic structure, while those reading for immediate comprehension focused more of their time on semantic content. However, the children (fifth graders) used reading strategies that involved mixtures of both of the adult components. (SL)

Expanded version of a paper presented at the Annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, St. Louis, Missouri, December 28, 1971; research supported by a grant from the Graduate School, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. (DD)

A total of 79 profoundly deaf 8- to 12-year-old children were tested for comprehension of spoken, written, and signed (Paget-Gorman Sign System, PGSS) English grammatical contrasts. It is concluded that the PGSS provides a communication channel that does not hinder language acquisition, but does not overcome the grammatical problems of deaf…

Production of the morpheme BE was studied among 22 children (ages 4-5) with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Contractible contexts were produced more accurately than uncontractible contexts by both groups, and there were no significant interactions between language status and contractibility. Copula forms were produced more…

Compares the performance of poor readers with that of matched good readers and younger average readers. Found that all poor readers performed poorly in all three linguistic areas concurrently, and these difficulties persisted; poor readers demonstrated a difference between their phonological processing skills and their semantic/syntactic skills;…

Compares conversion, a morphological process by which a word formed without explicit derivational mark, to phenomenon of multifunctionality; discusses with reference to alternative label of zero-derivation and directonality. Drawing on English and Italian second-language acquisition data, study shows process is productive from initial stages of…

Using experimental data from adult and child non-native language acquirers (L2ers), this paper addresses "interface issues" in language acquisition in two different ways. First, it examines the acquisition of direct object scrambling in Dutch, a phenomenon which involves the interaction of at least two different modules of language, i.e., syntax…

Researchers have hypothesized that words that are highly related semantically are more likely to occur within the same intonational phrase (F. zzaq;, 1988; E. O. Selkirk, 1984). D. Watson and E. Gibson (2004) proposed that semantic closeness can be captured by using the argument/adjunct distinction, such that intonational boundaries are more…

This study investigated personal narratives produced by children with and without learning disabilities in the context of naturalistic conversation. The high-point analysis was applied to compare the referential and evaluative aspects of children's personal narratives. Participants were 60 students in Grades 4 and 5 in public suburban schools,…

Examines whether manually coded English (MCE) sign language systems are learnable. Reading achievement and expressive English skills of deaf students educated using only a MCE sign system were examined. Deaf students had expressive English skills comparable to hearing students in respect to syntactical and lexical skills but were deficient in…

Background: Narrative may provide a useful way in which to assess the language ability of adolescents with specific language impairment and may be more ecologically valid than standardized tests. However, the language of this age group is seldom studied and, furthermore, the effect of narrative genre has not been explored in detail. Methods &…

This study examined the use of directive speech forms by 46 children 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-years of age as a function of different tasks (play with dolls versus play with colored stickers) and of the presence versus absence of a peer partner. Directive utterances were stimultaneously categorized according to structure, form and the person they…