Children tend to regularize their productions when exposed to artificial languages, an advantageous response to unpredictable variation. But generalizations in natural languages are typically conditioned by factors that children ultimately learn. In two experiments, adult and six-year-old learners witnessed two novel classifiers, probabilistically…

Metaphors are a common way to express creative language, yet the cognitive basis of figurative language production remains poorly understood. Previous studies found that higher creative individuals can better comprehend novel metaphors, potentially due to a more flexible semantic memory network structure conducive to remote conceptual combination.…

The cross-categorical use of nouns and verbs poses a challenging problem to young language learners because they are known to be less willing to accept that a single form of a word be used for more than one linguistic purpose (e.g., one-form/one-function principle). The present study investigated whether children under 3 years of age are able to…

Vygotsky measured his 'zone of proximal development' in years. To do this, he needed a scheme of age periods, and a set of tasks that could diagnose the next age period without defining it. In this paper, we compare the age periods in his late lectures with Halliday's categories of logico-semantic expansion as used by three adolescent…

This thesis examines whether native, heritage, and L2 speakers of Spanish engage a morphological layer of representation in the processing of inflected words, and whether they do so with both regularly- and irregularly-inflected words. Also examined is whether this tendency towards compositional (i.e. morphological rule-based) processing is…

We trained forty German-speaking children aged 1;8-2;0 in their comprehension of UNTER [UNDER]. The target word was presented within semantically organized input in the form of a "narrative" to the experimental group and within "unconnected speech" to the control group. We tested children's learning by asking them to…

This study examined single-word code-mixing produced by bilingual preschoolers in order to better understand lexical choice patterns in each language. Analysis included item-level code-mixed responses of 606 five-year-old children. Per parent report, children were separated by language dominance based on language exposure and use. Children were…

Discusses the role of linguistics in the study of phrase structure or expressive communication. Various linguistic approaches, including transformational grammar, structural linguistics, and the sociolinguistic approach, are discussed in connection with communication instruction. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Discusses the interaction of metaphor and idiom and the problems this poses for linguistic theory. (AM)

This article examines the notion of sign on various levels, concluding that which pertains to the linguistic level is pertinent; that which pertains to the expressive level is redundant. The notions of connotation and denotation are discussed. (Text is in French.) (AM)

A survey of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's views on the phenomenology of language yields insight into the basic semiotic nature of language. Merleau-ponty's conceptions stand in opposition to Saussure's linguistic postulations and Korzybski's scientism. That is, if language is studied phenomenologically, the acts of speech and gesture take on greater…

The historical study of words, and particularly of the changes in their meanings, has two benefits. First, it can bring to light our recent and culture-bound perspective on the nature of language, and, secondly, the approach to language needs to be made with a perspective on the future rather than the past. (JN)

Background: Children who have reached the age of 2 years without having acquired a 50-word vocabulary and/or who use no word combinations are referred to in the literature as "Late Talkers". Research has not yet identified the factors that cause slow development of expressive language; in particular, relatively little research has been carried out…

Advocates a reworking of lexical pedagogy with reference to the instruction of techniques of expression. (Text is in French.) (AM)