Language is of vital importance to human beings. It is a means of communication and it has specific cognitive links. Advanced social cognition is necessary for children to acquire language, and sophisticated mind-reading abilities to assume word meanings and communicate pragmatically. Language can be defined as a bi-directional system that permits…

Constituent structure is considered to be the very foundation of linguistic competence and often considered to be innate, yet we show here that it is derivable from the domain-general processes of chunking and categorization. Using modern and diachronic corpus data, we show that the facts support a view of constituent structure as gradient (as…

Forty Swedish university students produced sentences from homographs that could be interpreted either as verbs or nouns. The words also varied in degree of polysemy (multiple meaning). The results indicated that the subjects prefered verb productions when the words were grouped according to objective frequency. This was more evident when the…

This study examined the extent of children's awareness of the semantic subtleties of the word "promise" and their comprehension of sentences following an atypical syntactic pattern using "promise" as the main verb. Subjects included children within three months of being six-and-one-half, eight-and-one-half, nine-and-one-half, and ten-and-one-half…

This research studied the processes which enable people to acquire semantic information from natural-language discourse. Specific objectives were: (1) to represent semantically the structural meaning of English discourse by a well-defined semantic model; (2) to develop a way of using the semantic representation of a text as a structural model for…

This study is an attempt to investigate the efficacy of using existing semantic relations categories for understanding how children comprehend the verb "with" + noun construction. (Author)

Three experiments investigated the nature of productive forward linking (from semantics to syntax) and productive reverse linking (from syntax to semantics) in language-impaired children. Found that the normally developing control subjects showed a good use of productive forward and reverse linking, whereas the language-impaired subjects…

Two groups of preschoolers and one of young grade-schoolers were tested for their comprehension of presuppositions and negation in complex syntax. Four types of sentences were presented: affirmative and negative versions of sentences with factive main predicates (which presuppose the truth of the proposition of the complement clause) and with…

This paper is part of a current dissertation project exploring the relationships between constructs in linguistic theory and pattern of language behavior in aphasic adults. The author feels that linguists have done little enough work in the area of speech pathology yet they have discussed at length the distinction between competence and…

Presents the results of a one-year longitudinal analysis of the interlanguage of an adult acquiring English without formal instruction. Observations of the form-function relationships in the early interlanguage are included as well as the ways these relationships change over the 12 months of the study. (SL)

This paper is a response to Lavandera's question regarding the limits of the study of language variation. Sociolinguistics is characterized by its desire to limit representational meaning much more narrowly than formal linguistics. In addition while formal linguistics views language as species-specific and designed to accomodate logical…

Expands on study by Brown and Hanlon which showed that parents seemed more attuned to semantic value of their child's speech rather than grammatical form. However, this more recent study suggests that language learning environment presents subtle cues, distinguishing between well-formed and ill-formed sentences, evidenced by mothers' inclinations…

Investigates expression of part-whole semantic relation by children 3 to 12 years old and indicates that older children prefer its use significantly more often. The part-whole semantic relation was also observed to take several linguistic forms, such as partitive, spatial, and possessive. Age, experimental task format, or type of experimental…

Research supported by a Public Health Service Research grant. (VM)