Word order is one of the earliest aspects of grammar that the child acquires, because her early utterances already respect the basic word order of the target language. However, the question of the nature of early syntactic representations is subject to debate. Approaches inspired by formal syntax assume that the head-complement order,…

Purpose: To determine whether (a) expressive grammar intervention facilitated social and emergent literacy outcomes better than no intervention and (b) expressive grammar gains and/or initial expressive grammar level predicted social and emergent literacy outcomes. Method: This investigation was a follow-up to a recently published study exploring…

Morphosyntax constitutes one of the most complex areas of language. It takes into account the structure of the word and that of the sentence, and its development allows one to establish adequately agreements both within the nominal phrase and in the rest of the sentence. Morphosyntax is particularly impaired in individuals with Down syndrome. To…

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of ethical datives (EDs) in two Slavic languages, Russian and Macedonian. EDs are defined through a pragmatic lens as discourse licensed perspective markers in which a dative form expresses a speaker's decision to signal someone's emotional attitude--real or perceived--toward the action. Owing to…

Bih is a Chamic (Austronesian) language spoken by approximately 500 people in the Southern highlands of Vietnam. This dissertation is the first descriptive grammar of the language, based on extensive fieldwork and community-based language documentation in Vietnam and written from a functional/typological perspective. The analysis in this work is…

Ho, an under-documented North Munda language of India, is known for its complex verb forms. This dissertation focuses on analysis of several features of those complex verbs, using data from original fieldwork undertaken by the author. By way of background, an analysis of the phonetics, phonology and morphophonology of Ho is first presented. Ho has…

This article reports a post hoc analysis conducted as part of a larger study in which 61 typically developing, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were assessed in phonological awareness (PA), vocabulary (i.e., receptive, expressive, and definitional), and grammatical skill at baseline and 3, 6, and 9 months later. The larger study's purpose was to shed light…

The corpus-informed pedagogical intervention described in this article was developed for an advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) course designed for prospective International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) and implemented over the course of two class periods. Its primary goal was to offer students opportunities to gain language awareness of…

The study aimed, firstly, to assess a group of Indonesian adult EFL students' mastery of tenses and aspects as part of their mastery of English grammar and, secondly, to identify if their experience of going through the instructional processes, their perceptions of and habits in studying English grammar shaped their mastery of tenses and aspects.…

A quasi-experimental study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of providing written corrective feedback (WCF) to Arab speakers of English on ten uses of English prepositions. Arab speakers commonly find it difficult to correctly use English prepositions, mainly due to the differences between the two languages (e.g. Ortega, 2009). Examples…

Many Western scholars such as Dryden show little interest in imitations, and express their preference for translations, i.e. paraphrases that are faithful to the sense of the source text. However, they consider imitations as a viable category of translation. It is the degree of freedom, or departure from the original, that differentiates a…

This exploratory computer assisted-language learning (CALL) study used a computer-mediated communication (CMC) interface to allow English as a foreign language (EFL) writing students in classes at two universities to give each other anonymous peer feedback about essay-writing assignments reacting to selected news stories. Experts also provided…

Idiom transparency refers to how speakers think the meaning of the individual words contributes to the figurative meaning of an idiom as a whole (Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989). However, it is not clear how speakers or language learners form their assumptions about an idiom's transparency level. This study set out to discover whether there are…

The primary purpose of this study was to compare language and narrative skills of both talented and regular young children in Taiwan. The participants were asked to tell a story based on images in children's picture books. Twelve children, who participated in a screening session designed to identify young talented children for the Enrichment…

This survey investigates to what degree the Chinese learners know about the discrepancies between Chinese and English thought patterns and their possible effects on English writing. Eighty-one students from North China Electric Power University participate in the survey. Qualitative and quantities approaches, involving the adoption of both…