This collection of essays addresses issues in second language instruction related to focus on linguistic form, as distinguished from communicative or experiential language instruction. Papers include: "Issues and Terminology" (Catherine Doughty, Jessica Williams); "Focus on Form: Theory, Research, and Practice" (Michael H. Long, Peter Robinson);…

Kutenai has an obviation system reminiscent of the systems found in Algonquian languages, in which at most one third person nominal in a clause is proximate and others are obviate. Although the behavior of proximate nominals within clauses and within texts reflects a special status for proximates as having some sort of "higher rank" than…

McCarthy and Prince (1986, 1990) have put forward the prosodic Morphology Hypothesis to account for morphological processes, such as reduplication and truncation, that typically require that their output conform to a particular shape of template. This hypothesis claims that morphological templates are analyzable in terms of prosodic units. This…

Essays written by 14-year-old pupils about a chemistry topic were analyzed for structure and process using ideal paradigms defined mathematically. The students' actual behaviors were then compared with the behavior expected had they used either a serial or a parallel processing strategy based on either a constructive or a reproductive memory.…

The language of sportscasting is analyzed in terms of register variation, first by locating the register by successive approximations to a characterization of occasions of use, then by identifying syntactic characteristics: simplification, inversions, heavy modifiers, result expressions, and routines. Sports announcer talk is described as a…

Native users of American Sign Language manipulated sentences in four ways: sign them at slow rate, parse them, make relatedness judgments of pairs of signs taken from each sentence, and recall the sentences. Hierarchical performance structures for each of the sentences were highly similar across tasks. (Author/RD)

Reports on a study that examined the effect upon ninth grade students' comprehension of mathematics materials rewritten on the basis of the students' oral language in order to isolate those linguistic features that appeared to facilitate or interfere with comprehension. (FL)

Analyzes the overgeneralizations of bilingual children to determine whether the overgeneralizations of Spanish and English monolinguals would differ from those found in the speech samples of Spanish-English bilinguals and to reach a better understanding of speakers' preference for certain affixes and roots. (MES)

Describes study developed to measure the effects of structural versus grammar practice using the computer as the practice medium. Data supports contention that retention is a function of the meaningfulness of one's learning experience. Suggests the computer has great potential as practice medium in second language acquisition process. (Author/BK)

Describes a learning procedure for the purpose of improving competence in the field of essay writing. The procedure is grounded in systematic linguistics: making the student aware of the structural possibilities of English and using the substitution technique. The procedure has been tried out in language courses at the University of Trier.…

Very long-term memory for abstract materials was examined for subjects who had served in a synthetic grammar learning experiment two years earlier. Knowledge of these grammars was retained. The form and structure of knowledge and the manner in which it is put to use remained similar to the original. (Author/RD)

Proposes a top-down procedural model for the dynamic extraction and use of context structure to resolve references. (FL)

Outlines some problems that emerged when speech act theory was applied to the analysis of natural discourse, traces these problems to basic flaws or misconceptions in J. R. Searle's theory, and proposes an alternative view of speech acts within the complex organization of discourse processes. (FL)

Argues that an important type of child knowledge about letters is knowledge of the phonological structure of the letters' names in English. Concludes that learning the alphabet forms the basis for generalizations about the structure of letter names. (22 references) (Author/CK)

"Javanais" refers to a French linguistic variation, often viewed as slang, in which a word's original form is masked through affixation or displacement of sounds and syllables. Its history and linguistic theory are reviewed. Three types of javanais (verlan, infixing javanais, largonji des louchebems) are compared, and implications for…