In a study, Tagalog-speaking children, 3-, 5-, and 7-year olds, demonstrated better mastery of patient-focus (passive) than agent-focus (active) sentence structure. These results were attributed to the children's strategy of interpreting the first noun of a sentence to be the agent of the action. (SW)

A report on the state of the research in bilingualism among children to determine whether or not first and second languages are acquired in the same way. Several studies are described and classified; usage, pronunciation, interference and the question of dominant language are discussed. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A single Ph.D. program cannot be designed for candidates who will be either researchers and teachers. The solution is two different programs, one to serve each purpose. A plan for a Ph.D. research program in German is outlined. (CFM)

Study is made of five problem categories arising from use of national languages in training or education: linguistic, technical, educational, economic, and political. Conditions which appear necessary for the success of such changes involve planning, flexible rate of introduction, and synthesis of linguistic reform with other educational reforms.…

Authors present a critical, historical overview of research on second-language acquisition. Outlines four analytical approaches--contrastive, error, performance, and discourse analysis--traces the shifts among these approaches, and demonstrates the advantages and disadvantages of each. Also shows how the different approaches reflect changing…

An experiment on children aged 2 to 7 led to a critical evaluation of Piaget's implicit contention that young children use determiners anaphorically. It is suggested that the importance of young children's processing procedures on the linguistic environment has been underestimated in Piaget's interactive epistemology. (CHK)

Reviews the general trends of research concerned with second language phonology, citing several principal factors involved in foreign accent such as age and native language interference. More recent investigations show that pronunciation of a foreign language is influenced by factors of stylistic variation and stages of development unrelated to…

Summarizes contact-linguistic research on the Samis and Finns, the northernmost minorities in Scandinavia. The monolingual view of northern Scandinavian languages in the past is complemented with a multilingual perspective of the interaction between minority and larger languages. Among contact patterns discussed are North Germanic-Sami,…

Tested the hypothesis that the vocabulary of a discipline emphasizing concrete phenomena will have fewer synonyms per concept than vocabulary of a discipline emphasizing abstract phenomena. Although concreteness and abstractness of a discipline were found to be contributing factors in terminological consistency, at least one other factor exerts…

Investigation of fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-graders' knowledge of derivational morphology and the relationship between that knowledge and their ability to spell derived words, found that, while there was a strong developmental trend in both the mastery of derivational morphology and the spelling of derived words, spelling performances lagged…

Reviews research and empirical evidence to refute three first language acquisition myths: (1) comprehension precedes production; (2) children acquire language in a systematic, rule-governed way; and (3) the impetus behind first language acquisition is communicative need. (Author/CB)

Presents a study which investigated whether elementary school children could gain significantly in verbal reasoning about the definition of art. Reports that fifth and sixth grade students have the intellectual potential to improve their verbal reasoning if provided an adequate background in art education. (GEA)

Traces the history of the presence of black people's languages in Great Britain and also provides a contemporary perspective on current needs to define and articulate these language needs and to contribute toward the theory and development of language teaching, teacher training, and production of teaching material. (Author/CB)

Describes the presence of a phonological selection strategy and consonant harmony rule in one child's developing phonological system. Evidence suggests that this constant harmony constraint operated across morpheme boundaries, causing a delay in the onset of two-word utterances and influencing the selection of words that could occur in word…

Examines the nature of the convergent relationship between formal spoken and written discourse by focusing on three issues: (1) spoken vs. written modes; (2) formal vs. informal discourse; and (3) the relationship between oral ritual communication and written language and between ritual/written communication and everyday colloquial language. (SED)