The study involved a comparison of the ability of the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test and the Concrete Objects Test to measure receptive and expressive language skills in 30 trainable mentally retarded children. ( Author/ PHR)

Adult skilled and unskilled readers were tested using the cloze procedure, comparing syntactic and lexical errors with materials at varying levels of difficulty. Findings suggest that reading materials for adult basic education students should control not only vocabulary and subject matter, but also the syntactic complexity of the written…

A simplified formula for teaching German word order to American students is suggested. Other formulas in a few manuals are reviewed; suggestions for application of this one are offered. Consistent use of the formula has resulted in quicker development of a native feeling for the structure of the language. (AMH)

Compared with 30 normal and 30 language-deviant 3-year-old Spanish speaking Puerto Rican children were two measures of linguistic proficiency. (Author/MH)

The Spanish feminine article /el/, ordinarily the singular masculine definite article, has been used as evidence of the need for obligatory disagreement rules. Others explain the anamoly by means of referral rules. A third solution is suggested: an allomorphy rule which can be interpreted syntactically or phonologically. (LMO)

The acquisition of textual competence in a language occurs through the acquisition of both lexical competence and knowledge of word order that allows the construction of well-formed sequences. Exercises that help develop vocabulary and word order skills in French as a foreign language are presented. (MSE)

A study of 45 hearing-impaired students (ages 10 to 19) investigated their understanding of English verb-particle combinations of varying syntactic and semantic difficulty. Results suggest an order of difficulty in learning. Idioms were found to be more difficult than literal meanings with little improvement over the age range of the subjects.…

Summarizes 10 presentations made at the workshop on a variety of topics including: classification of Chinese dialects; the importance of semantic units in tone sandhi; insights on Chinese character recognition among brain-damaged patients; and a cognitive approach to the study of Chinese grammar. (TR)

Three types of metalinguistic awareness and their relation to socioeconomic status, vocabulary, reading readiness skills, and reading acheivement were longitudinally studied in a sample of 40 kindergartners and 43 first graders. The three metalinguistic tasks were highly interrelated until the effects of oral language comprehension or vocabulary…

Analysis of the spontaneous speech of English- and Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment indicated that word-final consonants adversely influenced Italian subjects' tendency to use articles. There was no evidence of syntactic differences between the language groups. (Author/CB)

Suggests that Slovene is acquiring a verb-second (V2) word order. Slovene is compared with Serbo-Croat to reveal diverged word order of these languages. Aspects of the history of the Germanic languages are examined for clues on current and possible future changes in Slovene. (Author/LMO)

Investigates the interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragamatics from the perspectives of functional constraints on sentence processing. Findings reveal that native speakers of Italian first become aware of the importance of the concept of word order in a second language before being able to determine the specifics of word order in that…

Outlines some applications of Natural Language Processing, the capacity of computers to process human language, to language teaching. The role of syntactic parsing (the assigning of grammatical structure to sentences by computer) and semantically based processing is examined. (Author/SED)

Demonstrates that, in order to introduce students to literature, language must be examined as to the way it conveys messages. Relates the use of literary language to more normal uses. (NKA)