Many factors that contribute towards the perception of second language (L2) sounds and the subsequent establishment of L2 phonetic categories have been the focus of past research. However, learning a third language, unlike SLA, may be influenced by additional factors attributed to the presence of two language systems in a bilingual instead of one…

The study reported here investigated the effects of using props to illustrate the meaning of sentences in a syntactic awareness task in which subjects were required to correct ungrammatical sentences. Children scored significantly higher in the props condition though the proportion of meaning-changing errors to total errors was not significantly…

Data from 37 children (aged 3;1 to 6;10) and 15 adult controls support idea that poor performance on Principle B of Binding Theory is result of exposure to sentences like "I chose me" and insensitivity to contrastive stress (CS). There was a high correlation between performance on Principle B and sensitivity to CS. The Contrastive Stress…

Two experiments were performed on the ability of children and adults to understand and produce locative verbs. Results confirm that children tend to make syntactic errors with sentences containing "fill" and "empty," encoding the content argument as direct object. (33 references) (JL)

The results from three studies using data provided by the SLOPE Test and oral interviews are reported. The studies include: (1) a comparison of rank orders obtained over a period of time; (2) a comparison of rank orders obtained in instrument-elicited and spontaneous speech; and (3) a comparison of results obtained using two methods of analysis,…

This issue of the journal includes these papers on contrastive linguistics: "A Note on Semantic Representation of Lexical Items and on Lexical Gaps" (Maria Grzegorek); "Some Remarks on Case Grammars as Bases for Contrastive Studies" (Hans U. Boas); "Are Exclusively Attributive Adjectives 'Transpositional'?--Some Comments on the Nature of Lexical…

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that children's use of Japanese case particles obeys the grammatical principles introduced at the earlier stage of language development. In previous studies concerning the acquisition of Japanese case examined through the experimental method, it has been suggested that children acquire the functional use…

Calls into question the data of grammaticality judgment tasks on which several GB-based studies on the second-language acquisition of accusative verbs by Japanese learners of English base their arguments and reports the results of a pilot study. (Author/VWL)

Research was conducted to investigate the development of linguistic competence in early French immersion programs. Fifty-five students in grades 3, 4, and 5 were administered a test of oral production in French. Twenty-seven grammatical features were examined by means of a detailed error analysis. The results show that there was little improvement…

The present study reports on exploratory research to determine whether the Aluminum Paragraph, a sentence-combining exercise developed by O'Donnell (Hunt, 1970) to measure the development of syntactic complexity in the writing of native speakers of English, can also serve as a measure of the active syntactic proficiency of learners of English as a…

Research was conducted to study systematically the comprehension and production of the pronouns "he, she, him, her" in the language of normal and linguistically deviant children. The purposes of the study were to: observe the manner in which normal children comprehend and produce these four pronouns, in terms of both their use and their…

An analysis of French oral proficiency and guidelines for evaluating and testing the development of such proficiency in learning French as a second language are the keynotes of this dissertation. The speech patterns (structural complexity, rate of production, and hesitation) of three groups of French students with various levels of audiolingual…

This collection of essays gives an overview of the different disciplines that inform language teaching and language teacher education. They include the following titles: "The Case for Psycholinguistics" (Bill VanPatten); "The Place of Second Language Acquisition Theory in Language Teacher Preparation" (Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig); "Why Syntactic…

Drawing on recent psychological and neurological research on how individual differences might interact with learning a particular language, the study examines how psycholinguistic research and theory can help in assigning military personnel to language training and to a given language. Using the Defense Language Institute's Defense Language…