This study examined the relation between young English language learners' (ELL) native oral language skills and their language input in transitional bilingual education kindergarten classrooms. Spanish-speaking ELLs' ("n" = 101) Spanish expressive language skills were assessed using the memory for sentences and picture vocabulary…

Recent studies of heritage speakers, many of whom possess incomplete knowledge of their family language, suggest that these speakers may be linguistically superior to second language (L2) learners only in phonology but not in morphosyntax. This study reexamines this claim by focusing on knowledge of clitic pronouns and word order in 24 L2 learners…

We tested the hypothesis that syntactic and narrative comprehension of a natural sign language can serve as the linguistic basis for skilled reading. Thirty-one adults who were deaf from birth and used American Sign Language (ASL) were classified as skilled or less skilled readers using an eighth-grade criterion. Proficiency with ASL syntax, and…

Describes experiments involving responses of language disordered children to sentences that can carry directive import. Results indicate that language disordered children are qualitatively like normal children with regard to early response behavior. These children do have more difficulty in generating informing responses and utilizing information…

Compared the oral narrative skills of 31 school-aged children diagnosed at 24 to 31 months with expressive language delay with those of 23 typically-developing peers. Suggests that the use of narrative structure may be a specific area of underachievement for late talkers, in addition to their continuing weakness in syntactic and lexical abilities,…

Investigated the use of complex syntax in narrative language samples of older children and adolescents with Down syndrome and a group of typically developing children matched on mean length of utterance. Findings indicate that syntactic development in individuals with Down Syndrome continues into late adolescence and is not limited to simple…

Environmentally contaminated speech errors (irrelevant words or phrases derived from the speaker's environment and erroneously incorporated into speech) are hypothesized to occur at a high level of speech processing, but with a relatively late insertion point. The data indicate that speech production processes are not independent of other…

A study of a brain-damaged subject's impaired performance on tasks involving production of verbal numbers found that lexical errors occurred in spoken production but not in written production, while syntactic error occurred in both modes. (Author/CB)

Using a corpus of 18 child-adult conversations, this study distinguished adult utterances that solicited information from those soliciting acknowledgment (i.e., where the response was predictable, and the utterance served a predominantly social function). Both types of utterance were usually responded to by children, but the form of response…

Examined the relationship between oral language and literacy in a two-year, multivariate design. Through empirical cluster analysis of a sample of 88 kindergarten children, four oral language subtypes were identified based on measures of semantics, syntax, metalinguistics, and oral narration. (Author/VWL)

Analysis of the spontaneous speech of English- and Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment indicated that word-final consonants adversely influenced Italian subjects' tendency to use articles. There was no evidence of syntactic differences between the language groups. (Author/CB)

School-aged, hearing-impaired children's propensity for incorporating complex syntax into the narratives and conversations they produced was investigated. Language samples containing both conversations and narratives in the form of story retellings were collected from seven subjects with moderate-to-severe hearing losses. (48 references) (VWL)

Children using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) picture boards often produce sequences of symbols that do not reflect the grammatical structure of the language spoken in their environment. Graphic symbols or pictures may be interpreted as global representations of meaning rather than as individual components to be sequenced into…

Three discourse-related formal aspects of model-imitation pairs were analyzed longitudinally in successive samples from two Hungarian children. Results revealed an unbroken developmental trend leading to lexically coherent conversational replies and that imitation aided the children in learning the lexicon, making phonological approximations of…