Due in part to its complex nature, there is still much to uncover in the investigation of the neural processes that contribute to synchronization between speakers and listeners during communication in the context of social cognition, specifically between native and nonnative English speakers and listeners. This study used a novel method of…

Syntactic priming studies in second language (L2) have contributed to understanding how L2 speakers' syntactic knowledge is represented and processed. However, little is known about social influences on L2 speakers' syntactic processing and learning. The present study investigated whether L2 speakers' syntactic priming is influenced by social…

Recent research has shown that distinct event-related potential (ERP) signatures are associated with switching between languages compared to switching between dialects or registers (e.g., Khamis-Dakwar & Froud, 2007; Moreno, Federmeier & Kutas, 2002). The current investigation builds on these findings to examine whether contrastive and…

Purpose: This study was designed to examine the relationships among minority dialect use, language ability, and young African American English (AAE)-speaking children's understanding and awareness of Mainstream American English (MAE). Method: Eighty-three 4- to 8-year-old AAE-speaking children participated in 2 experimental tasks. One task…

Edward Sapir's 1921 publication, "Language, An Introduction to the Study of Speech" is interpreted for beginning students of historical and descriptive linguistics. In his book, Sapir attempts to show (1) what he thinks language is, (2) what variables occur in language due to time and place, and (3) the relationship of language and…

A study investigated one aspect of the speech/reading comprehension relationship--that between the ability to select the correct standard English verbal endings (-s and -ed) and the ability to recognize the tense of a passage when time information was encoded primarily in the verbs and adverbs. Subjects were 135 third, sixth, and ninth grade…

Research by the staff and advanced students of the North Dakota Summer Institute of Linguistics is presented. In "Verb Agreement and Case Marking in Burushaski" (Stephen R. Willson), an overview of Burushaski morphology and syntax is presented, with special attention to verb agreement and case marking. "A Backwards Binding Construction in Zapotec"…

The collection of papers on linguistic experiments includes: "Discourse Functions of Pitch Range in Spontaneous and Read Speech" (Gayle M. Ayers); "When Is a Syllable Not a Syllable?" (Mary E. Beckman); "The Relationship between Syntactic and Semantic Processes in Sentence Comprehension" (Julie E. Boland); "The Influence of Orthography and…

Papers in phonology, psycholinguistics, and syntax include: "Discriminating between Syntactic and Semantic Processing: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials" (Kim Ainsworth-Darnell); "The Syntactic Structure of Chinese Formal Focus" (Qian Gao); "Employing a Multimodal Logic in an Approach to German Pronoun Fronting"…

Papers from the 1998 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium include: "Patterns of Gender Agreement in the Speech of Second Language Learners"; "'Nomas' in Mexican American Dialect"; "Parsing Spanish 'solo'"; "On Levels of Processing and Levels of Comprehension"; "The Role of Attention in Second/Foreign Language Classroom Research: Methodological Issues";…

Forty-one papers on language research and linguistic theory from the annual conference address these topics: linguistic philosophy; aspects of phonetics and phonology; topics in syntax; aspect; topics in semantics; topics in discourse analysis; sociolinguistics and language contact; historical linguistics; metatheory; and interdisciplinary…