Marcus (1995) suggests that the rate of overregularization of English irregular plural nouns is not substantively different from that of English irregular past tense verbs. A response to this claim reviews longitudinal parental report data, which indicates that children are significantly more likely to produce noun overregularizations than verb…

Looks at frequent mistakes made with verb forms, widespread even among sportscasters, school board members, and others. Outlines common verb form problems to look for, and ways to avoid such errors. (SR)

Attempts to resolve an outstanding question as to the most appropriate structural description of the relationship between subject and verb in Bislama (a Melanesian creole spoken in Vanuatu), discusses what the implications of this analysis might be for a Creole ontogeny, and attempts to unify this analysis to the verb system with the distribution…

Predictions were formulated for extended Optional Infinitives (OIs) stage in German-speaking children with specific language impairment and evaluated in clinical sample of 8 SLI German-speaking children, ages 4; 0 to 4; 8; and control group of 8 younger utterance-equivalent children, ages 2; 1 to 2; 7. Samples reveal that affected group more…

Three experiments investigated whether preschoolers attend to actions or object when learning a novel verb. Findings showed that children learning nouns in the context of novel, moving objects attended exclusively to appearances of objects. Children learning verbs attended equally to appearances and motions. With familiar objects, children…

Discusses a study of selected morphological features of the two surviving manuscripts of Lazamon's "Brut." The text, which is one of the main sources of evidence as far as Early Middle English is concerned, had been the subject of scholarly interest. Compares the strong verb system and personal pronoun usage in the two manuscripts based…

Demonstrates how second language acquisition research can inform textbook writers and language teachers. Presents an analysis of 40 English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) grammar textbooks, which shows that few mention unaccusative verbs or inappropriate passives in their presentation of active and passive voice. Offers suggestions for dealing with…

Two experiments investigated the Aspect First Hypothesis, which claims children initially use verbal morphology to mark aspect and not tense. The first tested 46 2- and 3-year-old children's comprehension of tense as it is marked in the auxiliary system using a sentence-to-scene matching task. The second changed the information available in the…

Examines whether children make use of the conceptual link between animacy and agency when interpreting the verb "move" in English. Hypothesized that, for inanimates, children would allow "move" to have a patient subject but not so for inanimates. Subjects were 3- and 4-year-olds and adults who viewed video clips of animals or…

Deals with two compromise strategies: (1) embedded language islands (EL Islands), and (2) "bare forms" in code switching (CS) within the projection of complementizer. These elements are discussed within the framework of the Matrix Language Frame Model. Shows how this model provides an explanatory account for the occurrence of both EL…

Compared the proportions of nouns and verbs in early vocabularies of English- and Mandarin-speaking toddlers and their mothers. Found that Mandarin-speaking children had relatively fewer nouns and more verbs than English-speaking children. When reading books, children's vocabularies were dominated by nouns but not when playing with toys. Mothers…

Argues that accuracy orders in morpheme acquisition by adult second language learners can be predicted by a model of morpheme classification, the 4-M model. The model identifies four types of morphemes; content morphemes, early system morphemes, and two types of late system morphemes. (Author/VWL)

Responds to research claims by Marcus, Pinker, Ullman, Hollander, Rosen, and Xu (1992) that overregularizations are never frequent in children's speech. Shows evidence for overregularizations in three longitudinal subjects. (Author/VWL)

This study asked whether aphasic adults show different noun/verb retrieval patterns based upon their clinical categorization as fluent or nonfluent. Participants selected either the noun or the verb meaning of target words, as presented in three contexts. The framework was that nouns (associated with temporal lobe function) are processed, stored,…

Background: Language intervention procedures often involve the speech-language pathologist highlighting or making more salient forms that are problematic for the child with a language impairment. According to limited processing accounts of specific language impairment (SLI), one way to increase the saliency of a form is to manipulate its sentence…