Background: Difficulties in language development are related to social and emotional problems, lower academic outcomes, and lower quality of life from childhood to adolescence. These grave consequences might be significantly reduced by timely identification and professional support. The introduction of systematic screening for language delay (LD)…

Thirty-one children with and without autism spectrum disorder were asked to draw the meaning of 10 basic concepts. Following each drawing, children explained their drawing to the experimenter. Transcripts of the drawing task were coded for children's use of personal pronouns and internal state terms. Children's use of on- and off-task comments…

Background: We discuss a free software system (Computerized Language Analysis [CLAN]) that can enable fast, thorough, and informative language sample analysis (LSA). Method: We describe methods for eliciting, transcribing, analyzing, and interpreting language samples. Using a hypothetical child speaker, we illustrate use KidEval to generate a…

Purpose: Several studies have reported that "useful speech" at 5 years of age predicts outcomes in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but this skill has been vaguely defined. This study investigates which specific aspects of expressive language in children with ASD best predict adult language and communication outcomes.…

When threatened with ostracism, children attempt to strengthen social relationships by engaging in affiliative behaviors such as imitation. We investigated whether an experience of ostracism influenced the extent to which children imitated a partner's language use. In two experiments, 7- to 12-year-old children either experienced ostracism or did…

There can be significant diversity in the language experience of minority language children, and in the levels of proficiency reached. The declining numbers of children now exposed to Irish include those from homes where only/mainly Irish is spoken, those with only one Irish-speaking parent, and children from homes where one/both parent(s) speak…

This study examined dual language learners' (DLLs n = 24) and English-only (EO n = 20) children's expressive and receptive language in kindergarten (M[subscript age] = 5.7 years) as well as the relation to peers' language use. Expressive language skills (vocabulary diversity, syntactic complexity) were measured in the fall, winter, and spring…

The current study investigated the distinction of L2 (second language) English article choice sensitivity in fifty-three L1-Korean L2-English learners in semantic contexts. In the context of English as a foreign language, the participants were divided into two groups based on grammatical ability as determined by their performance on a cloze test.…

Background: Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) show a disharmonic linguistic profile with a clear pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Despite their sociable nature, atypical socio-communicative abilities and deficits in communication and relationship with others have been found. Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate whether…

Children, like adults, use referring expressions to refer to specific objects, events, or people. Research has provided insights into how children use referring expressions and the appearance of forms developmentally (Radford, 1990; Abu-Akel, et al., 2004; Pine & Lieven, 1997). This study examined how three, four, and five year-old children…

This study examined the relation between young English language learners' (ELL) native oral language skills and their language input in transitional bilingual education kindergarten classrooms. Spanish-speaking ELLs' ("n" = 101) Spanish expressive language skills were assessed using the memory for sentences and picture vocabulary…

Discusses the syntactic differences in expressing wishes or desires in Italian and Russian. (CFM)

Syntactic synonymy enables the speaker to use syntactic devices to say the same thing in a number of different ways. It is based on three criteria: (1) similarity of semantic content, (2) certain syntactic similarity between the components of the synonymous structures, and (3) differences in surface structures. The third criterion separates…

Political language employed in serious inquiry differs systematically from language employed to promote loyalty to authority in respect to syntax; grammatical completeness and complexity; proportion of nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech; and forms of qualification. Formal language entails continuous effort at verfication or falsification and…

The stylistics of belief is the study of the ways in which language is used by speakers to express their beliefs, to convince other people they are right, or to avoid committing themselves to particular beliefs. Such study can contribute to an understanding of the ways in which people misuse and manipulate language for their own ends. The…