This book describes the phonological and grammatical structure of the whole-Dravidian language family from different aspects, examining its history and writing system, structure and typology, lexicon, and recent contacts between Dravidian and other language groups. The 11 chapters highlight the following: (1) "Introduction" (e.g., the…

This volume brings together the majority of lectures and papers presented at the 1998 and 1999 discourse symposia at Vaxjo University. Part one, "Four Perspectives on Discourse," offers a matrix perspective on narrative, a cross cultural perspective on academic rhetoric, a cognitive perspective on informational discourse, and a construction…

Wagiman is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in the northern part of the Northern Territory by about ten people. It possesses an unusual open class of words, which are called coverbs. Most frequently coverbs are paired with an inflecting verb from a closed class to form a complex predicate. This book provides a descriptive and analytical…

Examines the effects of audience adaptation and social cognitive ability on the syntactic strategies employed by four different age groups in the writing of persuasive discourse. (EKN)

Tested whether the predictions of a particular syntactically based theory about partial availability of universal grammar in post-critical-period second-language acquisition can provide insight into the acquisition of English restrictive relative clauses. (48 references) (Author/CK)

Investigates the effect of competing structures (pragmatics, semantics and morphosyntax) on the development of Arabic subject-verb agreement morphology and marking in Arabic interlanguage among Australian students of Arabic. Findings indicate that linguistic complexity influences the processing strategies employed and determines the order of…

Subjects (n=93) participated in an investigation of how the number of errors from different linguistic sources affects evaluative judgments about the need for revision in a non-native language. Results of the participation of non-native and native writers of English as well as of English as a foreign language teachers show that lexical errors have…

Discussion of text segmenting and comprehension highlights a study of elementary students in Australia that tested two hypotheses, one concerning reading abilities and one concerning information processing skills involved in syntactic analysis. Tests that measured vocabulary, comprehension, and processing skills are described, results are…

Presents an analysis of errors in a 400-page corpus of German essays by American college students in second-year language courses showing that syntax is the most problematic area, followed by morphology. This study indicates that 80% of student errors are not of semantic origin and are potentially recognizable by a syntactic parser. (six…

Examined the extent to which maternal linguistic input enabled children to use syntactic bootstrapping. Studied uses of 25 common verbs in speech of 57 mothers to their 1-year olds and 2-year olds. Found that verbs can be used to create informative syntactic frames, syntactic frames can cue appropriate verb class, and multiple syntactic framing…

This comparison of 15 successful and 15 unsuccessful college foreign-language learners found significant intergroup differences in performance on the Modern Language Aptitude Test, tests of written and oral language in the syntactic and phonological domains, and math calculation. Results suggest that students with foreign language learning…

Describes a study of English writing by Norwegian English-as-a-foreign-language learners. Language problems on different linguistic levels are analyzed and the theory of compensatory strategies is used to explain the process behind the production. Results show that less proficient learners have a higher number of grammatical, orthographic, and…

Reviews research findings on second-language (L2) interaction from the perspective of syntactic development. The article argues that better understanding of the role of negotiated interaction in L2 syntactic development requires examining the specific grammatical structures in interaction guided by the criteria of relevance, availability,…

Following the publication of an article summarising two systematic reviews on whether the teaching of grammar is effective in improving 5-16 year olds' writing (Andrews et al, 2006), the present article reflects on the relationship between knowledge about language and knowledge about grammar. It argues that there is no evidence for the assumption…

Introduction: The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether children who have reading disabilities in an alphabetically transparent orthography show a syntactic processing deficit. This research focuses on exploring syntactic processing and the use of morphological markers by subjects with reading disabilities. We analyze these groups'…