Although the Greek roots of the word pedagogy refer to teaching children, until the second half of the 20th century it was applied to any teaching-learning transaction regardless of the age of the learner. Some educators still use pedagogy in this generic way. A neologism is a newly coined word or phrase that is just emerging into mainstream use,…

This article presents an analysis of the relationship between sign structure and iconicity in American Sign Language. Historically, linguists have been pressured to downplay the role of form-meaning relationships (iconicity) in signed languages. However, recent inquiries into the role of traditional phonological parameters of signs (handshape,…

A key question in early word learning is how children cope with the uncertainty in natural naming events. One potential mechanism for uncertainty reduction is cross-situational word learning--tracking word/object co-occurrence statistics across naming events. But empirical and computational analyses of cross-situational learning have made strong…

Learning analytics, the analysis and representation of data about learners in order to improve learning, is a new lens through which teachers can understand education. It is rooted in the dramatic increase in the quantity of data about learners and linked to management approaches that focus on quantitative metrics, which are sometimes antithetical…

Deriving the meaning of unknown words from context and its relationship to text comprehension was investigated in 24 individuals with Down syndrome and in 24 typically developing children matched for the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) score. The study consisted of three phases. Unknown words were identified during the first phase (PPVT).…

Five experiments examined what is learned based on the perceptual and semantic information of objects in visual statistical learning (VSL). In the familiarization phase, participants viewed a sequence of line drawings and detected repetitions of various objects. In a subsequent test phase, they watched 2 test sequences (statistically related…

Understanding verbs typically activates posterior temporal regions and, in some circumstances, motion perception area V5. However, the nature and role of this activation remains unclear: does language alone indeed activate V5? And are posterior temporal representations modality-specific motion representations, or supra-modal motion-independent…

Cloud computing paradigm has gained tremendous momentum and generated intensive interest. Although security issues are delaying its fast adoption, cloud computing is an unstoppable force and we need to provide security mechanisms to ensure its secure adoption. In this dissertation, we mainly focus on issues related to policy management and access…

This dissertation explores, analyzes, and compares the usage of German and Chinese demonstratives. Discourse and textual uses of the forms will be considered as well as their locative and temporal uses. I observe that in both languages the demonstratives can be used to refer to referents. However, they depart from the common assumption that…

Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle & Marantz 1993; Marantz 1997) is founded on the premise that the syntax is the only computational component of the grammar. Much research focuses on how this premise is relevant to the syntax-morphology interface in DM. In this dissertation, I examine theory-internal issues related to the syntax-semantics…

Classifier languages are often described as lacking genuine number morphology and treating all common nouns, including those conceptually count, as an unindividuated mass. This study argues that neither of these popular assumptions is true, and presents new generalizations and analyses gained by abandoning them. I claim that no difference exists…

The current study compares the productivity (number of responses) and the typical responses to taxonomic and slot-filler prompts in 39 African American children from low-income backgrounds and a diverse group of 21 children from middle-income backgrounds. The authors tested the hypothesis that socioeconomic status would exert a global influence on…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of part-whole (e.g., "car-motor") and functional associations (e.g., "car-garage") on single word (Experiment 1) and sentence production (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a classical picture-word task was used. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli and distractors were embedded into a sentence.…

How do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment…

In this dissertation, I aim to provide a theory on the distribution of structural Case in Korean. I propose the following Structural Case Assignment Hypothesis (SCAH) regarding the assignment of structural Case: "Structural Case is assigned by phase heads (C: nominative; v: accusative) to every argument in the c-command domain of the phase…