Describes the acquisition, frequency, and function of the English articles ("a,""the," and "O"--the zero article). Explains the two types of zero article (zero and null), and shows how these occur in alternation with "a" and "the." Also provides a framework for the presentation of the articles in the classroom at the beginning, intermediate, and…

Examines through a text analysis of spoken and written discourse the meaning and function of the double genitive (DG) in English in comparison to the inflected preposed genitive. The study shows the DG to possess unique and specific pragmatic functions not adequately described for nonnative students. (22 references) (Author/CK)

Reports research examining the extent to which English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) university students' knowledge of a word can be assumed to indicate knowledge of other members of the word's family. Specifically looked at the ability of 106 graduate and undergraduate students to produce appropriate derivative forms in the four major word classes.…

Analysis of five Mohawk children's strategies for acquiring morphology revealed that the earliest segmentation of words was phonological, rather than morphological. Morphological structure was apparently discovered when most utterances were long enough to include pronominal prefixes as well as roots. (Author/CB)

Studies the kinds of errors made by American learners of Russian, the reasons for these errors, change in error patterns, and resemblance between the errors of foreign and primary language learners. (42 references) (CK)

A study of the use of phrase-terminal extension particles in Montreal (Canada) French analyzed composition, sociodemographic patterns of occurrence, and discourse functions of 76 particle types in 4 distinct classes. (MSE)

Background: Phonological awareness tests are known to be amongst the best predictors of literacy; however their predictive validity alongside current school screening practice (baseline assessment, pupil background data) and to National Curricular outcome measures is unknown. Aim: We explored the validity of phonological awareness and orthographic…

Sociolinguistic rules governing choice of pronouns of address are notoriously difficult in French, despite the fact that the number of variants is rather limited: the more formal "vous" versus the more informal "tu." Children with French as L1 learn to use pronouns of address appropriately as part of their socialization process. The learning curve…

While resumptive pronouns (RPs) are generally not allowed in English relative clauses, Chinese allows the use of RPs in indirect object position and genitive position but not in subject and direct object positions. Arabic languages allow RPs in direct object position as well as in indirect object position and genitive position, although not in…

Conjunction errors occur when participants incorrectly identify as "old" novel test stimuli created by recombining parts of two study stimuli (parent items). Prior studies have reported that the conjunction error rate is higher when parent items are studied together than when they are studied apart (a parent proximity effect). In several…

The authors examined whether people can use their knowledge of the wider discourse rapidly enough to anticipate specific upcoming words as a sentence is unfolding. In an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment, subjects heard Dutch stories that supported the prediction of a specific noun. To probe whether this noun was anticipated at a…

Purpose: This study addressed the effects of 3 different paradigms for scoring orthographic transcriptions of dysarthric speech on intelligibility scores. The study also examined whether there were differences in transcription accuracy among words from different linguistic classes. Method: Speech samples were collected from 12 speakers with…

The use of first and second person pronouns is an important indicator of how audiences are conceptualized by speakers and writers in academic discourse. Several grammarians and linguists have studied more or less specifically this part of the English language. Two of the most widely discussed aspects of pronouns are their reference and their…

This paper is a qualitative and quantitative corpus-based study of how academic writers use the personal pronouns I and inclusive and exclusive we. Using a multidisciplinary corpus comprising of journal research articles (RAs) from the fields of Business and Management, Computing Science, Economics, and Physics, I present data extracts which…

While reading or speaking, individuals break up sentences into "meaningful chunks." This is true of any individual with any language background. Failure to do so, in an L2 context, leads to idiosyncrasies, and may possibly create some comprehensibility problems. In this study, native and non-native speakers of English read an authentic text into a…