In four studies, 60 two- and three-year-olds were studied in an elicited imitation task wherein the linguistic form of sentences was varied according to conjunction structure and pattern of redundancy deletion in conjunction reduction. Both factors were found to affect imitation. (Author/RM)

In this study the part of the sentence which constitutes what the speaker is talking about is called the topic" of the sentence, and the rest of the sentence is the comment", which provides new information about the topic. (Author/MB)

This article reports on a statistical study on the frequency of occurrence of different connectors between simple sentences as seen in texts written by elementary school children, as a function of parent education and occupation, social class and dwelling area of the child. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

A study was undertaken to investigate which of ten constructions are available to children of various ages for expressing conditionality. A modified sentence completion test based on use of the ten constructions was designed, field-tested, and administered individually to 20 students in each of five grades: kindergarten and grades two, four, six,…

As may be seen from data collected during language observations of four children over a period of two and a half years, children's sentences are not simply flawed versions of adult counterparts, but seem to result from a different grammar. These data indicate that logical formatives, such as "even," and "only," are sentence-initial constituents.…

This article discusses prepositive expressions, expressions whose meaning is equivalent to that of one single preposition, and preposition groups in French. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

The classes and class members of function words are examined in detail in this paper in order to determine those which are most basic and most important to comprehension at the kindergarten through first-grade level. Noun determiners and pronouns, verbal determiners, and prepositions were found to be of importance, as were a small number of…

Describes two experiments which assessed the ability of adult second language (L2) learners to produce and comprehend real, unreal, and past unreal English conditional sentences. Developmental differences are analyzed in relation to distinctive features. The analyses lend support to the explanatory power of markedness theory in explaining L2…

Contrasts the syntactic view of forward and backward deletion of base structure elements with the idea that pragmatic factors of situational redundancy and perceptual grouping account for conjunction reduction in children. (EKN)

Errors made by Finnish university students in the use of the English article were analyzed using two types of error analyses: a traditional type of error analysis to provide an overall view of the errors found in students' compositions; and a multiple-choice test devised on the basis of the findings and shortcomings of the first test. With the…

Investigates the linguistic and cognitive aspects of the mastery of the time conjunctions "before" and "after" by young children. (EKN)

Conceptual and syntactic strategies in reading a foreign language are considered with attention to the functioning of the sentence parser. Topics of analysis include: the theoretical background and the educational relevance of the question of strategies; a study of the relative importance of the two parsing principles (syntactically guided…

This investigation studied the development of the form and function of negative sentences, and how it relates to the input on negation that children receive from their parents. The data came from three children: two from a previous study (Bellugi) and one the son of the investigators. A detailed analysis was carried out of the syntactic form and…

In this analysis of cases and clauses in Vietnamese, an attempt is made to make use of tagmemics and a case grammar model called lexicase. Such an eclectic combination of the two theories is not new either in the field of general linguistics or in Vietnamese. This paper recognizes the hierarchical levels in syntax and the grammatical unit or…