Discusses ergative case marking system in Anatolian branch of Indo-European in which neuters inflect ergatively and common-gender nouns inflect accusatively. Development from instrumental to ergative that occurred in prehistory of Gorokan languages of Papua New Guinea is also discussed. It is suggested that this process is a general mechanism for…

The effects of 3 factors with reputed control over the word-order options allowed by English grammar (animacy, word length, and prosody) were studied in recall and judgment tasks performed by 850 undergraduates in 7 experiments. Findings suggest a preeminent role of conceptual factors in word order. (SLD)

This study of the story composition abilities of 46 students (aged 11-14) with learning disabilities found that subjects had a rudimentary knowledge of story form, but this knowledge was less developed than that of their nondisabled peers. Subjects also had greater coherence problems in their writing and were less fluent writers. (Author/JDD)

This study, with 30 language learning-disabled, reading-disabled, and normal primary school children, found that clause structure complexity, fluency, and grammatical and phonemic accuracy tended to be highest when children were discussing absent referents, providing explanations and stories, and giving unshared information. These effects were…

This article explores the implications for the "Nacherzahlung" (free adaptation) of two distinctions from narrative theory. It suggests an explanation of students' difficulty writing about literary texts in second-year German courses and describes an approach to enhancing writing skills based on the interpretive summary. (Author)

A discussion of French grammar instruction looks at the relationship between linguistic competence and communicative competence. It offers exercises emphasizing the logic of language, using four different approaches. Three of the exercises use texts (included), and the fourth requires the student to describe a room. (MSE)

This study investigated the usefulness of a test designed to explore speaker awareness of linguistic constraints on the variable omission of "ne" by native speakers of French and learners of French as a second language. Results suggest speakers do have awareness of some constraints and that some advanced nonnative learners have a particular…

Describes a project to code complementation patterns of all verbs in the Collins COBUILD English language corpus, using simple notation based on words and word classes rather than traditional functional categories. This is the first pedagogic grammar to integrate syntax and lexis using corpus data. Explores the possibility of using a pattern…

This study compared the effect of productivity (a correlate of suffix frequency) on derivational suffix use in 69 elementary and middle school students' derivational suffix use. Twenty-three students had language-learning disabilities (LLD). Students with and without LLD used highly productive suffixes but LLD students were less accurate in…

Discusses themes that relate to the connections between first- and second-language acquisition. Specific focus is on the following issues: whether there is a language instinct; what input could and does teach the child; rules and representations (i.e., how language resides in the individual); individual differences in language acquisition; and…

This multiple baseline study investigated the effectiveness of direct instruction of an advanced story-map procedure on the reading comprehension performance of six middle school students with learning disabilities (LD). Results indicated an increase in story grammar and basal comprehension performance generalization to a novel passage, and…

Teachers should stop teaching traditional school-room grammar entirely. There is no reason to wound youngsters with something they will never learn and never need. Instead, teachers should treat usage and mechanics in gentle, encouraging, nontechnical, and innovative ways. A communication correctly understood by a native speaker is grammatical.…

Investigated whether children age 2; age 0-2; and 2 years used grammatical and caregiver cues in sentence comprehension and how different types of cues interacted. Children listened to sentences and identified pictures. Results indicated that children used caregiver cues (e.g., short length and position of key words) in sentence comprehension.…

Compared grammaticality judgment (GJ) test data with dehydrated sentence test data, collecting data about verb movement from three levels of adult second-language (L2) Spanish learners. The GJs of L2 learners were consistent, suggesting that a relationship exists between a standard GJ test and a dehydrated sentence test and noting that GJ data are…

Discusses the challenges of learning American Sign Language (ASL) for hearing individuals, including social-dominance patterns and attitude, grammatical differences, cultural differences, and motivation. Posits that learning ASL should be approached with respect and with the knowledge that mastery only occurs over a substantial period of time. (CR)