In this paper I review the methodology that I used in beginning my early fieldwork on a tonal Athabaskan language, including preparation through reading and listening, working with speakers, organizing data, and describing and analyzing the data, stressing how these are not steps or stages, but intersect and interact with each other.

This article demonstrates how the Comparative Method can be applied to cross-linguistic research on language acquisition. The Comparative Method provides a systematic procedure for organizing and interpreting acquisition data from different languages. The Comparative Method controls for cross-linguistic differences at all levels of the grammar and…

The study explored the different influences of roots and suffixes in reading aloud morphemic pseudowords (e.g., vetr-ezza, "glass-ness"). Previous work on adults showed a facilitating effect of both roots and suffixes on naming times. In the present study, pseudoword stimuli including roots and suffixes in different combinations were…

Abstract representations such as subsegmental phonological features play such a vital role in explanations of phonological processes that many assume that these representations play an equally prominent role in the learning process. This assumption is tested in three artificial grammar experiments involving a mini language with morpho-phonological…

Purpose: This study evaluated the effects of an intervention program aimed to improve reading and spelling ability through instruction in morphological awareness together with other forms of linguistic awareness, including knowledge of phonology, orthography, syntax, and semantics. Method: Sixteen children aged between 8;07 (years;months) and…

This cross-linguistic comparison of metalinguistic development in French and English examines early ability to manipulate derivational suffixes in oral language games as a function of chronological age, receptive vocabulary, and year of schooling. Data from judgment and production tasks are presented for children aged between 5 and 8 years in…

This opens with a critical and historical exploration of the terms that make up the phrase "English National Curriculum", breaking them down to build them up differently. This prompts a critique of the nominally singular subject "English" that stresses its plurality ("Englishes") and introduces the concept "Englishing" to highlight its ongoing…

Masked affix priming effects have usually been obtained for words sharing the initial affix (e.g., "reaction"-"REFORM"). However, prior evidence on masked suffix priming effects (e.g., "baker"-"WALKER") is inconclusive. In the present series of masked priming lexical decision experiments, a target word was…

A study of reciprocals in Japanese compares two kinds: (1) a verbal suffix "aw"; and (2) an NP argument "otagai." Although "otagai" appears to be taken care of by syntactic binding theory, it is proposed that there is no evidence for the existence of a syntactic position of the object NP in the case of "aw." The suffix can be characterized as…

A cross-modal priming experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that lexical access of verbs marked with a specific inflectional suffix would be facilitated by immediately prior exposure to semantically and contextually unrelated verbs with the same suffix. It was hypothesized that while listening to spoken "-ed" sentences,…

A study of the Samoan "-cia" suffix is presented. It argues that, contrary to prevailing theory, Samoan does have an active/passive contrast but that it is indicated by a difference in word order rather than by verbal morphology. It is shown, however, that "-cia" is similar to a passive suffix in that passive involves the…

After the Comanche Indians split from the Shoshoni-Comanche in the early eighteenth century, the Comanche language underwent several subtle changes in the use and position of directional suffixes. The use of two directional suffixes (-kin, meaning "motion toward" and -kwan, meaning "motion away") illustrates these changes. In…

A discussion of the treatment of suffixes in Korean linguistic theory argues that, in view of recent clitic typology, Korean case markers and verbal suffixes are better analyzed in lexical rather than in syntactic terms. Evidence for this approach is found in phonological phenomena, morpheme and allomorph selection, and compounding. The most…

A study examined the applicability of the Ordering Hypothesis to Japanese suffixes. The hypothesis, which claims that affixes that trigger phonological rules (cyclical affixes) do not appear external to affixes that do not, is found to be an inappropriate assumption in Japanese. Examples in English and Chamorro support this finding. It is…

A dialect of Rato-Romansh spoken in a Swiss town is examined in the context of lexical phonology. The structure of this dialect's lexicon consists of two levels defined by stress assignment, not cyclically in this case but at the end of each level. Other considerations that have been advanced as bases for level division within the lexicon, such as…