This article presents findings from a year-long study of how intermediate second language (L2) learners of German (English first language) used case markings, word order, and semantic information when comprehending individual German sentences. The results showed that the learners relied on word order and semantic information, but did not…

The Gricean Maxim of Quantity is believed to govern linguistic performance. Speakers are assumed to provide as much information as required for referent identification and no more, and listeners are believed to expect unambiguous but concise descriptions. In three experiments we examined the extent to which naive participants are sensitive to the…

A network model of logical and semantic structures from which speakers or writers generate linguistic messages at the discourse level is presented. (Author)

According to the author, competence and performance and their interrelationships are the concern of linguistics. Performance models must: (1) be based on physical data of speech; (2) describe the phenomena under investigation; (3) predict events which are confirmed by experiment; (4) suggest causal relationships by identifying necessary and…

The normal" six-year old has control of all aspects of his language when he begins attending school. The teacher must expand these skills. (MF)

Suggests that there are no sharp distinctions among children's linguistic comprehension, production, and knowledge. Instead, all performance and understanding are embedded in a fluctuating, interrelated thought system. (PD)

Two studies were conducted to discover possible patterns in question acquisition. For the production study, questions were collected from 22 children aged two to eleven. In the comprehension study, 100 children, aged three to five, were tested. The test controlled syntax and vocabulary and varied specific "wh-" question-words. (Author/RM)

Adapted from "Work in Progress" n5, 1972, Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh. (DD)

An investigation of children's ability to convey and respond to requests for action was based on the spontaneous speech of 36 dyads of nursery school children (3;6--5;7). Examinations of the contexts of direct requests indicated that speaker and addressee shared an understanding of the interpersonal meaning factors relevant to requesting.…

Recent experimental work in teaching standard English to speakers of nonstandard dialects of English has shown that such speakers often have a good receptive command of the standard dialect, and readily re-encode stimuli presented in the standard dialect into their own nonstandard forms. This fact shows that some modification is needed in the…

The linguistic development of 42 learning disabled students 10-16 years old was examined. Responses were elicited to five linguistic structures, including the distinction between "ask" and "tell", pronominal restriction, and the minimum distance principle. Data were analyzed in terms of three groups based on Verbal and Performance differentials on…

A study was conducted to examine some of the cognitive and linguistic factors that influence metaphor comprehension in young children. Presupposing that (1) the similarities between the topic and the vehicle in a metaphor comprise the metaphor's ground, (2) salience is the degree of prominence of a characteristic in relation to a concept, and (3)…

Discusses basic language functions emphasizing the importance of spoken language and decrying the fact that linguistics, on the conceptual level, is still chiefly concerned with written language. Stresses the complexity of language and the importance of the situational context, particularly with regard to the semiotics of the media. (MES)

In response to earlier studies by Thompson and Chapman (1977) and Clark and Clark (1977), 16 middle-class and upper-class White children between 1.2 and 2.2 were tested for overextension in production and comprehension. (AM)