Examines the reason why new grammar has failed to make the impact that was predicted fifteen or so years ago.(RB)

This paper reviews the literature on grammatical knowledge in language comprehension in the preschool years from the perspective of sensitivity to structural contrasts. Studies of both direct and indirect evidence of sensitivity to structural contrasts were evaluated and showed that there may be a developmental sequence of increasing sensitivity…

Demonstrates that an understanding of children's language-acquisition difficulties with a wide range of syntactic constructions should be derived from limitations on the child's ability to deal with processing load and formal representational complexity. Maintains this can be done only in the context of a view of syntactic representation…

This article assumes the value of a scientifically grounded, rhetorically focused, professionally supported, and publicly embraced grammar within the public schools and examines the past century of practices within the United States from that perspective. It describes a brief renaissance in the 50's and early 60's, inspired largely by the…

This paper, based on Rosenbaum's (1967) grammar of adult English, attempts to apply ideas of deep structure and transformations to child grammar. The main rules predicated include phrase structure rules, segment structure rules, contextual features, and transformational rules. In this approach, the role of transformations is to segment and place…

Examined the development of principles of control in the grammar of 15 preschool children over a 9-month period, focusing on pronominal reference. The results confirm a developmental sequence that is driven by lexical learning and changing structural analyses. (38 references) (MDM)

A system for classifying English predicates into four families that account for all forms, moods, voices, and tenses is examined as an approach to teach grammar to students of English as a second language (ESL). It is suggested that by focusing on one family at a time, then building by combining these families, students can learn more readily to…