This study investigates why researchers have trouble determining when learners acquire inverted and statement forms of yes/no questions. Researchers have difficulty designing studies on this subject because this area of language is not fully rule-governed or systematic. The choice of the form may be based on two speakers' foreknowledge of each…

Sixty undergraduate students read and summarized eight short passages in a study of how semantic components were involved in text comprehension. After the first summary was completed (the naive or untutored summary), the students were assigned to one of three groups. The experimental group was introduced to the semantic components, including…

This report describes the work of the text analysis groups of the Center for the Study of Reading, whose goals are to investigate the problem of reading comprehension from the standpoint of comparing properties of texts to the difficulty or ease of reading and to construct appropriate theories to account for text properties. The text analysis…

The interview techniques developed by Carol Chomsky were used in a comparative study of the language acquisition of 32 bilingual and monolingual third grade students. After these students were matched for age, socioeconomic status, IQ, family environment (both parents in the home), and reading ability, they were placed in four…

One factor that contributes to the difficulty that a reader may encounter when reading a text is the syntactic complexity of the constructions used in the text. Examples of altered text constructions include the transformations of subjects of subordinate clauses, making them either the subjects or the objects of main clauses. When the conditions…

TWO TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE APPROACHES TO TEACHING SYNTAX IN JUNIOR AND SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS ARE PRESENTED. ONE IS FOR USE WITH AVERAGE AND TALENTED STUDENTS IN GRADES 7-9, AND THE OTHER IS FOR SLOW-LEARNING STUDENTS IN GRADES 7-11. A DISCUSSION OF THE FIRST APPROACH IS DIVIDED BY GRADE LEVEL AND INCLUDES AN EXAMINATION OF BASIC SENTENCE…

THIS MANUAL IS INTENDED TO SERVE AS A REFERENCE RATHER THAN A DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR FOR ANYONE WISHING TO LEARN TO READ MODERN KIRGHIZ. A TURKIC LANGUAGE, KIRGHIZ IS SPOKEN MAINLY IN THE KIRGHIZ SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC, AND TO A LESSER EXTENT IN THE SINKIANG-UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC, THE KAZAKH, UZBEK, AND THE…

AS COMPUTERS ARE USED FOR INCREASINGLY COMPLEX OPERATIONS SUCH AS RETRIEVING DOCUMENTS AND ANALYZING SENTENCES, IT BECOMES APPARENT THAT HUMAN DECISION-MAKING IS STILL AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF THE PROCESS. THE USE OF THE ON-LINE INTERACTIVE CAPABILITY OF TODAY'S THIRD-GENERATION COMPUTERS SUPPORTED BY TYPEWRITER AND DISPLAY SCOPE TERMINALS MAKES…

Second language students may develop writing skills gradually, or they may learn and practice these skills through the use of sentence combining techniques. A study is reported of the consistent use of sentence combining exercises with intermediate language classes at the university level. A total of 325 students enrolled in intermediate French,…

Two aspects of the problem of native language grammar instruction, in this case English, are addressed. First, it is argued that a combination of linguistic and pedagogical factors contribute to the explanation for the apparent decline in English grammar instruction in the schools. Secondly, it is argued that effective grammar teaching should…

In a verbal memory study of language development, third- through sixth-grade children read and orally recalled short, expository passages which were presented in three syntactic paraphrase forms: (1) complex sentences with preverbal elaboration such as complex subject nominalizations and relative clauses, (2) complex sentences with postverbal…

An important feature of the sentence in any language is its thematic structure, new/given information organization. It has been found that in English, where word order is grammatically determined, the thematic structure is signalled by the place of the sentence stress. If an indefinite noun (new information) is present in the sentence, it bears…

A careful examination of the location of variation in the grammar is advocated as opposed to attempts to cover linguistic generalizations with a single rule. Such an examination may lead to non-deterministic solutions, since there may be two distinct possible derivations for a single surface structure. For instance, in Portuguese, the variation…

A mother's interactions with her young daughter were studied with special emphasis placed upon the frequencies of linguistically instructional input and the strategies employed to provide this information. The girl was between 18 and 28 months old and her mean length of utterance (MIU) was between 1.5 and 4.3 morphemes. Only maternal input was…

English-speaking children and adults who were learning Dutch at school and at work, without signigicant amounts of foreign language instruction, were tested at five-month intervals during their first year in Holland. The test battery included tests for active and passive control of phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary. Significant…