The present dissertation intends to investigate the syntactic nature and L2-acquisition of passive sentence structure in two Romance varieties, Italian and Spanish. First, I will present an analytic proposal couched within the Generative Approach (Chomsky, 1957, and subsequent work); from there, and following Perlmutter and Postal's (1977)…

It is a common finding across languages that young children have problems in understanding patient-initial sentences. We used Tagalog, a verb-initial language with a reliable voice-marking system and highly frequent patient voice constructions, to test the predictions of several accounts that have been proposed to explain this difficulty: the…

We report on a study of first-exposure learners with different first languages (L1s: English, Japanese) to examine their ability to process input for form and meaning. We used a rich set of tasks to tap respectively into processing, comprehension, imitation, and working memory. We show that there are advantages to having a first language (L1) that…

Many researchers now believe that the representations and processes underlying syntactical development are specific to a "language faculty." If so, reference animacy would not be expected to influence acquisition of linguistic structures such as the passive sentence construction. Specifically, children should be comparably able to…

An analysis of the skills involved in listening comprehension and techniques for developing them in students looks first at elements of the general process of interpretation, showing the essential importance of the interpretative functions as contrasted with simple comprehension of sounds and decoding of meaning. The first section looks at…

A model for adult language learning is developed based on the postulates that language is semiotic, contextual, communicative, and cultural. Research in psycholinguistics has discovered that a cognitive and recognitional knowledge of language underlies and is greater than performative language. The move from the first level, the semantic base, to…

Three- and four-year-old children were tested in their comprehension of locative prepositions. Results showed that those prepositions characterized as positive were comprehended less well than their ostensibly negative counterparts, contrary to theoretical predictions. An explanatory hypothesis concerning children's developing spatial…

Reviews research into listening skills and processes, focusing on speech recognition, memory in processing, discourse comprehension, the challenge of accessing the listening process, the role of context and other factors influencing listening, and the relationship between listening and other language skills. Future directions in research are…

The testing of a number of hypotheses about the effect of hearing a prior context sentence on immediate processing of a subsequent target sentence is described. According to the standard deep structure model, higher level processing (e.g. semantic interpretation, integration of context-tarqet information) does not occur immediately as speech is…

Impromptu speech is heard only once, at a rate of perception that depends on the speaker's delivery, and is specifically adapted to the listeners. These features trigger cognitive activities that facilitate translation. Impromptu speech is characterized by a constant interconnection between cognitive competence and language competence and between…

This study examined the effects of children's cognitively based role expectations on their judgments of the grammatical acceptability of sentences. Sixty children, 12 each in grades 4 through 8, individually heard 10 sentences violating the Minimum Distance Principle (MDP). The sentences were grammatical, but linguistically complex, and violated…

Recent studies in productive phonology among immigrants have supported the case for the existence of a critical or sensitive period in language acquisition. The present study proposes that the case for a sensitive period would be further strengthened by the discovery of comparable age effects for other linguistic abilities such as listening…

Communicative proficiency, defined as native-like ability to use the language as a medium of two-way communication, is most effectively and efficiently achieved through instruction emphasizing development of listening and reading comprehension skills, and virtually excluding training in production. The comprehension approach avoids the teaching of…

The experiments described in this paper compare inference-based and expectancy-based models of the comprehension of indirect, non-literal expressions. The inference-based model claims that the comprehension of non-literal meanings requires more and deeper processing than the comprehension of literal meanings. The expectancy-based model rests on…

The chapters in this volume represent a type of current psycholinguistic research that focuses both on the nature of human information processing and the coding of linguistic structure. The chapters and authors are as follows: (1) "The Wherefores and Therefores of the Competence-Performance Distinction," by V. Valian; (2) "Levels of Processing and…