A study of code switching attempts to validate the equivalence constraint on intrasentential code switching on the basis of natural speech data from two typologically different languages, Finnish and English. All informants are fluent native speakers of Finnish who emigrated to Canada as adults. (25 references) (Author/OD)

Presents the results of a study of Francophone pupils in the French schools of Windsor, Ontario. The article gives examples of nonstandard features pervading students' French vocabulary and syntax and concludes that a hybrid vernacular may be emerging as a result of the Canadian sociolinguistic situation, creating a challenge to the teaching of…

Argues that the nature of mental representation contributes little to the specification of synchronic syntactic competence. Psycholinguists, syntacticians, and morphologists can benefit from a collaborative approach to the construction of an integrative model of language and mind, covering competence, representation, processing, and acquisition.…

A study examined effects of requiring mainly nonfrancophone university freshmen to use word processing in a French literature course. Results showed students learned word processing without harmful effects on course performance, showed greater control over French spelling and grammar, and wrote more syntactically complex French. Increased…

The aim of this study was to determine universal versus language-specific aspects of children's ability to organize cohesive anaphoric relations in discourse. Analyses examine narratives produced on the basis of two picture sentences by subjects of four ages (preschoolers, 7-year olds, 10-year olds, and adults) in four languages: English, German,…

This study investigated sensitivity to morphological, semantic, and syntactic cues to grammatical gender among 64 students of college-level Italian. Results showed sensitivity to cues in word-final phonemes, but low awareness of gender associations of derivational suffixes. Students had more difficulty dealing with multiple cues, particularly when…

Examines competition between conflicting principles in Kenyan English (animacy hierarchy and discourse pressure to place given information before new), manifested in news discourse. Results suggest some differences between spoken and written Kenyan English pointing to a tendency toward a more standard native-speaker variety in news discourse, and…

Investigates the potential interference between the grammars of French-English bilingual children, ages two to three years. The study examined their acquisition of functional categories, specifically the properties of INFL (finiteness and agreement) and negation. Results indicate that these children evidence no transfer, acceleration, or delay in…

Based on recent studies, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been considered a tool to aid in language learning on account of its distinctive interactional features. However, most studies have referred to "synchronous" CMC and neglected to investigate how "asynchronous" CMC contributes to language learning. Asynchronous CMC possesses…

Background: The aim of the present study was to examine the literacy achievement of 10- to 12-year-old native and non-native children with intellectual disabilities (ID) living in the Netherlands. An intriguing question within this context was whether the second language learning non-native children with ID would show a double disadvantage when…

Nassaji and Geva (1999) concluded that lower level processes, particularly efficiency in phonological and orthographic processing contributed significantly to individual differences in adult ESL reading. Moreover, they reported that speed of letter naming, while not directly associated with reading comprehension, was related to linguistic…

This guide is intended to be a resource for teachers of the newly arrived Hispanic immigrant child. The number of children who enter U.S. schools without knowledge of English or whose first language is Spanish is growing and will continue to grow. Teachers will need to meet the challenge of educating students whose native language is not English…

This report describes a project to develop an English grammar-checking word processor intended for use by college students with hearing impairments. The project succeeded in its first objective, achievement of 92 percent parsing accuracy across the freely written compositions of college-bound deaf students. The second objective, ability to use the…

This study investigated the extent to which various factors play a part in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students' ability to resolve pronoun-antecedent connections in reading. The subjects were 97 ESL learners with four different native languages (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish) enrolled in the University of Illinois's Intensive English…

This paper reports on a study of the efficiency of interactive tasks at eliciting targeted morpho-syntactic structures from child speakers of English as a Second Language (ESL). Two groups of subjects between 7 and 10 years of age were examined, one group with various first language backgrounds, and a second which used Spanish as their first…