This study is a partial replication of a set of studies conducted to investigate the effects of unequal status on speech variation. It was found that, in some respects, first- and second-language variation may be quantitatively different. (52 references) (JL)

A case study of a 3-year-old with a phonological disorder is used to demonstrate the application of optimality theory to the assessment and treatment. A tutorial of the theory is provided and then several prototypical error patterns evident in the child's productions are analyzed within the framework. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

This article concludes a forum that considered theoretical and analytical frameworks applied to developing systems in phonological theory and treatment. It discusses the role of complexity in target selection of children with language impairments: error pattern interaction and complexity; complexity, treatment, and constraint demotion; and…

A study investigated the way in which children make use of morphemic information when they are learning to spell. Specifically, it examined the use of morphemic information in spelling compound words; the use made of morphemic information when adding suffixes to words, and the way the morphological rule governing the formation of the past tense is…

This paper analyzes spoken usage of English prepositions by two groups of Ontarian elementary students at the Grade 2 and Grade 5 levels. The first group (29 subjects) consists of bilingual Franco-Ontarian students from Welland and Sudbury. The second group (8 subjects) is composed of monolingual English students from Toronto. Examination of the…

Forty-three children, 2;11 to 5;6, described six familiar activities: making cookies, going to the grocery, having a birthday party, going to a restaurant, getting dressed, and having a fire drill. They described each event three times. The descriptions were elicited by initially asking "What happens when...?" or "What do you do when...?" and then…

This study attempts to assess the developmental psycholinguistics hypothesis that language acquisition strategies are universal. Four types of statements were focused upon: (1) true affirmative statements (e.g., "You are a child"), (2) false affirmative statements ("You are a baby"), (3) false negative statements ("You aren't a child"), and (4)…

A study of overregularized use of verbs by two children over a period when they were 2 1/2 to 5 years of age shows overregularizations in two directions: non-causative verbs were used as causatives; and causative verbs were used non-causatively. According to terminology from logic, predicates were classified according to the number of noun-phrase…

This paper summarizes the results of a longitudinal study of a child native speaker of French acquiring English. The observation period covered the child's progress from age 4 years, 9 months to age 5 years, 8 months. An analysis was made of the acquisition of the interrogative and negative structures and of nine grammatical morphemes. In…

The theoretical linguistic distinction between assertion and presupposition was empirically tested with two groups of subjects, young children acquiring English as their first language and adults acquiring English as a second language. (Author)

Examines the results of a nonce-verb test administered to adults and children in five hispanophone communities to determine their control of the inflectional morphology of the Spanish verbal system. Results indicate that adults have less access to natural productive verbal processes than do children. Notes that these results have implications for…

Elementary learning-disabled boys (N=48) were randomly assigned to four feedback treatment conditions that involved orally reading nonsense words. Results demonstrated significant differences for: any type of feedback compared to no feedback, corrective feedback (modeling and sound-it-out) compared to general feedback, and modeling compared to…

This article compares different claims that have been made concerning acquisition by transitional rule-based derivation theories and by optimality theory. Case studies of children with phonological delays are examined. Error patterns are argued to be implicationally related and optimality theory is shown to offer a principled explanation.…

Consonant harmony, a complex phonological assimilation in which segments (usually consonants, but sometimes even vowels) become identical, which occurs in the speech of young children and adult aphasics, is analyzed, particularly as it occurs in Finnish-speakers. Consonant harmony has an articulatory basis: it is a trend toward repetition of the…

Most second language acquisition research has been concerned with grammar or phonology and has failed to discuss lexical acquisition. The main reason for this neglect has been the lack of vocabulary study by linguists. However, recent concern with semantic theory has brought new impetus to work on lexical acquisition. Useful research on lexical…