Focuses on the increasing use of the so-called stative verbs found in the progressive aspect from the perspective of the nonnative speaker of English. The use of stative verbs in the progressive is a predictable consequence of the meaning of the present progressive and the particular discourse contexts in which progressive statives are found.…

Discusses theories and findings concerning the status of the present perfect in American Spanish. In Spain, the present perfect is preferred to the preterite whereas the simple preterite is more frequently used in South America. The lessened usage of the past perfect parallels the narrower usage of the present perfect in Latin America. (Author/LMO)

A diary study of the speech of a child acquiring English found eight between-word processes, all of which were optional and occurred in fairly restricted environments. Most of the processes were also of short duration. (Author/CB)

Measures fathers' and mothers' linguistic involvement in the development of communication between young siblings--infants and toddlers. In a laboratory setting, 39 families, each with a mother, a father and two children, were videotaped in semistructured activities. Results suggest that fathers very actively direct sibling interactions, especially…

Indicates that (1) males with low interpersonal orientation (IO) were least vocally active and expressive and least consistent in their speech performances, and (2) high IO males and low IO females tended to demonstrate greater speech convergence than either low IO males or high IO females. (JD)

Cites examples of surprise combinations of words that give sudden pleasure to a listener or reader.

Describes a study of adult listeners' perceptions of infant babbling. Adult judges were unable to identify language background significantly above chance level. Findings do not support the babbling drift hypothesis which predicts that babbling begins to approximate characteristics of the mother tongue as infants approach meaningful speech. (SED)

Tests were administered to obtain comparative data on the contentive verbal language of three-, four-, and five-year-old black children. (GW)

This article proposes a description of Spanish conjunctions based on functional and structural criteria, and attempts to present a taxonomy of the different functions of conjunctions. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

This study focuses on a particular listening pattern in Japanese which occurs by overlapping with the current speaker's incrementing utterance. Applying the Conversational Analysis approach to conversational data, the study delineates how native speakers utilize overlapping listener responses to indicate their strong alignment, and why learners of…

No word-list memorization here! Instead, in this book educators will discover classroom-tested, research-based strategies for teaching spelling in a way that reflects how middle school students actually learn -- by using spelling strategies and recognizing language patterns. This publication presents a wealth of strategies, activities, and ideas…

This analysis of verb morphology in Seri finds evidence that empty consonants occur in root-medial position. Analysis focuses on the parallel conjugation patterns of the verbs for "know" and "give," finding an empty consonant slot in the middle of each. This position is never preceded by a consonant, so it never appears as a…

Classical phonemic accounts of Cuzco (Peru) Quechua posit three distinct types of stops: plain, aspirated, and glottalized. A later analysis argued instead for a root-level feature of laryngealization governed by a small number of formal mechanisms. This latter analysis is taken one step further, showing that even greater explanatory power may be…

The report of research on English grammar argues that the intransitive resultative construction requires head-movement of the secondary predicate to the main predicate in order to assign the theta-role to the postverbal NP in LF. Then, this construction is taken as an instance in which theta-role assignment is derivational, supporting the findings…