Maintains that language as humans now produce and comprehend evolved from languagelike precursors in the communication systems of nonhuman primates. The article reviews "Gesture and the Nature of Language" (GNL) (1995) and notes that GNL derives syntax incrementally without diluting it to an element not recognizable as a property of language. (37…

Investigates whether, due to the language contact situation in Houston in a group of a Mexican-American speakers, the imperfect forms of subordinate language (Spanish) are going through a process of reduction in favor of the forms of the superordinate language (English) when compared to the speech of Spanish monolinguals. (Author/VWL)

Recommends that English teachers encourage students to explore interaction of popular culture and oral communication. Discusses similarities between personal letters and contemporary recordings. Identifies over 60 letter-related song titles that have used postal imagery to depict a variety of human circumstances and lists over 20 references.…

Focuses on a group of bilingual children within a large cohort of children with specific language impairment (SLI) attending language units attached to mainstream primary schools across England. Comparison of the bilingual children with their monolingual peers revealed differential performance on standardized speech and language assessment…

Three sets of meta-analyses examined gender effects on children's language use. Each set of analyses considered an aspect of speech that is considered to be gender typed: talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Statistically significant average effect sizes were obtained with all three language constructs. On average, girls were…

We report two experiments examining the role of concreteness and word phonological neighborhood characteristics on immediate serial recall. In line with previous findings concreteness, word frequency, and larger neighborhood size are associated with better serial recall. Both concreteness and word neighborhood size were also positively associated…

The "perceptual loop theory" of speech monitoring (Levelt, 1983) claims that inner and overt speech are monitored by the comprehension system, which detects errors by comparing the comprehension of formulated utterances to originally intended utterances. To test the perceptual loop monitor, speakers named pictures and sometimes attempted to halt…

Because of its centrality to school success, social status, and workplace effectiveness, oral and aural skills development has been increasingly emphasized in Canadian curricula, classrooms and, very recently, large-scale assessment. The corresponding emphasis on group processes and collaborative learning has aimed to address equity issues in…

When thinking about talk and discussion in primary science, the author often returns to the little gem of a book by Douglas Barnes--"From communication to curriculum" (1976). Barnes used observations of science lessons to make cogent points about the value of talk for both thinking and communication. A useful distinction that he…

The wide-ranging field of theory about religious education may be thought of as a series of ongoing and at times overlapping conversations (Foster, 2003), each most meaningful within its own context, whether this context is educational, ecclesial or societal. This paper begins by mapping these conversations, then uses them as a lens through which…

Women are more intolerant of hate speech than men. This study examined relationality measures as mediators of gender differences in the perception of the harm of hate speech and the importance of freedom of speech. Participants were 107 male and 123 female college students. Questionnaires assessed the perceived harm of hate speech, the importance…

Background: There have been several reports of successful psychosocial interventions for children with selective mutism (SM), a disorder in which a child consistently fails to speak in one or more social settings (e.g., school) despite speaking normally in other settings (e.g., home). The present literature review was undertaken in order to…

Background: The existing literature has conflicting findings about the literacy outcome of children with speech sound disorders (SSD), which may be due to the heterogeneity within SSD. Previous studies have documented that two important dimensions of heterogeneity are the presence of a comorbid language impairment (LI) and the persistence of SSD,…

An expressive disturbance of speech prosody has long been associated with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD), but little is known about the impact of dysprosody on vocal-prosodic communication from the perspective of "listeners." Recordings of healthy adults ("n" = 12) and adults with mild to moderate PD ("n" = 21) were elicited in four speech…

This study investigated the overall intelligibility of speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC). Four hearing, experienced sign language users were recorded under SC and speech alone (SA) conditions speaking Boothroyd's (1985) forced-choice phonetic contrast material designed for measurement of speech intelligibility. Twelve…