Study results indicate that it is feasible to develop automatic name recognition algorithms to distinguish character strings representing names from other character strings occurring in English language titles. This finding offers cautious promise for alleviating some of the labor intensive work of cataloging. (16 references) (Author/SD)

Forty postsecondary students who were deaf were required to recall lists of eight words. Students with higher levels of English language proficiency recalled significantly more than those with lower levels. Semantic pairing aided the low-level group more than the high-level group, whereas syntactic organization aided the high-level group more.…

This response to EC 604 058 argues that Marc Fey's emphasis on language organization at the morpheme and word level is not efficacious with preschool children who show phonological delay and delayed semantic-syntactic development. A model of verbal communication which unites phonetic, phonological, and higher organizational levels and related…

College students with prelingual deafness were assessed on their knowledge of English syntax at the beginning and end of the academic year. Results revealed significant improvement on nine English structures assessed; students with lower general English proficiency improved to a greater extent than other students. (Author/JDD)

Twenty-seven American Indian children (ages 4-12), 10 with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and 17 normally developing control subjects, were administered the Test of Language Development. FAS children exhibited depressed performance on most subtests. The older FAS children presented syntactic deficits whereas the younger FAS subjects presented more…

The application of language processing skills between 2 languages with dissimilar morphosyntactic features was investigated with 72 American university students learning Japanese. Results suggest that learners' first- and second-language knowledge both play a significant role and that the linguistic knowledge and coding capability for text…

Notes that in linguistic theory, phenomena previously handled by a separate grammatical component have been moved into the lexicon and that in some theories, the contrast between grammar and the lexicon has vanished. Concludes that the case for a modular distinction between grammar and the lexicon has been overstated and that the evidence to date…

Analyzes results of a previous study on speech recognition (SR) technology for its ability to distinguish between native- and nonnative English speakers. The current study concludes that SR technology has potential for testing the oral proficiency of English-as-a-Second-Language students.(ER)

Examines the communication strategies used by adult second-language learners of English when performing contrasting pedagogic tasks. The article suggests that existing descriptions of communication strategies ignore the pragmatic function of such devices in interactive discourse and offers a reclassification that differentiates strategies…

Twenty-eight experienced English language professionals were surveyed regarding the degree of difficulty students with deafness with and without learning disabilities might have in dealing with 30 specific English language phenomena. Spelling knowledge and a variety of English discourse, lexical, syntactic, and morphological phenomena emerged as…

According to "noun-cue" models, arbitrary linguistic categories, like those associated with case and gender systems, are difficult to learn unless members of the target category (i.e., nouns) are marked with phonological or semantic cues that reliably co-occur with grammatical morphemes (e.g., determiners) that exemplify the categories. "Syntactic…

In this cross-population study, we use narratives as a context to investigate language development in children from 4 to 12 years of age from three experimental groups: children with early unilateral focal brain damage (FL; N=52); children with specific language impairment (SLI; N=44); children with Williams syndrome (WMS; N=36), and typically…

This is the first study to investigate experimentally how children come to learn mappings between novel phrasal forms and novel meanings: a central task in learning a language. Two experiments are reported. In both studies 5- to 7-year-old children watched a short set of video clips depicting objects appearing in various ways. Each scene was…

Grammatical priming of picture naming was investigated in Kiswahili, which has a complex grammatical noun class system (a system like grammatical gender), with up to 15 noun classes that have obligatory agreements on adjectives, verbs, pronouns and other parts of speech. Participants heard a grammatically agreeing (concordant), nonagreeing…

The acquisition of case and gender marking on the definite and indefinite article was studied in a sample of 6 normally-hearing children and 9 children with cochlear implants. Longitudinal spontaneous speech data are used. Children were matched by MLU, with 4 MLU levels: 1.8, 2.8, 3.6, 4.8. Age ranges for normally-hearing children were 1;4 to 3;8…