This book is intended to help instructors construct reading tests. All the chapters are concerned with viewing two complementary aspects of the written text materials that is used as the base for testing: (1) the relations that hold among the parts of a written text that occur together; and (2) the fact that each word in a text plays certain roles…

A common assumption underlying cross-linquistic studies in child language is that the comparison of any feature in unrelated languages may simplify semantic-grammatical complexities in a way that studies on a single language cannot. This paper begins by discussing the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in Spanish by four…

Research on the relationship between syntactic complexity and quality of written composition was reviewed to test the assumption that these two concepts are positively related. The studies reviewed, which have appeared during the past 15 years, fall into two broad categories: (1) intervention studies designed to increase syntactic complexity and…

Contrastive analysis is viewed as an interlinguistic, bidirectional phenomenon which is concerned with both the form and function of language. As such, contrastive analysis must view language psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically as a system to be both described and acquired. Due to the need for a psychological component in the analysis,…

Most second language acquisition research has been concerned with grammar or phonology and has failed to discuss lexical acquisition. The main reason for this neglect has been the lack of vocabulary study by linguists. However, recent concern with semantic theory has brought new impetus to work on lexical acquisition. Useful research on lexical…

The testing of non-English dominant children cannot be achieved through written examinations that demand reading proficiency and that fail to ascertain the strengths or weaknesses of individual performance. Nor can an oral proficiency test, involving a lengthy tension-inducing interview and relatively inconclusive scoring, provide the information…

Language skill attrition refers to the loss of any language or portion of a language whether it be the declining use of mother tongue skills, the replacement of one language by another in language contact situations, the deterioration of language in the neurologically impaired or elderly, or the death of whole languages. In this paper, language…

This study examines some aspects of the interaction of one Hmong family with the English-speaking community to determine what sort of language contact situations they encounter and what means they use to communicate in those situations. Observations revealed that English language use outside of the classroom was limited. The subjects did not seek…

An approach to teaching the subjunctive in the foreign language classroom is presented here. Based primarily on the work of the linguist William Bull, the numerous and vague "rules" are reduced to two essential principles that determine subjunctive use. The materials consist of a sixteen-page teaching guide, an outline for student use,…

This investigation studied the performance of fifteen normal and fifteen language-disabled children on experimental pragmatic tasks and on a standardized Piagetian measure of sensorimotor intelligence. The children were matched for mean length of utterance, all subjects performing at the holophrastic level. A series of experimental measures was…

The primary objective of foreign language learning, social communication, requires that experiences be simulated in the classroom. Before such simulations can be constructed, the teacher has to know what is involved when people communicate, in other words, the nature of the language act. This paper analyzes the situational, syntactical, and…

This investigation studied the development of the form and function of negative sentences, and how it relates to the input on negation that children receive from their parents. The data came from three children: two from a previous study (Bellugi) and one the son of the investigators. A detailed analysis was carried out of the syntactic form and…

This study considers the interaction of syntactic and pragmatic factors (social and cognitive) in children's production of coordinate structures involving conjunction reduction. Two aspects of pragmatic context were considered: (1) the pattern of uncertainty or redundancy in a complex action sequence, and (2) the perceptual grouping of objects…

THIS TEXT IS DESIGNED AS A MANUAL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO PROVIDE GENERAL INFORMATION ON ALTAIC LINGUISTICS, AS WELL AS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION OTHERWISE DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. IN PART 1, THE AUTHOR CLASSIFIES THE ALTAIC LANGUAGES--MONGOLIAN, MANCHU-TUNGUS, CHUVASH-TURKIC, (WITH THE POSSIBLE INCLUSION OF KOREAN)--AND…

The simplification of legal language is required by President Carter's Executive Order requiring "clear and simple English" in government regulations. A major problem in the simplification process is the absence of any adequate description or classification of legal language. This paper defines some specific features of legal language,…