Examines from a creolist perspective the claim that American Sign Language (ASL) has creole origins. Applying criteria based on the work of various creole researchers, the article concludes that the evidence for creole origins of ASL does not meet any usual definition of a creole. The article discusses lexical and morhosyntactic similarities…

Presents evidence that the supposed paradox in which infants find abstract patterns in speech-like stimuli whereas even some preschoolers struggle to find abstract syntactic patterns within meaningful language is no paradox. Asserts that all research evidence shows that young children's syntactic constructions become abstract in a piecemeal…

Asserts that the posited paradox between infancy and toddlerhood language was not eliminated by Tomasello and Akhtar's appeal to infants' robust statistical learning abilities. Maintains that scrutiny of their studies supports the resolution that abstracting linguistic form is easy for infants and that toddlers find it difficult to integrate…

The language transcripts of seven children with Down syndrome (DS) and seven typically developing children with comparable mean length of utterance levels were compared for verb argument structure. Findings suggest that syntactic difficulties may delay children with DS in overcoming the optional subject phenomena and the lesser number of anomalous…

Argues that forms represented orthographically as "wanna,""hafta,""gonna,""gotta,""usta," and "sposta" are linked to "want to,""have to," for example, by derivational morphology. Also argues that these to-derivatives inflect on their heads, not their edges, and that they are synonymous with their bases but have different subcategories and more…

Semantic primitives for time and space, as proposed in Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, are examined for lexical equivalents in Hong Kong Cantonese. Temporal primitives are all found to have clear Cantonese exponents that can be combined as predicted with other metalanguage elements, with two exceptions. Spatial primitives all appear to have…

Proposes a set of copula forms that should be set aside from variable analysis as instances of "don't count" (DC) forms to allow for systematic comparisons among studies of the English language. Reviews the major alternative descriptions of DC copula cases in the literature and analyzes the behavior of the traditional DC categories. (29…

Four individuals with agrammatic aphasia were trained to comprehend and produce filler-gap sentences with wh-movement. Two participants received treatment first on the least complex structure (who-questions), and 2 received treatment on the most complex form (object-relative constructions). Object-relative training resulted in robust…

Examined the distribution of two Hebrew nominal structures in spoken and written texts of two genres produced by 90 native-speaking participants. Written texts were found to be denser than spoken texts lexically and syntactically as measured by a number of novel N-N compounds and denominal adjectives per clause; in older age groups this difference…

Reports on a test of the validity of Pienemann's processability theory, which predicts that certain morphological and syntactic phenomena are acquired in a fixed sequence. Tests whether these phenomena appear in this predicted hierarchical order in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian second language learners. (Author/VWL)

Describes an investigation of the differences and similarities existing between the intonation systems of French and English. The unity of the procedures described here is confirmed by an analysis of intonational errors made by English-speaking learners of French. (Author/VWL)

Examines cohesive ties that children and adults use during verbal explanations to resolve incongruent discourse information. Identifies age-related changes in children's use of adversatives and causal connectives. Finds less use of personal referents and demonstratives among preschoolers, and no decreased use of additives and temporal connectives…

The proposed framework assumes six developmental stages according to mean length of utterance in morphemes. Within each stage, syntactic forms and semantic relations interact. In assessment, each utterance is analyzed for features which describe current language abilities. Language goals are developed based on existing and expected features.…

Views the Dutch language as analogous to the polder typical of the Netherlands, an area of low-lying land reclaimed from a body of water and protected by dikes. Phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and stylistic analyses are presented. (MSE)

Gives an overview of various linguistic software tools in the field of intelligent text handling that are being developed in Germany utilizing artificial intelligence techniques in the field of natural language processing. Syntactical analysis of documents is described and application areas are discussed. (10 references) (LRW)