Examines the effects of short term memory (STM) capacity, meaningfulness of stimuli, and age upon listeners' structuring of sentences. Results show that the interaction between STM capacity and meaningfulness (1) approached significance when data were collapsed over both age levels, and (2) was significant for one age level. Tables and references.…

Describes a pilot project using the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) in a writing program designed for Spanish Americans. Since ITA mirrors the writer's speech it can be used as a diagnostic tool. (JF)

Criticism of much of the previous research into the syntax of children's language. (RD)

The first "missing link is that between the linguist's rules and the rule component of performance; the second is between a student's competence as expressed in correct performance in the controlled language learning situation and spontaneous performance where selection of language is involved. (Author/FWB)

True bilingualism is defined as having two mother tongues and a level of linguistic performance in both such that one is a full-fledged member of two linguistic communities. A survey of conference interpreters focuses on how one becomes a bilingual person and remains one, and what the advantages and disadvantages are. (MSE)

A study of linguistic judgment tasks and lexical decision tasks among English-German bilinguals supports the hypotheses that bilinguals have knowledge of two sets of phonotactic constraints, and that both sets of constraints are simultaneously available to the individual during language processing. (MSE)

Analysis of the performance of hearing impaired and normal hearing adolescents on a standardized reading test shows that the hearing impaired students attempted significantly more items than their hearing counterparts, but made more errors and significantly more errors that are classified as "nonlinguistic" in nature. (FL)

Analysis of the performance of hearing impaired and normal hearing nine- to eleven-year-old children on a standardized reading test shows that the hearing impaired children tackled significantly more test items than their hearing counterparts and made significantly more errors in achieving similar reading scores. (FL)

Identifies three sociological dimensions that constrain the selection, production, interpretation, and reporting of verbally manipulative behaviors; discusses two texts illustrating the dimensions; and examines some problems of conceptualization and measurement. (FL)

Children deprived of the normal give-and-take of family during the first three years of life often suffer long-term psychological damage, according to Alberta Siegel, professor of psychology and psychiatry in the behavioral sciences, Stanford University Medical School. Discusses the importance of a caring environment as a requisite for language…

Through analyses of text corpora, sentence completion, and self-paced reading, examined role of structurally defined parsing principles, local information (lexically specific biases), and contextual information (referential pragmatics) in resolving syntactic ambiguities. Subjects were 32 undergraduate native English speakers. Found that local and…

In 4 experiments, 85 preschoolers and kindergartners had to pronounce the initial consonants of spoken words. Subjects' performance varied markedly with the linguistic structure of the words. Words with initial consonant clusters were more difficult than words beginning with a single consonant. Implications for phonemic awareness instruction are…

Investigates the effect of time and attention on formal accuracy in the linguistic performance of 36 adult language learners with regard to the third person singular verb "-s" and the plural from of nouns, using a story retelling task as its elicitation technique. Results suggest that the attention variable had a significant impact on grammatical…