Most second language acquisition research has been concerned with grammar or phonology and has failed to discuss lexical acquisition. The main reason for this neglect has been the lack of vocabulary study by linguists. However, recent concern with semantic theory has brought new impetus to work on lexical acquisition. Useful research on lexical…

The testing of non-English dominant children cannot be achieved through written examinations that demand reading proficiency and that fail to ascertain the strengths or weaknesses of individual performance. Nor can an oral proficiency test, involving a lengthy tension-inducing interview and relatively inconclusive scoring, provide the information…

Language skill attrition refers to the loss of any language or portion of a language whether it be the declining use of mother tongue skills, the replacement of one language by another in language contact situations, the deterioration of language in the neurologically impaired or elderly, or the death of whole languages. In this paper, language…

This study examines some aspects of the interaction of one Hmong family with the English-speaking community to determine what sort of language contact situations they encounter and what means they use to communicate in those situations. Observations revealed that English language use outside of the classroom was limited. The subjects did not seek…

An approach to teaching the subjunctive in the foreign language classroom is presented here. Based primarily on the work of the linguist William Bull, the numerous and vague "rules" are reduced to two essential principles that determine subjunctive use. The materials consist of a sixteen-page teaching guide, an outline for student use,…

This investigation studied the performance of fifteen normal and fifteen language-disabled children on experimental pragmatic tasks and on a standardized Piagetian measure of sensorimotor intelligence. The children were matched for mean length of utterance, all subjects performing at the holophrastic level. A series of experimental measures was…

The primary objective of foreign language learning, social communication, requires that experiences be simulated in the classroom. Before such simulations can be constructed, the teacher has to know what is involved when people communicate, in other words, the nature of the language act. This paper analyzes the situational, syntactical, and…

This investigation studied the development of the form and function of negative sentences, and how it relates to the input on negation that children receive from their parents. The data came from three children: two from a previous study (Bellugi) and one the son of the investigators. A detailed analysis was carried out of the syntactic form and…

This study considers the interaction of syntactic and pragmatic factors (social and cognitive) in children's production of coordinate structures involving conjunction reduction. Two aspects of pragmatic context were considered: (1) the pattern of uncertainty or redundancy in a complex action sequence, and (2) the perceptual grouping of objects…

THIS TEXT IS DESIGNED AS A MANUAL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO PROVIDE GENERAL INFORMATION ON ALTAIC LINGUISTICS, AS WELL AS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION OTHERWISE DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. IN PART 1, THE AUTHOR CLASSIFIES THE ALTAIC LANGUAGES--MONGOLIAN, MANCHU-TUNGUS, CHUVASH-TURKIC, (WITH THE POSSIBLE INCLUSION OF KOREAN)--AND…

The simplification of legal language is required by President Carter's Executive Order requiring "clear and simple English" in government regulations. A major problem in the simplification process is the absence of any adequate description or classification of legal language. This paper defines some specific features of legal language,…

A study was conducted to describe the ability of students to handle the various systems of the English language (phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics) and to determine how these systems are being affected by the linguistic environments surrounding the students. The 210 student subjects were enrolled in seven of the schools of the Lake and…

A cross-cultural study of British and United States elementary school children's writing and reading, looking in particular at the comparative growth of syntactic maturity in the two countries as the key to both processes and the link between them, is described in this report. Five hundred sixteen children in 19 classrooms in the Nottingham area…

The need for an index of development by which second language proficiency could be expediently and reliably guaged has been acknowledged by both second language (L2) teachers and researchers. In two previous L2 studies, the search for an index of development centered on an examination of learner written performance. In an attempt to construct an…

An introduction to this teaching guide briefly explains the underlying theory of language, identifies behavioral objectives, and offers taxonomies of the four language skills. The major portion of the guide is composed of transcripts of Spanish listening comprehension tests. The tests are designed for use with audiolingual materials (ALM) and…