This paper presents an experimental study of the rarely explored question of how input through instruction interacts with L2 acquisition at the level of modular linguistic knowledge. The investigation focuses on L2 knowledge of the English polarity item "any," whose properties are only partially covered by typical language-teaching…

Evidentials are grammatical elements such as affixes and particles indicating the source of knowledge. We provide an overview of this grammatical category and consider three research domains to which developmental studies on evidentiality contribute: the acquisition of linguistic means to characterize knowledge, the conceptual understanding of…

Viewing language acquisition as the product of a biased learner who takes advantage of the information available from a variety of sources in his or her environment, this book provides a new way of thinking about the process of language comprehension. The analysis in the book borrows insights from theories about the development of mental models,…

Examined effects of direct intervention on language learning. Using a toy manipulation task, 18 children aged 3;6 to 4;6 were systematically taught linguistic structures beyond their developmental grasp. Solid improvement was found in the experimental conditions; no significant improvement was noted in control conditions, showing that the language…

Discusses results of study that attempted to determine whether subject-auxiliary inversion occurs in yes-no questions before wh-questions and whether noninversion errors are characteristic feature of acquisition of wh-questions. Findings do not support previous claims that inversion is acquired in yes-no questions before wh-questions. Rather,…

Discusses the current approaches to interlanguage syntax, focusing on the goal of finding consistency and pattern in syntactic variation. Some themes contributing to descriptive approaches include: the transition from morphosyntax acquisition studies to those of more complex syntax, the emergence of syntax from discourse, explicitness, and the…

Expands on study by Brown and Hanlon which showed that parents seemed more attuned to semantic value of their child's speech rather than grammatical form. However, this more recent study suggests that language learning environment presents subtle cues, distinguishing between well-formed and ill-formed sentences, evidenced by mothers' inclinations…

Presents results of two case studies involving the acquisition of English in a natural environment, as well as the results of two judgment tests in which subjects were asked to judge the grammaticality of sentences containing both correctly and incorrectly used dative verbs. (SL)

This volume deals with various aspects of the relationship between linguistic ability and general cognitive development. It presents original, up-to-date research for child psychologists, linguists, psycholinguists, scholars, teachers, and students interested in this field and interprets the findings in the context of contemporary linguistic…

Phenomena are examined to support the conception that cognitive structures continue to reflect the numerous ways of apprehending the world that blend to some degree into each other. (AMH)

A study of the relative difficulty of four grammatical components of object complements (complement markers, personal pronouns, tense inflection, and word order) indicated that tense marking was found to be the most difficult for hearing-impaired students. It is suggested that data on first and second language acquisition be considered when…

Comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences was studied with 48 Japanese children between the ages of two and six. Four types of sentences were constructed using passive and active structures and two word orders: subject-object-verb (SOV) and object-subject-verb (OSV). The basic order of elements in a simple sentence in Japanese is…

This study is concerned with the teaching of French grammar to native speakers at the elementary level and specifically considers whether or not students are psychologically ready to handle concepts entailed in the formal instruction of grammar. The sample included 5,900 students in grades 4 through 8 in French schools in Ontario. Subjects…

The development of sentence coordination in children using sentences conjoined by "and" was studied to test the adequacy of the transformationally based derivational theory of complexity. Two cross-sectional experiments were conducted using 18 sentence types with children between the ages of three and five. One experiment used an elicited…

The present paper reports on a case study investigating the acquisition of form and function of the English progressive by a seven-year-old Hebrew speaker, learning English as a second language. The paper describes the different elicitation techniques used, and discusses the suitability of such techniques for the investigation of form and…