Fifth graders were asked to learn 32 syntactically varied semantically unrelated sentences containing combinations of agentive, objective, and instrumental case relations. Results were discussed in terms of ways to store sentences. (ST)

The study compared linguistic analyses of 27 language disabled and 30 normal language children in grades 1-6. The first procedure, cohesive tie analysis, examined surface characteristics of a text for connections between lingustic components that contribute to coherence; the second procedure, story grammar, examined underlying story organization…

This paper considers five possible analyses to explain dental alternations in Japanese and argues that the formulation approximating the actual historical development is likely to provide the most satisfactory synchronic description. The approaches considered are distributional analysis, strict historical interpretation, modified historical…

Special issue devoted to research and the teaching of French in the elementary school. (VM)

In a previous paper, J. Hurford accounts for errors in children's question forms by postulating that children incorrectly internalize adult rules. This article suggests that this rule is inconsistent and unjestified, and that such errors are due to segmentation problems and processing limitations. (CHK)

This article criticizes a previous paper that stressed a transformational analysis of children's question acquisition. It is argued that a surface structure generalization analysis makes empirically correct predictions about mistakes both in acquisition of inverted word order and in the form of "wh" questions. (CHK)

This paper reports on a study conducted to determine the abilities of children to make optional transformations in sentences conjoined with "and." The subjects were 35 middle-class children between the ages of five and eight, who demonstrated average school achievement, spoke standard American English, and had normal speech and hearing. A…

Instructional strategies targeted for differentiating between German verb synonyms have involved: (1) extended paraphrases or definitions in German and/or English; (2) reference to stylistic and/or contextual differences; and (3) the use of syntactic and/or semantic features. Application of these strategies is shown with the…

Data on the complexity of relative clause formation in children indicate that right embedding precedes central embedding in development. Previous research on the subject argues that configurations where coreferential NP's function as subjects are less complex than configurations where coreferential NP's function as objects. It appears that the…

This study begins with a discussion of what a phonological rule is, and how the term has been used in previous investigations. The relation between the child's phonological system and the adult's system, the relationship between discrimination and production, and the viability of positing underlying forms for children's words are also discussed.…

Argues that transformational grammar supplies an adequate theoretical model with explanatory power; all that is needed is that the language teacher take a long, hard look at transformational theory. (VM)

Goodluck and Solan (EJ 205 641) presented alternative formulations about why errors predicted by basic operations fail to occur and suggested a refined hypothesis. Each aspect of their argument is addressed, and it is concluded that descriptive power, methodology and principles for restricting error predictions favor our original analysis. (RD)

THE ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE IS CONSIDERED AS A QUESTION OF SPECIFYING HOW CHILDREN'S CAPACITY FOR LANGUAGE INTERACTS WITH THEIR LINGUISTIC EXPERIENCE--THE INTERACTION TAKING THE FORM OF RELATING THE UNIVERSAL ASPECTS OF THE DEEP STRUCTURE TO THE IDIOSYNCRATIC ASPECTS OF THE SURFACE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE. THIS INTERACTION OCCURS IN THE ACQUISITION…

Two experiments indicating that children's linguistic generalizational biases change from a semantically-based system to a syntactical-structural system provide evidence for a semantic-relational bias in children's early grammars and support the notion that children's generalizational biases shift from a semantic-relational basis to a…