This paper discusses C. Chomsky's 1969 paper on children's syntactic development and the subsequent studies made to test her findings. Later studies indicate that Chomsky's results were not clearly differentiated, and a slight alteration in procedure changes results significantly. (CHK)

This paper examines the question of aspect in Russian, never fully mastered by the non-native speaker. Definitions are not found to be adequate pedagogical tools; the difficulty seems to stem from the notion of binariness. Perfectivity in verbs stems from the concurrence of two features, rather than a single criterion. (CHK)

The traditional division of the Chinese syllable into initial, final, and tone is examined. Distributional criteria are used to justify this analysis as more applicable to the Cantonese syllable than strict segmental analysis. A detailed analysis of the Cantonese final is given and implications for cross-language analyses are discussed. (CHK)

Examines the relationship between public relations practitioner and journalist in the transmission of the language of science to the public. The grammatical structure of original press releases was compared with the resulting newspaper stories for both science and nonscience releases to determine differences in syntax and editing. (Author/LRW)

The role of prosodic breaks (PB) in the parsing of locally ambiguous noun phrases (NP) + verb (V) + NP + prepositional phrase (PP) was examined in four word-monitoring experiments. Results indicate that PBs can influence sentence parsing. The article discusses possible mechanisms in the framework of two models. (32 references) (Author/CK)

Argues that the account of coordination of unlike categories ought to be unified with the account of feature neutralization under phonological identity. Further argues that this unified account ought not be couched in terms of string of features, but rather in terms of the logic of categories. Study concludes with a discussion of the interactions…

Replies to issues raised by Bouchard and Dubuisson (B&D) (1995) about American Sign Language (ASL), refuting B&D's assertion that visual-gestural languages are not bound by any universal constraints on word order and reaffirming that ASL is a highly configurational language with a basic underlying syntactic structure as well as an…

Evaluates the cumulative evidence on the use of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college-level second language writers' overall proficiency in the target language. Discusses implications of the findings for further research. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the acquisition of Spanish word order by native speakers of English. Specifically considers the development of sensitivity to the distinct interpretations of subject-verb vs. verb-subject order as determined by lexical verb class and discourse structure. (Author/VWL)

Four- to 10-year olds viewed pictures in which all or some individuals pictured were doing something to all or some objects pictured. Children indicated which sentences, using "all" or "each" to modify the subject or object, applied to the pictures. In choosing the applicable sentence, children showed little difficulty with…

Determined the degree to which a sample of one child's creative utterances related to utterances that the child previously produced. Utterances were intelligible, multi-word utterances produced by the child in a single hour of interaction with her mother. Results suggest the high degree of creativity in early English child language could be…

Discusses the role of frequency in phonological reduction. Argues that phonological alternations provide evidence for the size and nature of morphosyntactic chunks. The phonological shape of words provides evidence that categorization is not completely exemplar based, but rather involves some abstraction resembling the construction of a prototype.…

Discusses key points raised in the articles in this special issue of the journal. Suggests progress is being made in using complementary theories of the role of lexical representation, prediction, and crosslinguistic variation to get a full picture of this complex area of lexico-morhposyntactic knowledge. (Author/VWL)

A study observed a significant curvilinear relationship between speaking rates and accentedness and comprehensibility judgments of utterances produced by users from a variety of first language backgrounds. A second study manipulated rates with speech compression-expansion software established that this effect was due to the rate differences rather…

Examines one kind of syntactic variation--variable subject pronoun presence with American Sign Language plain verbs. Focuses on narratives that occurred during conversations recorded as part of a larger study. (Author/VWL)