Investigates phonological cues available to children and explores the possibility that differential frequency in the linguistic input explains the priority given to masculine forms when children are faced with ambiguous novel terms. A connectionist model of determiner production was incrementally trained on a lexicon of determiner-noun phrases…

Clarifies Grosjean's Language Mode (LM) hypothesis, which develops the notion of language mode or the relative state of activation of a bilinguals two or more languages and language processing systems. Discusses studies that do not support views of the LM hypothesis. Studies of Dutch-English bilingual are presented. (Author/VWL)

An author, David Nunan, responds to a previous article that criticizes his advocacy of task-based syllabuses. Another author, Michael Long, points out inaccuracies in the criticism, and the author of the criticism, Ron Sheen, defends his earlier claim. (45 references) (JL)

A study concerned with factors that may affect three-year olds' acquisition of subordinate categories considered salience of the attribute or attributes that differentiate a subordinate category, presence or absence of linguistic input, and child characteristics. Correlational analyses pointed to a series of relationships between child…

According to prior assumptions that a second language is acquired by being used as a tool for doing things with others, this article analyzes certain mechanisms that teacher and pupils use to build up the meaning of their interaction in the target language. (106 references) (JL)

Reviews research that addresses how grammar can best be taught in terms of four theoretically motivated instructional options: (1) structured input; (2) explicit instruction; (3) production practice; (4) negative feedback. (Author/JL)

Investigates the relationship between a child's degree of bilingualism and features of parental input. Seeks to demonstrate that parental discourse strategies have a direct bearing on the levels of mixing present in a child's utterances in his weaker language (English). (Author/VWL)

Investigates the differential effects of three conditions--nonegotiated, premodified input, negotiation without "pushed output, and negotiation plus pushed output--on second language (L2) learners vocabulary comprehension and acquisition (receptive and productive). Findings of the study provide empirical evidence for the important role of…

Examined how acoustic variation affects second language (L2) lexical acquisition in consideration of four hypotheses: degraded input, elaborate processing, independent modulation, and robust versus strong connectivity. Beginners of L2 Spanish attempted to learn 24 Spanish words presented in 1 of 3 degrees of acoustic variation. Immediate and…

This study compared the language behaviours of parents of toddlers with language delay (LD) and language of parents of typically developing toddlers (LN). Results indicate that parents of children with a language delay and children with normal language produced comparable amounts of linguistic input, but differed on some qualitative measures.…

The issue of regular-irregular past tense formation was examined in a cross-modal lexical decision task in Modern Greek, a language where the orthographic and phonological overlap between present and past tense stems is the same for both regular and irregular verbs. The experiment described here is a follow-up study of previous visual lexical…

To understand whether a responsive parenting intervention for socially disadvantaged mothers was related to preintervention parenting resources, the authors examined both of these conditions as moderators of behavior change in 264 participating families (term, n = 120; very low birth weight, n = 144). Families were randomly assigned to an…

This study investigated relationships between teacher talk exposure in preschool and school and children's second language vocabulary acquisition. Teacher talk exposure and vocabulary acquisition in Turkish-speaking children learning Norwegian and attending various classrooms were assessed yearly from when the children were in their next-to-last…

Examined parental speech data demonstrating that linguistic input to children does not contain sufficient information to support unaided learning of the pronoun "one." Examined 18-month-olds' interpretation of sentences with a "one" substitution. Found that 18-month-olds have command of the syntax of "one." Because…

Reports on two studies on input enhancement used to support learners' selection of focus of attention in Spanish second language listening material. Input consisted of video recordings of dialogues between native speakers. Exact repetition and speech rate reduction were examined for effect on comprehension, acquisition of decoding strategies, and…