Describes the cornerstone of traditional descriptive grammars as the construction (a recurrent patterns of linguistic elements that serves a communicative function), examining argument structure constructions, verbs and constructions, and implications for studying language development. Discusses Adele Goldberg's recent book, which develops the…

Presents the responses of 12 authors to Michael Tomasello's essay, which comments on Adele Goldberg's recent book, "Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure." Goldberg's book develops the theory of construction grammar for a set of problems associated with verb-argument structure. (SM)

Responds to 12 commentators who commented on an essay by the author about Adele Goldberg's recent book, "Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure," which develops the theory of construction grammar for a set of problems associated with verb-argument structure. (SM)

Examines the relationship between consciousness, language learning, and social interaction from an ecological perspective. Argues that consciousness and language are integral parts of the human ecology, that is, they can be defined in terms of social activity and relationships among people, as well as in terms of mental operations or cerebral…

Develops a model of language change characterizing the dynamic interaction between internal universal grammar and external linguistic evidence, as mediated by language acquisition. Borrows insights from the study of biological evolution, where internal and external forces interact in similar fashion. Applies the model to explore the loss of the…

Fifty-seven children (ages 5-8) with and without specific language impairment (SLI) participated in judgment and elicitation tasks designed to evaluate their understanding of irregular verb forms. Differences between SLI and control children were observed in their productions and relative levels of sensitivity to infinitive errors in finite…

Reports the results of an interpretive task showing that both native speakers of French and English-speaking classroom learners of French exhibit knowledge of the event sensitivity associated with quantification at a distance. Argues that such knowledge seems reliably acquirable only if both first language and second language acquisition are…

Examines a mixed pattern of subject omission in Hebrew. Longitudinal data is presented from three children whose first and only language is Hebrew. Findings show very early acquisition of the null subject system. (Author/VWL)

Describes the education of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind person to communicate through language, examining the work of Samuel Gridley Howe, Perkins Institute for the Blind director, as he tested his ideas on: human nature and cognition; the philosophical debates of antebellum U.S. culture; early attempts at empirical psychological…

Examined children's ability to draw on functional information to predict the similarity of function across exemplars and to extend new words from an initial exemplar to one of two others. The cognitive difficulties associated with judgments concerning material function are discussed in relation to additional factors that could lead children under…

Analyzed article use in Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment who are learning English as a Second Language. The surface hypothesis account of specific language impairment was evaluated in relation to the use of articles in these children. Language samples were obtained from 15 Spanish-speaking children with language…

Investigated the use of "mama" or similar sounds referred to as "mama" by 75 infants less than 6 months of age. Parents were directed to listen for "mama" sounds and to note the sounds made, the age of onset, whether the sounds appeared to be directed to any person or persons, or whether they appeared to have a purpose. (Author/VWL)

Shows that Rispoli's (1999) suggestion that previous studies arguing for a contingency between the case of subject pronouns and the presence/absence of verbal agreement in the acquisition of English suffers from methodological problems is itself based on a methodology that unnecessarily biases his study against the predicted contingencies.…

Discusses the importance of providing opportunities for ongoing oral language development for all students, the particular needs of children learning English as a second language, and the unique appropriateness of poetry as a vehicle for providing practice and pleasure in oral language skill development. Notes that poetry provides a relaxed and…

Three studies examined lexical categorization in 2-year- olds. Findings indicated that even with minimal opportunities to familiarize themselves with novel artifacts, children generalized their names in accordance with the objects' functions, even when they had to discover the functions on their own or when all the test objects had some…