The acquisition of case and gender marking on the definite and indefinite article was studied in a sample of 6 normally-hearing children and 9 children with cochlear implants. Longitudinal spontaneous speech data are used. Children were matched by MLU, with 4 MLU levels: 1.8, 2.8, 3.6, 4.8. Age ranges for normally-hearing children were 1;4 to 3;8…

The present study addresses the reactivity of two types of verbal protocols in SLA research. It expands on the work of Leow and Morgan-Short (2004), who found nonmetalinguistic verbalization during a second-language reading task to be nonreactive for beginning learners' text comprehension, intake, and production of the targeted morphological form.…

This study examined the interaction between working memory and language comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI), focusing on the function of the central executive component and its interaction with the phonological loop (A. D. Baddeley, 1986) in complex working memory tasks. Thirteen children with SLI and 13 age-matched…

We assessed whether and how the discourse written for prototype integrated tasks (involving writing in response to print or audio source texts) field tested for Next Generation TOEFL[R] differs from the discourse written for independent essays (i.e., the TOEFL Essay[R]). We selected 216 compositions written for six tasks by 36 examinees in a field…

The present study assumes that, despite the relative uniformity of research articles (RAs) imposed by the requirements of the genre, there may be intercultural variation in the rhetorical preferences of different writing cultures. This study develops further Moreno's [Text 18 (1998) 545] model for the comparison of the metatext employed in English…

In order to investigate second language (L2) processing at ultimate attainment, 20 first language (L1) English and 20 L1 Dutch advanced to near-native speakers of German as well as 20 native Germans were tested in two experiments on subject-object ambiguities in German. The results from a self-paced reading task and a speeded acceptability…

Literacy instruction materials developed by literacy workers are presented. Most of the materials are intended for a variety of student proficiency levels; one is intended for teachers. The first four sets, all illustrated with photographs, include a story about playing the lottery, the description of a shopping trip for jeans and shoes, a…

This paper discusses some of the problems that arise for students and instructors in the teaching of the linguistics of a language to students in the process of learning that language as a second language (L2). Because non-native speakers may not have reached terminal competence in the L2, the language being presented in linguistics classes as…

This issue of working papers focuses on the relationship between the mind and language. Papers include the following: (1) "The Role of Language of Thought in Foreign Language Learning" (Andrew D. Cohen); (2) "UG Accessibility in Second Language Acquisition: Re-examining the Binding Parameter" (Howard Chen); (3) "Helping Philippe: Constructions of…

A study of codeswitching patterns in American speakers of Finnish, primarily at the syntactic level, is presented. Subjects are 21 Finnish-English bilinguals aged 8 to 91 years, whose speech in naturally occurring speech situations was recorded and analyzed for intrasentential codeswitching. The analysis looked at (1) how much codeswitching could…

A discussion of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching focuses on the relationship of lexical items to the syntactic situations in which they may occur, and the importance of teaching this relationship to language learners. First, common errors made by ESL students that are attributable to lack of syntactic context knowledge are identified.…

An assessment battery, measuring multiple aspects of language, was administered to 29 children between 4 and 5 years of age who had been born prematurely. The children, who weighed less than 2,500 grams at birth after less than 37 weeks of gestation, were recruited from a cohort of children originally admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit…

The nine papers in this collection include: "L'expression du feminin dans l'adjectif latin: Genese et extension de *-ih2 comme morpheme de feminin grammatical en indo-europeen" (The Expression of the Feminine in the Latin Adjective: Genesis and Extension of the -ih2' as Grammatical Feminine Morpheme in Indo-European); "Lexikalische…

A small-scale study at a British university investigated two issues: the effect of task familiarity on language production; and the effects of the task on oral production. Three university students of differing language backgrounds, all non-native speakers of English, were interviewed in autumn and again 3 months later. On both occasions they were…

The Australian aboriginal language Kuuku Ya'u and its closely related dialect Umpila are described. An introductory chapter provides information on the classification of the languages, linguistic type, and dialect groups. The second chapter outlines aspects of the phonology of Kuuku Y'au and Umpila, including phonemes, vowel length, consonant…