Using a self-paced reading task, the study aimed to investigate (a) whether English learners in Taiwan immediately resolve main verb versus reduced relative clause ambiguities in a similar way as native English speakers and (b) whether the learners at various English proficiency levels show diverse profiles. With analyses and syntheses of reading…

The present study investigated how lexicosemantic information, syntactic information, and world knowledge are integrated in the course of oral sentence processing in children with specific language impairment (SLI) as compared to children with typical language development. A primed lexical-decision task was used where participants had to make a…

In the current study we explored lexical, syntactic, and semantic processes during text comprehension in English monolinguals and Spanish/English (first language/second language) bilinguals with different experience in interpreting (nontrained bilinguals, interpreting students and professional interpreters). The participants performed an…

This paper compares explicit instruction in second-language Spanish with a control treatment on a written picture description task and a timed auditory grammaticality judgment task. Participants came from two intact, third-year US high school classes, with one experiencing a week of communicative lessons on the Spanish clitic "se"…

In this study we examined syntactic ambiguity resolution in two different Chinese languages, Cantonese and Mandarin, which are relatively similar grammatically but very different phonologically. We did this using four-character sentences that could be read using two, two-syllable sequences (2-2) or a structure where the first syllable could be…

Although the organization of first language (L1) and second language (L2) lexicosemantic information has been extensively studied in the bilingual literature, little evidence exists concerning how syntactic information associated with words is represented across languages. The present study examines the shared or independent nature of the…

Provides redefinition for the syndrome of Broca's aphasia. Advances argument that the neurological explanation should be on separable psychological mechanisms that might be disrupted in isolation from other components of focal brain damages. Neuroanatomical implications are considered within the framework of a "strong localizationist" hypothesis.…

Cross-linguistic borrowing (overt use of words from the other language) and transfer (use of semantic or syntactic structures from the other language without active switching to that language) were examined during language production in Russian-English bilinguals. Grammatical category (noun/verb) and level of concreteness were found to influence…

Past studies of autistic children's memory for linguistic materials have shown that autistics have a special linguistic coding difficulty. Because the autistic deficit stems from a failure to use semantic and syntactic knowledge or from a failure to acquire such forms, future research should explore the mechanics underlying this deficit. (PJM)

Describes a study which examined learning disabled children's understanding of conversational rules for initiating repair of a communication breakdown. Results show learning disabled children were less likely to request clarification of inadequate messages and made fewer correct referent choices than normal children, but analyses suggest this…

Spanish-speaking (SS) children with language impairment (LI) present with deficits in morphology and verb argument structure. These language areas may be useful for clinical identification of affected children. This study aimed to evaluate the discrimination accuracy of spontaneous language measures with SS preschoolers to tease out what…

Describes experiments involving responses of language disordered children to sentences that can carry directive import. Results indicate that language disordered children are qualitatively like normal children with regard to early response behavior. These children do have more difficulty in generating informing responses and utilizing information…

Comprehension and strategy use of 18 autistic children was compared with that of normal 3- and 4-year olds. Subjects were asked to act out certain syntactic and semantic patterns in two experiments. Autistic children performed below the levels of the normal subjects, suggesting that autism is a semantic/cognitive deficit. (PJM)

Using a word order correction paradigm, this study assessed syntactic awareness skills in children with good and poor reading comprehension, matched for age, decoding skill, and nonverbal ability. Poor comprehenders performed less well than normal readers, and the performance of both groups was influenced by the syntactic complexity and semantic…

The ability to process the linguistic input in real time is crucial for successfully acquiring a language, and yet little is known about how language learners comprehend or produce language in real time. Against this background, we have conducted a detailed study of grammatical processing in language learners using experimental psycholinguistic…