The first stage of combinatorial speech is better described as variable than uniform. Talk of variants obscures two different aspects of language (knowledge and use) and two different aspects of language development -- acquisition of the grammar (competence) and deployment of the grammar in speaking and listening (performance). Null subjects and…

In our article, "Syntactic complexity effects in sentence production" [Scontras, Badecker, Shank, Lim, & Fedorenko, 2015 (EJ1057757)], we reported two elicited production experiments and argued that there is a cost associated with planning and uttering syntactically complex, object-extracted structures that contain a non-local…

In this article, I present my view on the significant developments and theoretical/empirical tipping points in nonverbal and verbal deception and lie detection from the last 30 years and on prospects for future research in this domain. I discuss three major shifts in deception detection research: (a) From observing target persons' nonverbal…

Ambridge's proposal cannot account for the most basic observations about phonological patterns in human languages. Outside of the earliest stages of phonological production by toddlers, the phonological systems of speakers/learners exhibit internal behaviours that point to the representation and processing of inter-related units ranging in size…

A tension exists on college and university campuses across America today concerning how to pursue liberal, rational, open learning and, at the same time, celebrate a spirit of academic community--in short, how to exercise free expression and maintain civility. In this article, the author begins with an exploration of the boundaries of free speech,…

In this response, Minnick asserts that unequal representation of students' voices, an idea presented in Sensoy and DiAngelo's "Challenging the Common Guidelines in Social Justice Education," presents multiple negative classroom implications. Foremost, Minnick argues that Sensoy and DiAngelo's lack of clarity regarding when a teacher…

This article is comprised of two essays by Paul Alper. The first essay, "Linda VA AG 2013 and Knitting Needles," provides examples of how a natural language does not necessarily work the way of logic. The second essay, "Words," discusses how the words of winners tend to become what we call the enduring historical record. The…

In grammar books, the various functions of "and" as phrasal coordinator and clausal conjunction are treated as standard knowledge. In addition, studies on the uses of "and" in everyday talk-in-interaction have described its discourse-organizational functions on a more global level. In the phonetic literature, in turn, a range of phonetic forms of…

The paper Languages in Contemporary Anglophone Caribbean Societies examines how language is treated in Jamaica and other Anglophone Caribbean societies and the effects of a haphazard approach to language planning on the social dynamics of the society as well as the individual. It briefly explores how Language is handled in Francophone or…

The purpose of this article is to provide some perspectives on Lilienfeld, Ammirati, and David's (2012) paper on distinguishing science from pseudoscience in school psychology. In many respects their work represents an intervention for "grandiose bragging," a problem that has occasionally occurred when various non-evidence-based or discredited…

The article by Amaral and Roeper (this issue; henceforth A&R) presents many interesting ideas about first and second language acquisition as well as some experimental data convincingly illustrating the difference between production and comprehension. The article extends the concept of Universal Bilingualism proposed in Roeper (1999) to second…

This paper responds to Michael Rosen's blog entries, "How Genre Theory Saved the World", arguing that genre theory in the tradition of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has made an important contribution to language and literacy pedagogy. It emerged in the Australian context in about 1980 and was initially developed in response to…

The recent "TESOL Quarterly" article by Biber, Gray, and Poonpon (2011) raises important considerations with respect to the use of syntactic complexity (SC) measures in second language (L2) studies. The article draws the field's attention to one particular measure--complexity of noun phrases (NP) (i.e., noun phrases with modifiers, such as…

In this essay, Mordechai Gordon interprets Martin Buber's ideas on dialogue, presence, and especially his notion of embracing in an attempt to shed some light on Buber's understanding of listening. Gordon argues that in order to understand Buber's conception of listening, one needs to examine this concept in the context of his philosophy of…

Poplack, Zentz and Dion (PZD; Poplack, Zentz & Dion, 2011, this issue) examine the often unquestioned assumption that the existence of preposition stranding (PS) in Canadian French is linked to the presence of a contact situation with English in the North American context. Although this issue has been the topic of previous research from a…