Examines whether preschool children take the gender of the addressee into account when disputing during peer exchanges. Finds that both boys and girls modified their language use in mixed-sex groups, with boys using fewer commands when more girls were present, and girls using more contradictions in mixed-sex than same-sex groups. (SR)

This article discusses the relationship between theory and methodology in qualitative research, arguing that theory informs the questions that researchers ask, the assumptions they make, and the approaches they use. It outlines the six principles of critical research theory and discusses its application to the language learning of immigrant women…

This article discusses how qualitative research can inform language teacher education, focusing on the perspectives of teacher practice, knowledge, and understanding that affect teacher education research. It argues that researchers need to examine how teachers, students, parents, and others involved in the classroom construe their worlds and…

Replicates R. P. Leow's 1993 study on the effects of simplification, type of linguistic item, and second/foreign language experience on learners' intake of linguistic items contained in written output. Results on the type of linguistic item underscore the need for research to consider seriously the role of modality while addressing cognitive…

Attempts to determine whether children can use social-pragmatic cues to determine "what kind" of referent, object, or action an adult intends to indicate with a novel word. Doubts that children assume that a novel word refers to whatever nameless object is present. Suggests that lexical acquisition rests fundamentally on children's…

Examines whether knowledge of functional properties of a referent for a new name influences children's first guesses about whether that name refers to an object or a substance. Suggests that children do not rely on a single source of information, but rather draw on various kind of information, including perceptual characteristics of the entities…

Explores the relationship between pragmatics and reading from a perspective of "learning to read" in order to "read to learn." Second language reading is discussed in terms of cognitive processing and research on content and formal schemata; cognitive processing and readers' cognitive strategies and metacognition; and the reading-writing…

It is shown that, although native English speakers routinely use subject-verb-object questions for specific functions and in informal discourse, this question form rarely appears in textbooks or presentations used in English-as-a-Second-Language classrooms. Thus, language presented in these classes may not expose students to the complete range of…

Discusses intercultural problems of writing academic English in a non-English context, specifically in Finland. It is argued that before such courses are designed for academic nonnative writers and for teachers of such writers, it is essential to conduct textlinguistic research into cultural and linguistic differences in the practices existing…

This article discusses the attitude of the second generation Dutch in Australia to language maintenance. A profile of the group's language activities is given, and factors related to language maintenance attitudes and the use of Dutch are examined. (16 references) (VWL)

A multidimensional approach analyzes the linguistic characteristics of 26 Somali spoken and written registers. Somali represents a different language type, and no single dimension adequately describes the relations among registers. Findings are related to previous analyses of English, Tuvaluan, and Korean. (27 references) (Author/LB)

The overall role played by hypercorrection in the literature on language change, language variation, and second language acquisition is reviewed. The paper argues that hypercorrection is not a completely unified phenomenon, citing an empirical study showing that quantitative methods applied to qualitative hypercorrection necessarily involve…

Questions Bloom's (1984) assertion that, because the Chinese do not employ counterfactual conditionals, the Chinese have not developed a labeled cognitive schema that allows them to process counterfactuals "naturally" (as opposed to the English). It is demonstrated that Arabic contains a specific counterfactual marker, yet Arabic…

Defines and discusses the concept of small languages. Topics addressed include political status; official status (e.g., as a national language); distinctiveness; robustness or the degree of feasibility; social function; education to support the language; functions of literacy; and appropriate technology for use with particular languages. (12…

Focuses on a single rule of grammar to produce evidence of a memory system for language acquisition and processing that is modular; independent of real-world meaning; unaffected by frequency and similarity; sensitive to formal distinctions; more sophisticated than the explicitly-taught rules it subsumes; developed independently of ambient input;…