Investigated the effect of semantic inconsistency on performance of an auditory sentence-grammaticality judgment task among school-age children with and without language-learning disabilities. Children judged grammatical correctness of semantically consistent sentences and correctness of grammatically inconsistent sentences. Results are discussed.…

Studies of the impact of formal instruction consistently show that more instruction results in modest increases in consciously-learned competence, a conclusion that is consistent with the claims of the monitor hypothesis. Reviews research in which the impact of direct instruction in grammar is measured directly, discusses individual studies…

Presenting four types of evidence, this article argues that grammatical competence should not be a subcomponent of communicative competence in second-language instruction, but have a separate status. Focuses on the critical role of grammatical competence in the overall development of target-language proficiency. (Author/VWL)

This study evaluated the accuracy of automated methods of grammatical categorization ("tagging") of transcribed conversational language samples from 30 normally developing children. On a word-by-word basis, automated accuracy levels averaged 95.1%; accuracy of tagging whole utterances averaged 77.7%. Results suggest that further improvement of…

Introduces the fundamental characteristics of corpus-based research and illustrates such research with a study of a complex grammatical feature in English: linking adverbials (i.e., connecting expressions such as "therefore" and "in other words"). Shows that corpus-based research is useful even with features that cannot be…

Presents two questionnaire experiments that investigated the processing complexity of a variety of nested constructions in Japanese. The results are discussed in terms of the syntactic-prediction locality theory. (Author/VWL)

A study analyzed oral narrative and emergent storybook reading by 40 children (half with language impairment) ages 2-4. Children with language impairment were less able to produce language features associated with written language, used past-tense verbs less frequently in both contexts, and used personal pronouns less in the oral narratives.…

Offers an explanation for the gap in the paradigm of the verb "be" where amn't is expected to be found. The explanation is base on a combination of multiple-default inheritance and function-based morphology, as embodied in word grammar. (Author/VWL)

Summarized findings from experimental and quasi-experimental investigations into the effectiveness of second language instruction. Comparisons of average effect sizes from sample studies indicated focused second language instruction results in large target-oriented gains, explicit types of instruction are more effective than implicit types, and…

Compares morphological processing of skilled and less skilled Dutch readers. Focuses on the role of prefixes as access units in visual word recognition. Finds evidence for differential use of prefix information in undergraduate students and elementary school children. Concludes that the information accessed by prefixes is semantically combined…

Examines the structural consequences of the contact between Dutch overseers and Eastern slaves during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the formation of Berbice Dutch, an unusual Creole because of its remarkably homogeneous substrate. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the simplification of forms ending in obstruents by native speakers of Mandarin, in particular two effects that are not obviously motivated by either the native- or the target-language grammars: a tendency to devoice final voiced obstruents and a tendency to maximize the number of bisyllabic forms in the output. (Author/JL)

Examines the number of relative clauses and percentages of subordinate clauses in two sets of research reports from "Physical Review." Finds a slight decrease in percentages of relative clauses from the first set (1893-1901) to the second (1980). Finds striking differences in patterns of what relative clauses modify. Suggests a stylistic…

Considers the cross-linguistic findings concerning the early development of formal, arbitrary, grammatical systems in normal hearing and deaf children and in children with congenital brain abnormalities. Evidence is reviewed that shows an early acquisition of grammatical forms. (Author/JL)

Narratives of the dreams of 145 early adolescents were tape-recorded and transcribed, and the frequencies of various grammar forms and common words were calculated. The most common nouns were "house" and "mother;" the most common verbs were "go" and "do." Results indicate that linguistic features of dream narrative are affected by age and sex.…