Investigates the extent to which study of Latin might influence high school students' improvement in spelling. Finds that, although skilled spellers generally made greater progress than less skilled spellers, the students of Latin did not outperform students of other second languages either on the standardized spelling test or specifically on…

Supports the hypothesis that literal and metaphorical interpretations can result from similar contextual constraints. Finds that a metaphorical interpretation may be selected because a literal interpretation would have been inappropriate and that likewise a literal interpretation may be selected because a metaphorical interpretation would have…

Lexical statistics and a production experiment gauge the extent to which the linguistic notion of morphological productivity is relevant for psycholinguistic theories of speech production in languages such as Dutch. Lexical statistics show that new Dutch words are created often enough to make such theories of speech production theoretically…

Reports on two studies that looked at the spontaneous face-to-face interaction of three-month-old infants with their mothers. Facial and manual actions, gaze direction, and vocalizations were coded. Results showed a correlation between index-finger extensions and syllabic sounds, suggesting a strong connection between speech and the pointing…

The study reported here investigated the effects of using props to illustrate the meaning of sentences in a syntactic awareness task in which subjects were required to correct ungrammatical sentences. Children scored significantly higher in the props condition though the proportion of meaning-changing errors to total errors was not significantly…

This bibliography contains 103 references to scholarship on Africanized English and related educational scholarship published since 1985 and includes articles published in scholarly journals, books, and chapters from edited volumes. (MDM)

Discusses connectionist techniques that can be used for modeling perception, memory, and language processing, concentrating on a class of network with dual-weight connections in which each connection has both short- and long-term weight and describes a novel architecture in which the short- and long-term weights are independent. (45 references)…

Examines the Variable Competence (VC) approach to second language acquisition (SLA) by defining what is meant by VC and looking at the variable rules and how they are acquired. The research implications of VC models are examined, presenting arguments for and against their use in applied linguistic research in language testing and SLA. (32…

Reviews four books on speech research: (1) "The Speech Chain: The Physics and Biology of Spoken Language" (Peter B. Denes and Elliot N. Pinson); (2) "Speaking: From Intention to Articulation" (Willem J. M. Levelt); (3) "Talking to Learn: Conversation in Second Language Acquisition" (Richard R. Day); and (4) "Speaking" (Martin Bygate). (eight…

This article discusses professional language and communication in real-life settings and provides a critical overview of research on language for specific purposes. Ideas for renewing this field of study are presented. (78 references) (MDM)

Discusses Russian translatology after 1950. Introduces in chronological order some of the most important Russian works and discusses their main points. Deals with Russian approaches to key problems in translation such as equivalence, pragmatic relations, audience orientation, and problems of cultural transfer. (SR)

This article proposes an explanation for the use of resumptives in child language based on the feature of the nominal system. A cross-linguistic comparison shows no significant difference in resumptive use between child French, child English, and child Spanish. (50 references) (JL)

Discusses the different theoretical perspectives concerning input data to second-language (L2) learners, and examines the learners contributions to input and the interactions between what learners take in themselves and what is given to them. (58 references) (GLR)

Details six major research findings regarding second-language acquisition, including transitional stages for acquiring syntax; fixed-order emergence of grammatical morphemes; language acquisition progress from unmarked to marked elements; first-language influence; rule-governed learner output; and learner access to input. (27 references) (CB)

Reviews a book that presents the proceedings of three round-tables and descriptions of the goals and aims of the Language and Society section at the Moscow Institute of Linguistics (1988-90). (six references) (LT)