Proposes a new theory of morphological acquisition in second language learning, based on the theory of contrastive analysis and on the notion of the "psychomorpheme." (AM)

A discussion of a semantic approach to teaching these particles. The meaning of -zhe can be best characterized as "incompleteness.' Another characteristic of -zhe in a simple sentence is to change an action verb into a stative one. -Ne in conjunction with -zhe mitigates the incompleteness represented by -zhe. (Author/AMH)

Concludes that it is time for teachers to be more critical of the commercial materials and classroom practices commonly used to sensitize children to different semantic cues and morphological units. Argues that without a firm knowledge of context clues and morphemes on the part of teachers, the teaching of these skills will remain incidental. (FL)

Presents two analyses of deviant phonological systems. The one based on production evidence alone accounts for (1) differences in surface behavior of a set of phonetic segments with three possible phoneme sources, and (2) obstruent clusters across morpheme boundaries. The "substitution analysis" identifies the child's underlying representations…

This pilot study investigated Standard American English (SAE) morphological development for 15 bilingual Hispanic preschoolers. Analysis of data from spontaneous language samples revealed emergent use of Brown's (1973) 14 grammatical morphemes. Because mastery generally was later than for SAE speakers, clinicians are urged to use caution when…

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…

After rating their own literacy-related knowledge in three areas (knowledge about reading/reading development, phonemic awareness/phonics, and morpheme awareness/structural analysis), graduate teacher-education students completed five tasks intended to measure their actual disciplinary knowledge in these areas. Teachers with high levels of prior…

The morphological and lexical bases of Dravidian complementation are explored by proposing a series of rules that govern the distribution of finite predicates in the Dravidian sentence. The distribution of two verbs, "a-" ("become") and "en-" ("say"), is shown to be correlated with the distribution of finite predicates. These predicates are…

From the standpoint of transformational grammar, this experimental work evaluates the extent to which children choose or fail to generalize their rules for the placement of the negative particles "not" and "n't." The subjects were eight three- and four-year-olds of middle-class background who had been producing sentences with…

The crib talk reported here of a 2;2-2;4-year-old boy replicates the phenomenon of crib talk reported in previous studies by other investigators. This study adds a corpus of mother-child interaction (MCI) and tests one aspect of the hypothesis that crib talk may enhance production of linguistic forms at a later date. Transcripts of monologues were…

Community college professors have a responsibility as teachers to help students learn the many new words which must be added to their high school vocabularies if they are to be successful. While some instructors provide students with a list of jargon words relevant to a particular course, most ignore the problem posed by new words encountered in…

Seeking to discover how comprehensively and systematically one significant category of semantic elements is taught in current reading instructional material, a study surveyed the teaching and use of prefixes in the teachers' guides, readers, and workbooks (grades two to six) of six major reading series. Findings indicated that many of the most…

Exercises are provided in this set of four workbooks designed to aid students in health occupations programs in building vocabulary and reading skills. Each workbook borrows from the vocabulary of the health sciences to provide explanations and exercises for a sequential series of instructional objectives. One workbook concentrates on developing…

Spanish American plural formation is discussed in relation to attempts that have been made to write a set of phonological rules that would correctly predict the Spanish plural using a combination of phonological rules and word structure constraints. A brief synopsis is resented of why previous attempts to predict the plural are in error.…

Because it presents a fresh perspective on spelling, linguistics can improve the spelling ability of high school students. Linguistic study involves students in learning how speech is conveyed in writing, how key linguistic generalizations can be applied to spelling, and how historical precedent and phonology affect the spelling of many common…