This study aims to extend statistical learning (SL) research to multilinguals and provide an insight into what could facilitate word segmentation. We studied how the number of cues available in the input as well as the number of languages spoken influence SL and word segmentation. We used two SL tasks: one involving the tracking of transitional…

This dissertation draws on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate the linguistic practices of teachers and children who are learning Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) in two dual immersion preschools in California. CHL children have been interpreted as novice members in local speech communities who actively explore…

Recent research that explored how input exposure and learner characteristics influence novel L2 morphosyntactic pattern learning has exposed participants to either text or static images rather than dynamic visual events. Furthermore, it is not known whether incorporating eye gaze cues into dynamic visual events enhances dual pattern learning.…

The present paper examines the oral performance of Hindi language learners during practice Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI) conducted during workshops hosted by New York University and sponsored by STARTALK. The most salient characteristics of the heritage language learners' output are compared with the output of foreign language learners who are…

This study of 40 hearing-impaired college students found that highly intelligible speakers were uniformly consistent in their speech production patterns, whereas speakers who exhibited low overall speech intelligibility were either extremely consistent in their aberrant production patterns or extremely inconsistent in their error patterns.…

A study examined grammatical morphology and sentence imitation in 9 children with specific learning impairments (SLI), 10 with Down syndrome (DS), and 10 controls matched on mean length of utterance. Children with SLI and DS performed significantly more poorly than controls on measures of tense inflections and non-tense morphemes. (Contains…

Fourteen preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) and 12 younger controls were more likely to produce auxiliary "is" to describe target pictures when the preceding sentence contained auxiliary "are" than when it contained past tense. Use of "is" was least likely when the preceding sentence was nonfinite. (Contains references.) (CR)

Fourteen children (ages 4-6) with specific language impairment produced sentences containing reduced or unreduced disyllabic proper names. Acoustic analyses revealed a significantly longer duration for verb-onset to name-onset of sentences containing the reduced name, indicating that although segmental material is omitted, an acoustic trace…

A study investigated phonological patterns in 12 bilingual (Spanish-English) 4-year-old children. There were no significant differences between the two languages on percentage of occurrence for phonological processes, however, children exhibited different patterns of production across the two languages and showed different patterns compared to…

Two studies on the rhythmical patterns of eye movements during reading, displayed by adolescents with reading disabilities and by undergraduates without reading disabilities, revealed that subjects with reading disabilities exhibited rhythm variability, unpredictability, and lethargic tempos; and subjects who were primed exhibited improved parsing…

In research on second language instruction, the researcher's knowledge of the learner's background has not always been central in data collection. However, data collection is part of a research design that should include both a description of the sample population and the role of the learner in the decision to carry out a given study.…

Results of a 1973 mail questionnaire survey of Chicano medical students are reported, indicating that the group, the majority being educated in California and Texas, is similar to the majority of medical students in some respects but different in such areas as language use and parental socioeconomic status. (Editor/JT)

Research is reported on the degree to which the speaker characteristics of children can be related to the attitudes of teachers, in the absence, and in the presence of additional visual information about the speaker. (JM)

A regional replication of the Williams Study of teacher evaluation of children's speech was attempted, using the same 40 language tapes as stimuli for 87 elementary school teachers, both black and white, from the Memphis, Tennessee, school district. During listening sessions, conducted during a teacher inservice program, subjects were asked to…

Lexical diversity of 53 children with specific language impairment (SLI) (ages 3-7) was compared to 91 typical peers and younger children matched for mean length of utterance in words (MLUw). Older subgroups showed higher lexical diversity. At lower MLUw levels, children with SLI showed higher diversity than the younger children. (Contains…