The creative oral language elicited from 45 preoperational and 40 concrete operational first grade students was analyzed to study the relationship between cognitive development and the types of case relationships produced. Each child's language was analyzed for eight noun/verb relationships, including state, process, action, experience, location,…

This survey of Albanian language and literature is a synopsis of linguistic studies and literary achievements in Albania. The first chapter discusses the origin of the Albanian language. The next chapters deal with the Greek, Latin, Slavic, and Turkish influences on the Albanian language. The influence of Albanian on other Balkan languages and the…

A research project combining ethnographic and experimental methods is currently underway to assess whether minority groups use language in ways that put their children at a disadvantage in school. The project, which focuses on social, cognitive, and educational consequences of different patterns of language function and use, has involved…

Based on the assumption that the same conditions that promote talk in the preschool years might continue to promote oracy if they could be replicated in schools, this paper investigates conditions most likely to promote growth in oral communication, summarizes the findings of two relevant Australian research studies, and draws implications for…

Two semantic theories of word learning, a perceptual complexity hypothesis (H. Clark, 1970) and a quantitative complexity hypothesis (E. Clark, 1972) were tested by teaching 24 preschoolers and 16 college students CVC labels for five polar spatial adjective concepts having single word representations in English, and for three having no direct…

This paper addresses itself to the way in which K'ekchi speakers identify the subject and the object in simple sentences. An attempt is made to determine: (1) whether K'ekchi has a basic word order, (2) the possible functions of any derived word order, and (3) whether there are any constraints on the logically possible word orders in K'ekchi. A…

Studies investigating the functioning of persons who have cerebral lesions and evidence from the study of commisurotomized and normal subjects are reviewed. A study of recognition of pictorial stimuli by right-handed male children is also discussed. Studies about cerebral lesions and associated deficits have yielded information about the…

In order to attempt to identify the linguistic difficulties of slow learners, errors made by two groups of English-speaking adults learning French as a second language were compared. The subjects of the two groups shared similar characteristics, with the exception of the amount of time required to cover the same linguistic material (Group 1: 17…

To dispel the myths of linguistic deficiency among nonstandard English dialect speakers, evidence that repudiates these myths should be examined. These myths include suggestions that nonstandard dialects are ungrammatical and cannot be used to form concepts, and that speakers of such dialects receive little verbal stimulation as children. The…

The three projects described in this paper were based on the intrinsic connection between language and the structure of perception and action. The first project explored the role of nonverbal frameworks in the development of communication between mother and child, beginning with the first word. It emphasized the role of the mother in the creation…

The first section of this paper focuses on misunderstandings surrounding two of the proposals for changing sexist aspects of the English language, namely, avoiding the use of masculine pronouns (he, his, him, himself) with alleged sex-indefinite reference, and replacing the word and morpheme "man" with "person" in sex-indefinite usage. Several…

This paper summarizes the results of a longitudinal study of a child native speaker of French acquiring English. The observation period covered the child's progress from age 4 years, 9 months to age 5 years, 8 months. An analysis was made of the acquisition of the interrogative and negative structures and of nine grammatical morphemes. In…

Twenty-four English speakers from various regions of India were tested for the intelligibility of their speech. Recordings of speech in a variety of contexts were evaluated by listeners from the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, and Germany. On the basis of the resulting intelligibility scores, factors which tend to hinder…

THE LITERATURE ON INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT APPEARS TO ATTRIBUTE TO THE YOUNG CHILD A HIGH LEVEL OF LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND A RELATIVELY LOW LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT IN OTHER COGNITIVE SPHERES. IN AN ATTEMPT TO RESOLVE THIS DISCREPANCY, THE AUTHOR ADVANCED THE HYPOTHESIS THAT THE DESCRIPTIONS OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT ARE BASED ON AN ANALYSIS OF THE…

These proceedings contain six conference papers with commentary and discussion: (1) Dell Hymes, "On Communicative Competence," (2) David McNeill, "How to Learn a First Language," (3) Wayne O'Neil, "A Theory of Linguistic Performance," (4) William Stewart, "Social Dialect," (5) Paul Cohen, "Some Methods in Sociolinguistic Research," and (6) S. Alan…