Examines the contributions of rapid automatic naming, verbal ability, and phonological awareness to the prediction of phonological and orthographic skills from the first to the second grade. Illustrates how explicit computational models of reading can clarify relations among tasks commonly used in reading research. (SC)

Examined whether use of statistical properties of syllable sequences is uniquely tied to linguistic materials for adults and 8-month olds. Found that both groups were able to segment a continuous non-linguistic auditory sequence or tone stream, with performance indistinguishable from that obtained from syllable streams. Results suggests that the…

Analyzes Spanish second-language oral spontaneous data from adult native speakers of pro-drop and topic-drop languages. Results show that all Spanish nonnative grammars contain null subjects in both matrix and subordinate clauses. Many nonnative pronominal subjects do not have the same value as native Spanish subjects, and subject pronouns are…

Production of grammatical and lexical verbs in narratives from 29 individuals with Down syndrome and 29 controls matched on linguistic level was examined. Individuals with Down syndrome produced fewer lexical or grammatical verbs per utterance compared to the control group but produced a greater diversity of lexical verbs. (Author/CR)

This study investigated lower-lip motor processes underlying production of iambic and trochaic metrical forms with 16 children (ages 3 and 4) and eight adults. Movement patterns were well differentiated for both groups but in qualitatively different ways. Results suggest that metrical forms are perceptually and linguistically established.…

Examines age of acquisition of multiple wh-questions in English and Korean, whether there is any difference between English and Korean in terms of the stage at which the multiple wh-question pattern emerges, and whether there is any difference in the degree of difficulty of various multiple wh-questions in Korean and English. (Author/VWL)

According to natural-language theory, reading and writing are learned from whole to part, in meaningful contexts. Strategies based on this theory for literacy tutors to use include Characteristics of Good Readers; Apperceptive Interactive Method; Prime-O-Tec (repeated readings); Knows, Wants, Learned, Confused; and List It and Skip It. (SK)

Predictors of language production skills were evaluated in 48 children and adolescents with Down syndrome and compared to 48 children matched for nonverbal mental age and mother's years of education. Comparison of two models found the model that incorporated comprehension performance (as well group membership, chronological age, cognition,…

One of a series of letters to parents of children with developmental apraxia of speech, this letter discusses other problems associated with the disorder including language development problems, academic problems, motor skill problems, and chewing and swallowing difficulties. An annotated bibliography of two further readings for parents is…

Aims to give a thorough analysis of the morphosyntax produced at the outset of multi-word speech, with a classification of free language produced at 2 years by 27 French-speaking children. A classification performed with word sequences reveals surprisingly adult-like sequences of syntactic categories of words. (Author/VWL)

Reports on the early phonological development of six children learning Finnish. Primary focus is on their production of multisyllable targets. There was a tendency to reduce the last element of long words. Results also indicated that the segmental factor may influence the deletion pattern: the syllable that contained a stop was produced,…

Discusses measures of infants and toddlers developing vocabularies. Suggests that what is needed are norms derived from observations of typically-developing bilingual children, followed up by measures of concurrent and predictive validity. (Author/VWL)

Examines the earliest uses of verbal morphology in Spanish, an inflectional language. Stringent criteria were applied to data from two children to determine what inflections are used productively. Analyses reveal that there is little productive command of verbal morphology at early ages, and that subjects begin with a single form per verb.…

Introduces this special issue of the journal and reports on new directions in the research that began with code switching, but increasingly has come to include other types of language contact phenomena. The articles in the issue report on analyses and explanations for a variety of outcomes in bilingual production. (Author/VWL)

Examined Russian-speaking children's knowledge of syntactic and discourse-related restrictions on the interpretation of pronouns in subjunctive clauses. Eighteen children (4-5 years of age) participated in a truth-value judgment task. In constructions in which syntactic knowledge is implicated, children's performance is very similar to that of…