Language is the basis of human communication and is the most important key to complete mental development and thinking. Therefore, children must learn to communicate using appropriate language. For this to happen, the development of language in the child must be understood as a biological process, complete with internal laws and with marked stages…

Linguistic alignment--the contingent reuse of our interlocutors' language at all levels of linguistic structure--pervades human dialogue. Here, we design unique measures to capture the degree of linguistic alignment between interlocutors' linguistic representations at three levels of structure: lexical, syntactic, and semantic. We track these…

The ability to spell correctly is a fundamental skill for participating in society and engaging in professional work. In the German language, the capitalization of nouns and proper names presents major difficulties for both native and nonnative learners, since the definition of what is a noun varies according to one's linguistic perspective. In…

Resultative constructions show a wide range of cross-linguistic variation, which may pose nontrivial challenges to L2 learners. This study investigates how syntactic and semantic differences between L1 and L2 affect L2 acquisition of resultatives. In particular, we investigate how L1-Korean learners project the syntax and semantics of L2-English…

This paper investigates the effect of sentence complexity, specifically lexical and syntactic surprisal, on L2 listening difficulty. Psycholinguistic studies revealed that surprisal cases correlate with textual comprehension difficulty. Based on surprisal theory, these cases are less probable or expected, considering the precedent context, thus…

Unlike English, Standard Arabic has two forms of subject pronouns: Independent such as "?na" ("I"), and a pronominal suffix that is an integral part of the verb such as "katab-tu" ("I wrote"). Independent subject pronouns are commonly used in nominal sentences, not verbal sentences. Use of independent…

This report describes part of a longer study on sentence comprehension. The long range goal is to identify distinct levels of processing in terms of the types of linguistic and extralinguistic information each level uses. The focus of this part of the study is sentences with filler-gap relations, such as, "This is the girl the teacher wanted to…

A study tested the validity of a theory of count/mass syntax in word learning. The theory proposes that children infer one of two procedures, depending on whether the referent is an object or a non-solid substance. Subjects were 36 2-year-olds, divided according to three experimental conditions. All were taught a novel word with reference to…

The role of court judges as linguists is discussed. Linguistic issues arise in courts when lawyers attempt to convince a court that a statute, insurance policy, or contract should be interpreted as favoring their own client's interests, with respect to resolving a dispute that depends on the proper construal of a particular document. An…

A study investigating the independence of linguistic abilities from each other, specifically the separability of syntax and semantics and the autonomy of syntactic abilities, is described. In the study, 30 individuals with Alzheimer's disease produced spontaneous conversations, completed sentences eliciting 16 grammatical forms, and when possible,…

This research characterizes how the mental lexicon functions during sentence processing. In sentence processing, access of meaning is seen to be dependent on interaction between syntactic and semantic information within the sentence. It had been previously thought that meaning had been located in an independent mental lexicon. Three experiments…

A polemic is made for frame semantics and the linguistic phenomenon of anaphoric reference without noun phrase (NP) antecedent is examined within this frame. Non-syntactic anaphora is that which does not point out into the real world but rather points back into the discourse in a frame which has been built up between the speaker and hearer in a…

This research examines how semantic information influences syntactic parsing decisions during sentence processing. In the first experiment, subjects were presented lexical strings having syntactically identical surface structures but with two possible underlying structures: "The children taught by the Berlitz method," and "The…

The use of "wh" forms in questions asked by four children was recorded from age 22 to 36 months, and analyzed. In the emergence of "wh" forms, the children first asked identifying questions with "what" and "who," followed in order by (1) "wh" pronominal questions which ask for major sentence…

The paper examines ways in which language complexity of the stimulus and language ability of the receivers may influence learning via television for hearing impaired and hearing children. Research is reviewed on the impact of language abstraction on learning from television, and findings from paired associate learning trials are cited to suggest…