This study reports findings from two truth value judgment experiments to address two research questions on Mandarin: (i) whether children and adults have the knowledge of the structural constraint Principle C in their pronoun resolution; and (ii) whether adults and children show the prohibition effect of the cyclic-c-command constraint or the QR…

Much has been said about children's strategies for mapping elements of meaning to words in toddlerhood. However, children continue to refine word meanings and patterns of word use into middle childhood and beyond, even for common words appearing in early vocabulary. We address where children past toddlerhood diverge from adults and where they more…

This article reports on how, against a background of relatively stable patterns of second language negation, a Japanese-speaking adult learning English made use of a negative formula, "I don't know," and how, in and through interaction, analyzed it into its component parts and began using "don't" more productively.…

To express object transfer, Cantonese-speakers use a "ditransitive" ([V-R-T] or [V-T-R] where V = Verb, T = Theme, R = Recipient), or a more complex prepositional/serial-verb (P/SV) construction. Clausal elements in Cantonese datives can be optional (resulting in "full" versus "non-full" forms) or appear in variant…

What are the chances of a dyad of Spanish-speaking strangers using informal address in casual, initial interactions in Buenos Aires, Argentina, today? To discover the pattern(s) of contemporary address, the Principal Investigator (PI) conducted a sociolinguistic experiment focusing on strangers' initial interactions to minimize the influence of…

This study examines an interlanguage in which Moroccan learners of Dutch use non-thematic verbs in combination with thematic verbs that can be inflected as well. These non-thematic verbs are real dummy auxiliaries because they are deprived of semantic content and primarily have a syntactic function. Whereas in earlier second language (L2) research…

An experiment testing adult Polish speakers' ability to supply dative forms of unfamiliar nouns revealed strong effects of type frequency (performance was better on inflections that apply to large classes) and neighbourhood density (participants were more likely to supply the target inflection with nonce nouns belonging to densely populated…

This booklet is divided into two sections. Section 1, "A Few Words on Language, Courtesies, and Stereotypes," gives suggestions on speaking to and about people with disabilities. Principles of language use include: (1) put people first, not their disability; (2) avoid identifying a group of people as a disability category; (3) avoid…

Two studies investigated gender influences on the communication patterns of individuals with mental retardation. Gender-linked patterns appeared to exist among speakers with the highest Mean Length Utterances (MLU), despite the overarching relationship of MLU and person reference. (CR)

Two experiments examined Lakoff's suggestion that men and women use different speech styles (women's speech being more polite and less assertive than men's). The effects of undergraduate students' use of three linguistic variables (tag questions, qualifiers, and compound requests) on person perception was tested. (CM)

Based on the premise that the most important activity of socialization is the construction of meaning systems in a person's mind, this paper describes a study of U.S. children and adolescents who reside in Japan and Japanese children and adolescents who reside in the United States. The study attempted to isolate specific developmental processes…

A study analyzed the use of six nonstandard linguistic variables by eight adolescent and eight adult African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), each group equally divided into males and females, from Muncie, Indiana. The study was designed to investigate whether occupation, a social variable, also determines AAVE speakers' use of nonstandard…

Research has begun to address the question of transfer of language usage patterns beyond the idea that people's native language (L1) can influence the way they produce a second language (L2). This study investigated bidirectional transfer, of both lexical and grammatical features, in adult speakers of English and Spanish who varied in age of L2…

A study investigated patterns of usage of "can" and "may" (e.g., "May/Can I go to the bathroom?") among native speakers and non-native speakers of English. A questionnaire was administered to 25 native English-speakers, most aged 19-26 and the remainder over age 45, and 56 non-native speakers taking advanced…

Analysis of 12 Scottish and 12 American 3- to 6-year-olds interacting with adults indicated that, because Scottish adults use the present perfect tense more frequently in their speech to children than American adults do, Scottish children use the tense in their speech long before American children do. (Author/CB)