This study evaluated an Extended Optional Infinitive theory of specific language impairment (SLI) in children, which suggests that SLI children omit finiteness markers longer than do normally developing children. Comparison of 18 SLI 5-year olds with 2 normally developing groups (ages 5 and 3) found that SLI subjects omitted finiteness markers…

Attempts to determine whether children can use social-pragmatic cues to determine "what kind" of referent, object, or action an adult intends to indicate with a novel word. Doubts that children assume that a novel word refers to whatever nameless object is present. Suggests that lexical acquisition rests fundamentally on children's…

Examines whether knowledge of functional properties of a referent for a new name influences children's first guesses about whether that name refers to an object or a substance. Suggests that children do not rely on a single source of information, but rather draw on various kind of information, including perceptual characteristics of the entities…

Examined travel time in the family car as an opportunity for young children to use distant time referents in their talk with parents. Results supported preschoolers' tendency to talk predominantly about the here-and-now in most settings, but highlights factors that may contribute to children's increased use of decontextualized talk about past and…

This study of normally achieving second graders, language-learning-disabled children, and adults with literacy problems (total n=27) found that morphological knowledge in spoken language was highly related to morpheme use in written language samples. Results suggest that morphological knowledge does not develop solely as a function of maturation…

This article presents strategies, including communicative reading strategies, to facilitate holistic language learning in young children with language and learning disorders. Strategies include pairing oral and written language and using preparatory sets, semantic maps, flowcharts, and theme building. An example of narrative discourse demonstrates…

This article reviews recent research on children's knowledge and acquisition of derivational morphology across studies of listening, speaking, reading, and spelling. The paper concludes that this dimension of language organization deserves more attention than it now receives in language instruction. (Author/JDD)

The prediction that young Chinese- and English-speaking children should exhibit parallel performance in their use of null arguments was investigated using an elicited production task. The hypothesis that early English allows null subjects was upheld; the argument that early English is a discourse-oriented language like Chinese was not upheld. (26…

Improvisational role-play is presented as a teaching strategy that can help students with hearing impairments learn to use a variety of language forms while growing in literature appreciation. The teacher develops lesson plans around a story the children are reading, and students enter into the characters' roles, exploring the situations that…

This review of research on the use of whole language with students with hearing impairments identifies recurring themes, such as whole language is effective for students from a variety of backgrounds and age levels, and literacy development of deaf students exposed to a literate environment parallels that of hearing students. (JDD)

The Learning Cycle as an instructional strategy in science consists of three phases: exploration, concept introduction, and concept application. The strategy's support of language development in students with deafness is noted, and three lessons are presented: force (primary level), physical properties of matter (older elementary), and properties…

The hypothesis that good guessers are good second-language learners is investigated. Focus is on one characteristic, cognitive style, of successful and unsuccessful learners. Overall, the study provides continuing evidence for the positive relationship between field independence and English-as-a-Second-Language proficiency. (45 references) (LB)

The syntactic development of preschoolers (n=22) who later became disabled readers was compared to that of similar children who became normal readers. Expressive and receptive syntactic abilities were examined from age 30 to 60 months. The dyslexic group was poorer on all measures until age five, when both groups exhibited similar syntactic…

Examines the early production of 9 cohesive devices during narration about personal experience in an 18-month longitudinal study of 10 children between the ages of 2 and 3.6. The specification of noun phrases and types of noun errors is explored. (35 references) (GLR)

Focuses on a single rule of grammar to produce evidence of a memory system for language acquisition and processing that is modular; independent of real-world meaning; unaffected by frequency and similarity; sensitive to formal distinctions; more sophisticated than the explicitly-taught rules it subsumes; developed independently of ambient input;…