In vocabulary research there has been a shift from focusing on single words to considering multiword sequences, such as collocations. Despite the general consensus among language researchers that collocation is essential to effective language use in real-world communication, particularly oral communication, language-testing researchers have made…

Discusses study which looked at the variance from target language norms in second-language behavior which arises in semantic information in individual words. Results suggest that study of grammar as a knowledge of basic lexical classifications requires little attention because work class identifications learned in L1 are smoothly transferred to…

The study reported here investigated the effects of using props to illustrate the meaning of sentences in a syntactic awareness task in which subjects were required to correct ungrammatical sentences. Children scored significantly higher in the props condition though the proportion of meaning-changing errors to total errors was not significantly…

Two studies are described that investigated preschool children's sensitivity to relative clauses as barriers to the movement of "wh" questions. A cross-sectional study and a longitudinal study conducted over the course of one year found that young children refused to extract "wh" questions from the ungrammatical site inside a…

Compared grammaticality judgment (GJ) test data with dehydrated sentence test data, collecting data about verb movement from three levels of adult second-language (L2) Spanish learners. The GJs of L2 learners were consistent, suggesting that a relationship exists between a standard GJ test and a dehydrated sentence test and noting that GJ data are…

Currently accepted principles of communicative approaches to second language pedagogy are examined to determine the extent to which they are grounded in theories of language, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and other language-related disciplines. The discussion of communicative approaches distinguishes the notions of communicative competence…

An outline is provided of the contents and boundaries of three areas of competence, or systems of knowledge, that are to be minimally included in a theory of communicative competence: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Grammatical competence is concerned with the rules of sentence grammar and sentence…

This study presents evidence for the psychological reality of the Subset Principle as a determinant of the acquisition of Governing Category Parameter settings for English anaphors and pronominals. Prelingual deafness was used as a natural experiment in the acquisition of English in the presence of variably impaired access to English language…

Analyses of the Null Subject Parameter (NSP) suggest that several factors may influence the resetting process for second language acquisition, such as specific "trigger" data, awareness of agreement as a part of awareness of agreement (INFL), and stylistic rules such as subject postposing and anaphoric reference. Four tests were…

Empirical evidence is presented in favor of a theory that attributes the delay in the acquisition of the passive to young children's ability to accomplish nonlocal assignment of features. Two experiments testing monolingual Spanish-speaking children's knowledge of the passive are discussed and analyzed in light of the theory of Argument-chain…

This is a bibliography of post-graduate theses on language and linguistics in Irish university libraries, from 1915 to 1976. The 537 entries are listed by author and indexed by subject and language. In addition, each entry contains the following information: degree, year, and university. An appendix contains theses completed outside of Ireland…

Discusses the suggestion that grammatical-specific language impairment (SLI) is characterized as a deficit affecting only feature-related aspects of grammar. The research reported here indicates a wider impairment involving aspects of grammar not determined by feature checking, in particular the structure of the verb phrase with resultative…

This overview delineates the direction of pedagogical developments since the 25th anniversary issue of "TESOL Quarterly." Three tendencies characterize our professional practice: (a) a continuation along the earlier lines of progression (i.e., in opening up the classroom to learning opportunities, integrating skills, and teaching for specific…

Calls into question the data of grammaticality judgment tasks on which several GB-based studies on the second-language acquisition of accusative verbs by Japanese learners of English base their arguments and reports the results of a pilot study. (Author/VWL)

This study argues that positive second-language (L2) data do not necessarily rule out inappropriate L2 grammar. Rather, L2 learners appear to postulate first-language (L1) grammar as an interim theory about the L2, at least in the initial stages of L2 acquisition. The case where L2 grammar intersects L1 concerning time adverbial clauses was chosen…