The production of finite verb morphology of 19 children (ages 5-10) with mild-moderate sensorineural hearing impairment was compared with that of 14 children with specific language impairment (ages 7-10) and age-matched and language-matched control groups. On average, the hearing impaired children outperformed the language impaired group. Findings…

Three studies examined 2-year-olds' ability to learn novel words when overhearing these words used by others. Found that children ages 2.5 years were equally good at learning novel object labels and action verbs when they were overhearers as when they were directly addressed. For younger 2-year-olds, this was true for object labels, but results…

Investigates the relationship between lexical semantics and derivational morphology in the acquisition of causative/inchoative-related verbs in Turkish as a second language (L2) by Spanish and English speakers. Suggests that L2 learners are attuned to the rich morphology of Turkish and that the acquisition of derivational morphology and lexical…

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the variation underlying subject-verb agreement in the spoken French interlanguage of Irish classroom and study abroad learners. Results outline the range of factors constraining that variation, such as the learners' level of informal contact with the language, as well as linguistic factors such as…

This paper links experimental psycholinguistics and theoretical syntax in the study of subject--verb agreement. Three experiments of elicited spoken production making use of specific characteristics of Italian and French are presented. They manipulate and examine its impact on the occurrence of "attraction" errors (i.e. incorrect agreement with a…

This study inspected the processes of verifying the current discourse constituent against the referents that it passively cues during reading. It seemed plausible that, after understanding "The customer ate pancakes," the processes of fully understanding "The waiter implied that the customer ate eggs" might resemble those of intentionally…

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences describing events in which an individual performed an action with an implement. The noun phrase arguments of the verbs in the sentences were such that when thematic assignment occurred at the critical target word, the sentence was plausible (likely theme), implausible (unlikely theme),…

This article describes effective instructional strategies for teaching verbs with inflected endings. The ability to spell past and present progressive verbs provides an example of how children need to learn to integrate their developing understanding of letter-sound correspondences with knowledge of morphological and orthographic patterns in order…

In a recent paper [Lidz, J., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. (2003). Understanding how input matters: Verb learning and the footprint of universal grammar. "Cognition," 87, 151-178], we provided cross-linguistic evidence in favor of the following linked assertions: (i) Verb argument structure is a correlate of verb meaning; (ii) However, argument…

This study seeks information on the mental representation of Verb-Noun (VN) nominal compounds through neuropsychological methods. The lexical retrieval of compound nouns is tested in 30 aphasic patients using a visual confrontation naming task. The target names are VN compounds, Noun-Noun (NN) compounds, and long morphologically simple nouns…

Verb production is notoriously difficult for individuals with Broca's aphasia, both at the word and at the sentence level. An intriguing question is at which level in the speech production these problems arise. The aim of the present study is to identify the functional locus of the impairment that results in verb production deficits in Broca's…

In this paper, we show that both token and type-based effects in lexical processing can result from a single, token-based, system, and therefore, do not necessarily reflect different levels of processing. We report three Simple Recurrent Networks modeling Dutch past-tense formation. These networks show token-based frequency effects and type-based…

This study examined the nature of verb deficits in 14 individuals with probable Alzheimer's Disease (PrAD) and nine with agrammatic aphasia. Production was tested, controlling both semantic and syntactic features of verbs, using noun and verb naming, sentence completion, and narrative tasks. Noun and verb comprehension and a grammaticality…

It has been shown that the processing of irregular past-tense forms is affected by phonological factors that are inherent in the relationship of the past-tense forms to other words in the lexicon (rhyming families of irregulars) or to their base forms (vowel dominance effects). This paper addresses more ephemeral phonological effects. In a…

Throughout "Coriolanus", the third person "shall" appears primarily as a modal auxiliary: combined with another verb, it indicates the speaker's mood or attitude toward the person or thing that (s)he speaks about. This essay looks at one of the tribunes' use of "shall" in the third person and how it reveals the…