Discusses why some schools chose the dial access retrieval system medium, how it was utilized and modified, and why it succeeded or failed. (EKN)

Using a delayed mimicry paradigm to assess speakers' awareness of nondistinctive phonetic differences which, in part, distinguish languages, the study provides tentative evidence that such differences are detectable by language learners and do not present an impossible barrier to phonetic learning in second-language acquisition. (EKN)

Explores the possibility that the characterization of native speaker-nonnative speaker speech (NS-NNS) is too broadly conceived. Confirms earlier claims about NS-NNS interaction, but also offers evidence that the frequency of use of discourse modifications by NSs in conversation with NNSs is variable. (EKN)

Discusses attempt to replicate and extend Keil's study of effects of ontological knowledge on judgments of sentence acceptability (indicating there is hierarchical one-to-one mapping of predicate-term relations of language onto the basic structure of knowledge). New data does not support Keil but suggests that range of sentence interpretation…

Outlines an attempt to use artificial intelligence formalisms as a formal language of description for the complex conversational behavior that occurs in ethnographic interviews. Discusses three kinds of coherence and uses them to analyze the text of an interview. (FL)

Discusses published references to deaf infants babbling like normal hearing children and states that the relationship between babbling and hearing still remains to be proven. (EKN)

Discusses the cognitive processes involved in constructing linear orderings from pairwise relationships of information items. Examines the effects that sentence types used in presenting information have on these processes, and tests two models designed to clarify the acquisition of spatial knowledge and the processing of locative and comparative…

Uncertainty was researched as a perceptual structure which mediates the transition from sensorimotor activity to language. The guiding notions are that the attentional system is geared to uncertainty from the beginning of life and that a speaker's language use is coordinated with this system as it emerges. (Author)

Study examined native Japanese speakers at two levels of English language experience and compared performance to native American-English speakers to determine whether Japanese-English bilinguals with intensive experience conversing with native English speakers would identify and discriminate /r/ and /l/ perception. Concludes that native Japanese…

This experiment investigated whether three- and four-year-old children show systematic preferences for animate or inanimate nouns to function as actors and objects of simple active and passive voice sentences. The children had to choose from several toys a suitable referent for a nonsense word used in a sentence. (Author)

Transcripts of 11 young children's speech to adults were found to include hints and question directives. (FL)

Reviews the book that reports the results of research conducted by Edward Klima, Ursula Bellugi, and others. The book aims to show American Sign Language as a true language and to detail the representational devices that the language employs. A chapter by chapter summary of the reported research is given. (PJM)

Contains status reports of research in three areas of speech production: functional properties of the speech production apparatus, control principles underlying speech production, and the biological basis of the speech production process. (RL)

Considers three different topics in speech research from the viewpoint of the physiology of the speech production mechanism: laryngeal control for voicing distinctions, articulatory dynamics in normal and dysarthric cases, and central mechanism of skilled movements. Includes a summary of a discussion on speech production. (RL)

Notes the parallels between N. Chomsky and M. Halle's "The Sound Pattern of English" and A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell's "Principia Mathematica." Uses these parallels to distinguish "formalist" v "substance-based" generative phonology. Suggests that a modification of the "formalist" program is ultimately more satisfactory than the…