The current study establishes the reliability of the Holy Qur'an as one of the earliest treatise on language acquisition by humans. This is not to say that it is a scientific treatise: Rather what we know as modern 'knowledge' finds mention in a book much older. This applies to many aspects of human life, whether they spring from scientific…

Adjuncts and arguments exhibit different syntactic behaviours, but modelling this difference in minimalist syntax is challenging: on the one hand, adjuncts differ from arguments in that they are optional, transparent, and iterable, but on the other hand they are often strictly ordered, reflecting the kind of strict selection seen in argument…

How do children map linguistic representations onto the conceptual structures that they encode? In the present studies, we provided 3-4-year-old children with minimal-pair scene contrasts in order to determine the effect of particular event properties on novel verb learning. Specifically, we tested whether spatiotemporal cues to causation also…

This dissertation concerns the acquisition of the interaction between lexicosemantic properties of verbs and syntax, focusing on symmetrical and asymmetrical verbs in different syntactic structures. Based on linguistic evidence, it is shown that two conceptual categories, Mutuality and Number, interact to give rise to four event-types: Single…

In an effort to document demographic changes in the academic linguistics community, the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) has commissioned an annual report detailing information about job titles, students, degrees awarded, average salaries, and more. The report offers information about trends in student enrollment and employment by industry.…

We test the claim that acquiring a mass-count language, like English, causes speakers to think differently about entities in the world, relative to speakers of classifier languages like Japanese. We use three tasks to assess this claim: object-substance rating, quantity judgment, and word extension. Using the first two tasks, we present evidence…

In the 1980s, researchers in child language devised several new experimental techniques to assess children's emerging linguistic competence. Innovations in methodology were needed to bridge the apparent gap between the expectation of rapid language acquisition, based on linguistic theory, and the protracted acquisition that was being witnessed…

Computational models have played a central role in the debate over language learnability. This article discusses how they have been used in different "stances", from generative views to more recently introduced explanatory frameworks based on embodiment, cognitive development and cultural evolution. By digging into the details of certain specific…

This study aims to describe in detail the linguistic skills of a large group of SLI participants. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of age-related effects on their linguistic performance and to whether a linguistic assessment of a narrative task can capture language impairments that might not be adequately pointed out by standardized…

Concerns the language development of four children between the ages of 19 and 26 months, as they progressed from single-word utterances to a mean length of utterance of 2.5 morphemes. The observed developmental sequence is described and possible linguistic and cognitive explanations for it are discussed.

IN THIS ARTICLE THE AUTHOR GIVES AN OVERVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS DURING THE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE PUBLICATION OF VOLUME 34, NUMBER 2 OF "REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH" IN APRIL 1964. DISCUSSED ARE (1) LEARNING AND NATIVISTIC THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, (2) EMPIRICAL FINDINGS IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLINGUISTICS,…

Twelve preschoolers who had Down's Syndrome, hydrocephalus, or brain damage of unknown etiology and who functioned at early and late linguistic Stage I were asked to respond to commands in simple, complete adult forms and in incomplete, telegraphic child forms. Late Stage I Ss were superior in comprehension of all forms. (CL)

Two language-delayed children (three-four years old) received comprehension instruction on preposition-object phrases using a miniature linguistic system format to structure generalization. Results indicated generalization not only to untreated two-word combinations but also to comprehension of four-word phrases. In addition, there was some…

This book treats human language as the manifestation of a faculty of the mind, a mental organ whose nature is determined by human biology, suggesting that its functional properties should be explored just as physiology explores the functional properties of physical organs. The book asserts that linguistics investigates cognition, taking as its…