I describe the results of an experiment that bears on how children learn the lexical and syntactic properties of abstract verbs ("seem," "try") in order to distinguish the subclasses of raising ("seem") and control verbs ("try"). Previous research suggested that an inanimate subject in certain contexts leads children to suppose that the subject…

A developmental association exists between colour preference and emerging colour term acquisition in young children. Colour preference might influence colour term acquisition by directing attention towards or away from a particular colour, making it more or less memorable. To investigate the role that colour preference may have in the acquisition…

This article describes in detail several explicit computational methods for approaching such questions in phonology as the vowel/consonant distinction, the nature of vowel harmony systems, and syllable structure, appealing solely to distributional information. Beginning with the vowel/consonant distinction, we consider a method for its discovery…

As the student population becomes increasingly linguistically diverse, educators are faced with the challenge of providing academically rigorous instruction to ELLs. Because this requires teachers to adopt new strategies that challenge learners to think at higher levels; it will subsequently require leaders to intentionally address all aspects of…

Adults rapidly learn phonotactic constraints from brief production or perception experience. Three experiments asked whether this learning is modality-specific, occurring separately in production and perception, or whether perception transfers to production. Participant pairs took turns repeating syllables in which particular consonants were…

This paper studies the interactive structure and the interactive meaning of definitions in primary school classroom interaction. The classes that were chosen are classes which consisted solely or for a large part of second language learners, as definitions might have a special importance for them in their second language acquisition. Three…

The aim of this study was to measure the pattern of hand preferences for pointing gestures as a function of object-manipulation handedness in 123 infants and toddlers (10-40 months). The results showed that not only right-handers but also left-handers and ambidextrous participants tended to use their right hand for pointing. There was a…

This study explores different frequency effects on children's interpretations of novel noun-noun compounds (e.g. "egg bag" as "bag FOR eggs"). We investigated whether four- to five-year-olds and adults use their knowledge of related compounds and their modifier-head relations (e.g. "sandwich bag (FOR)" or "egg white (PART-OF)") when explaining the…

A manual search paradigm explored the development of English singular-plural comprehension. After being shown a box into which they could reach but not see, infants heard verbal descriptions about the contents of the box (e.g., "There are some cars in the box" vs. "There is a car in the box)" and were then allowed to reach into the box. At 24…

A central issue in cognitive neuroscience today concerns how distributed neural networks in the brain that are used in language learning and processing can be involved in non-linguistic cognitive sequence learning. This issue is informed by a wealth of functional neurophysiology studies of sentence comprehension, along with a number of recent…

Can 6- and 8-year-olds (and adults) comprehend common instrument verbs when extended to novel situations? Participants heard eight unusual extensions of common verbs and were asked to paraphrase the verbs' meanings. Half of the verbs used were "specified instrument" verbs that include the name of the instrument used to perform the action (e.g., a…

The theme for the 62nd annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers was Educating for a Just Society. Connie Briggs, previous Program Chair, reminded us that, "Education has always been the foundation of a democratic nation. It is important that our students understand the principles upon which our nation was…

Early lexical acquisition is affected by biases and constraints within learners, but also by patterns and statistical regularities within a learner's environment. Much of the previous work examining the effect of statistical regularities on word learning has been directed at phonological regularities. Particularly, research has focused on the…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine and gain a clearer understanding of the perceptions of foreign language learning of adult foreign language learners attending a South-West Missouri community college. This study was based on the Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory of Howard Gardner. It examined the perceptions of adult language…

Proper Names appear at the heart of several debates in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. These include "reference", "intentionality", and the nature of "belief" as well as "language acquisition", "cognitive development", and "memory". This dissertation follows a cognitive approach to the philosophical problems posed by proper names. It puts…