In a study using preschool and elementary school children, the children's judgments of whether brief stories described valid instances of a concept shifted in a manner consistent with the authors' hypothesis that meanings typically develop from representations in which characteristic features predominate to those in which defining features become…

Some salient characteristics of words that facilitate or inhibit their recall and eventual use in a foreign language, including phonological shape, grammatical category, and functional aspects such as meaning and affective value, are examined and their pedagogical implications are discussed. (MSE)

Investigates second language phonology (English) of two native Hungarian speakers. Finds evidence for phonetic and phonological transfer but argues that there are limitations on what can be transferred. Contrasts error analysis approach with autonomous system analysis and concludes that each provides unique information and should be used together…

Examines whether specific characteristics of American Sign Language (ASL) syntax affect perceptual processing of the language. Findings support the psychological reality of sentence embedding processes in ASL, further supporting the claim that visually based languages achieve the same functional goals as speech, although with different means. (FL)

Examines "pseudoborrowing" of some English words into the French vocabulary. Considered the prestige language of Western Europe, English is viewed as a social hallmark of higher education; thus, even a modest knowledge and use of English reinforces this attitude. However, also suggests a modification of this concept, noting a reciprocal prestige…

Two experiments questioned whether deaf signers agree on the location of sign boundaries in American Sign Language (ASL), as well as where in time the boundaries are located. Results indicated that the deaf subjects were using linguistic knowledge of ASL when making judgments of the location of sign boundaries. (SL)

Results show that basic objects are shown to be the most inclusive categories for which a concrete image of the category as a whole can be formed, to be the first categorizations made during perception of the environment and to be the categories most codable, most coded, and most necessary in language. (Author/DEP)

Discusses the language development of Gypsie children and explores some of the problems they encounter as a minority group in England. (RB)

Soldiers in each of the 3 countries answered questions relating to content and vocabulary of material in languages of the other 2 countries. Nonlinguistic factors (education, travel, etc.) were taken into account. Investigation indicated that the languages are so similar that comprehension could be improved with little difficulty. (RW)

It has usually been psycholinguistics which has accommodated itself to alterations within linguistic formulations, but now there is a growing independence on the part of many psychologists in the study of language. The shift in emphasis is from competence to performance. (POP)

This article examines research done in Switzerland on languages in contact, and concludes that the limited amount of such research is due to the fact that the various languages spoken in Switzerland are spoken in adjacent areas in which bilingualism is rare. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

Describes a study of the recall of narrative prose. Serial structure at first influenced which elements were remembered, but as the Ss remembered more, the story grammar structure became the dominant influence over the elements remembered. (Author/RM)

This article proposes a description of Spanish conjunctions based on functional and structural criteria, and attempts to present a taxonomy of the different functions of conjunctions. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

This article describes the needs and efforts to devise a simple and concrete scientific vocabulary of Spanish. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

Three experiments investigated a characteristic of the propositions that underlie sentences. For some of the sentences tested, the same concepts occurred repeatedly across the underlying propositions; for others, concepts were seldom repeated. Repetitions were shown to facilitate sentence processing. (Author/RM)