In-depth analysis of a large corpus of English and German beginning consonant and syllable stress errors revealed that claims regarding these errors can not be replicated for Spanish, leading to the development of hypotheses focusing on Spanish as a pre-final-stress and syllable-timed language. (38 references) (Author/CB)

Two experiments were conducted to explore processing of relative clause structures by normal elderly adults. Four groups of subjects (aged 20-29 years, 60-69 years, 70-79 years, and 80-89 years) participated in a lexical decision task and a sentence repetition task. (19 references) (VWL)

A research study is reported that studied (1) the effect of respondents' chronological age on attitudes toward patronizing speech directed at the institutionalized elderly and (2) the prevalence of and understanding of patronizing speech toward noninstitutionalized elderly individuals. (36 references) (LB)

Reviews the second-language research on age-related differences, drawing conclusions regarding learning-age influence on initial acquisition rate and ultimate attainment level; sensitive periods of language development; cumulative age-related loss in ability; and the adequacy of affective, input, and current cognitive explanations for reduced…

Eighty-one kindergarten children at risk for reading disabilities were assigned to either code-emphasis or meaning-emphasis instruction for first and second grades. Children who received code instruction subsequently scored higher than the other group on reading and spelling measures. Critical instructional program elements are discussed.…

While children aged 1;10 and 2;1 show only a modest rate of mapping novel nouns onto unfamiliar rather than familiar objects, children aged 1;4 and 1;8 show a high rate. Two studies with young 2-year olds found the noun-mapping preference prevalent, but unless initial choices are strongly reinforced, increase in salience of familiar kinds lures…

A study of 5-year olds' ability to distinguish promises from predictions was suspected to have achieved its results due to methodological problems. A similar study with 32 children ages 5 to 6 that used several variations of the previous study's procedures was found to have similar results, suggesting the earlier findings were an accurate…

A study investigated the effects of varying the morphological characteristics of input on comprehension and input processing. Nine targeted subjunctive verbs in a text were substituted with infinitives and a nonsense morpheme. Passage comprehension, measured by recall, was significantly lower for the correct, subjunctive forms than for incorrect…

Evaluated the distinctiveness, independence, and relative time courses of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by syntactically and semantically anomalous words. ERPs were recorded while subjects read sentences, some of which contained a selectional restriction violation, a verb-tense violation, or a doubly anomalous word that…

Investigated the online processing strategies used by a sample of nonnative speakers of English who were asked to give the meanings of selected common idioms presented in a written context. Data were gathered using a think-aloud procedure; participants were asked to verbalize their thoughts as they arrived at the meaning of the idioms. (Author/VWL)

The prototype effects in understanding unfamiliar meanings and usage in a polysemous word, "play," are examined. The learners use prototypical meanings as a referential point to understand peripheral meanings. (Author/VWL)

Videotaped productions of isolated American Sign Language signs or sentences were presented at speeds of two to six times normal. Results indicated a breakdown in intelligibility at around 2.5 to 3 times the normal rate. Results are similar to those found for auditory reception of time-compressed speech suggesting a modality-independent limit to…

Assessed the amount of linguistic information needed by 2-year-old infants to recognize whether or not a sentence belongs to their native language. A cross-linguistic study of French and American 2-month-old infants was conducted, measuring the latency of the first ocular saccade toward a loudspeaker playing short French and English utterances.…

Four experimental studies were designed to test, in Norwegian, the hypothesis that children's non-adultlike interpretations of pronouns may be partly attributable to a lexical factor interacting with the A-Chain Condition. (Author/VWL)

Discusses information retrieval systems and the need to have them adapt to user needs, integrate information in any format, reveal patterns and trends in information, and answer questions. Topics include statistics and probability; natural language processing; intelligent agents; concept mapping; machine-aided indexing; text mining; filtering;…