Models the spread of linguistic change by taking account of the ages of the acquirers and transmitters of change. The article focuses on three interlocutor combinations: parent-infant/young child, peer group-preadolescent and older adolescent/adult-adolescent. Findings suggest that borrowings are the easiest to acquire, while lexically…

Presents a replication of experiments which found that input practice is better than output practice for comprehension skills, and no worse than output practice for production skills in a second language (Spanish). Findings reveal that these patterns are obscured when the testing time and the morphosyntactic nature of the structure in question…

Reviews three books with the common theme that the way language operates in connection with juridical processes of various kinds gives ground for complaint. A subsidiary theme is that academic language studies might, in some cases, provide the appropriate theoretical underpinnings for the examination of the problems in question, and perhaps lead…

Four activities for classroom French instruction are described: a board game for children's vocabulary development; a sentence and dialogue construction exercise using comic strips (existing or student-made); a discussion of the treatment of the notion of "event" in different journalistic contexts; and an exercise in debating skills and language.…

Examines differences in oral narrative discourse of adult second-language learners of English on narrative tasks simulating the ability to describe events in the Here-and-Now versus the There-and-Then. Results indicate that complex tasks elicit less fluent, but more accurate and complex narration than do simpler tasks. (90 references) (Author/CK)

Examined syntactic development in acquisition of Swedish as a first language in normal (L1) and specifically language-impaired (SLI) children, and acquisition of Swedish as a second language (L2). Similarity between SLI learners and L2 learners is evidence against the hypothesis that there is a fundamental L1-L2 difference. Some data are appended.…

The current study examined the provision of corrective feedback and learner repair following feedback in the interactional context of child-to-child conversations, particularly computer mediated, in an elementary Spanish immersion class. The relationship among error types, feedback types, and immediate learner repair were also examined. A total of…

This document contains the 1994 edition of a publication designed to share information in the field of linguistics that is of practical, theoretical, administrative, or general interest. Articles in these issues include: "Ethnography Vs. Questionnaire" (Thomas E. Murray); "Differences: A Diary Entry"--concerning structuralism…

The workbook is designed for teaching Melanesian Pidgin English (Tokpisin) sentence structure to Peace Corps volunteers. It addresses sentence structures that are common to most languages, and uses listening, speaking, translation, and other grammar drills and exercises to reinforce learning. The approach used assumes that a native speaker is…

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"…

This study looks at natural syntactic processes in the development of verbal mood in first- and second-language acquisition, language change in progress, history, and creolization. Correspondences are examined in the development of the subjunctive vs. the indicative mood. The study presents an integrative perspective, taking into account seemingly…

Taiwanese college students have significant difficulty in reading technical texts in English. Based on information gathered from students in freshman English classes in Taiwan, and on previous research, three significant areas of student confusion are: (1) frequent use of prepositions, particularly when an English preposition with multiple…

This paper discusses the development of a criterion-referenced assessment measure for both written English and American Sign Language (ASL) that can be used with deaf elementary through secondary students. The measure is presented as well as the results of a trial use. Developed by the Cleary School for the Deaf, the Cleary Language Assessment…

Renewed interest in the connection between black English and reading difficulty warrants a summary of the groundwork laid in the 1960s and 1970s. Linguists have established the fact that black English is a legitimate language, that its speakers are not language deficient, and that the basic difference in black and standard English pertains to…