This report is the third in a series of annual reports describing the research performed by Stanford Research Institute to provide the technology that will allow speech understanding systems to be designed and implemented for a variety of different task domains and environmental constraints. The current work is being carried out cooperatively with…

This survey was conducted in order to provide a resource for those interested in revising existing Chinese teaching materials and/or writing new materials. A study of the vocabulary in several texts for first and second year Chinese classes in American colleges was used as the basis for constructing a questionnaire consisting of a list of commonly…

As part of a continuing project of language analysis, SURC presents an essay on the nature and history of frequency counts. The first section deals with the history of such counts and traces them from Early Hellenic times to the present. Section 2 is an analysis of techniques used and describes the capabilities and limitations of frequency counts…

Previous studies dealing with the age at which children acquire constituent order preferences have been in conflict. This study was designed to determine if children with normal language development demonstrate constituent order preferences as early as age three and one-half, or a mean age of four years, one month. To test this competency, an…

This dissertation examines the principles of two current theories of first language acquisition and from them synthesizes a second language methodology. As a background to the problem of second language methodology, it is stated that the basing of second language methodologies on first language learning is currently being questioned and that the…

Established by the Alaska State Legislature on June 9, 1972, the Alaska Native Language Center is responsible for: (1) studying languages native to Alaska; (2) developing literacy materials; (3) assisting in the translation of important documents; (4) providing for the development and dissemination of native literature; and (5) training Alaska…

Assuming that hypothesized concepts of "case" and "semantic deep structure" reveal insights into the irregularities of cognitive semantic structures underlying the English language, this study attempted to probe the semantic structure of English to provide a foundation for language curriculum materials. Using the case grammar of Charles J.…

The "War on Poverty" has focused on the economic, educational, and social disadvantage of great segments of our population. Prominent among the disadvantaged is the North American Indian, living in the mainstream of the dominant culture and in the more isolated setting of the government reservation. One of the basic difficulties faced in efforts…

Pedagogical implications of transfer of training theory and of an assumed universal grammar, as related to second language learning processes, are reviewed in this article. In recent years, the concept of a universal grammar has lost its credibility. The author urges, however, that grammar be conceived as a process or method of generating or…

This book, the second in an annual series, contains 38 articles published during the past year in the field of child psychiatry and child development. The editors attempted to compile articles "of most value to workers in this field both for immediate information and for long-term reference." Accordingly, the articles are of two types: (1)…

An overall look is taken at the cloze research method as a new tool for measuring readability. The construction of a cloze readability test is described as well as several studies made on the reliability and validity of such tests. Included also are some methodological considerations to be kept in mind when constructing a cloze test. Data is…

The purpose of this canonical and multiple correlation study of measures of writing ability was to develop a valid weighted index of writing ability to replace the single measures now being used to evaluate elementary English programs. The subjects, 134 pupils from each fourth, fifth, and sixth grade level of Broadway and Dunham schools in Maple…

The purpose of this research was to frame a hypothesis accounting for the observed behavior of particular children in a contact language area, in an attempt to understand their linguistic learning processes. The community involved was the township of Benque Viejo at the Guatemalan frontier, and the four informants, aged 10-13, spoke varying…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a program designed to improve the quality of written composition by teaching students the components and use of a descriptive writing scale so that they could rate their own compositions and those of other students. The study consisted of two groups, an experimental group and a…

This study was designed to investigate, describe, and compare the intonation patterns of Black English and Standard English speaking children in a reading (formal) and free discourse (informal) situation. Black English was defined as the linguistic code of the subjects sampled from the inner city black poverty area schools, and Standard English as…