This book is an accessible introduction to learnability theory and its interactions with linguistic theories. Working within the principles and parameters framework, the book surveys general concepts from formal learning theory and complexity theory, together with important findings from developmental psycholinguistics, historical linguistics, and…

To test D. Stampe's hypothesis about the development of phonological processes, 60 children (21 to 48 months old) were placed into groups based on mean length of utterance (MLU) and chronological age. MLU was found to be the best classification for describing the phonological processes. (Author/SEW)

Young children found it difficult to verify negative statements, but found affirmative statements, affirmative questions, and negative questions equally easy to deal with. It is proposed that children acquire the answering system earlier than the verification system, and use answering to verify statements before acquiring the verification system.…

Pronoun mastery demands a knowledge of speech roles and an ability to identify oneself and others in those roles. Twenty-one girls' knowledge of "my,""your," and "her" was assessed when they were speakers, addressees, and nonaddressed listeners. The children were aware of speech roles only when they themselves occupied these roles. (PJM)

Examined capacity of 4-month olds to identify their maternal language (Catalan or Spanish) when phonologically similar languages are contrasted. Compared infants from monolingual and bilingual environments to analyze whether differences in linguistic background affect this behavioral response. Found that language discrimination is already possible…

Offers resolutions to the paradox of infants' ability to abstract patterns over specific items and toddlers' lack of ability to generalize patterns over specific English words/constructions. Argues that contradictions are rooted in differing methodologies and stimuli content. Suggests that the patterns infants extract from linguistic input are not…

Examined 2-year-olds' comprehension and production of novel nouns, verbs, or actions at 3 intervals after training conducted in massed or distributed exposures. Found that for comprehension, children learned all item types in all training conditions at all retention intervals. Production was better for nonverbal actions than for either word type…

A proverb explanation task consisting of 24 low-familiarity expressions was administered to 353 individuals (ages 13-79) to examine how patterns of language growth in adults compared to those observed in adolescents. Results indicate performance improved markedly during adolescence and into early adulthood, and then began to decline during the…

Describes an alternate lexico-semantic view of native language acquisition and adult second language learning that proposes that humans acquire and learn words, names, titles, expressions, sayings, and formulas as undifferentiated lexical items first and then develop systems to store and retrieve the lexemes and combine them into phrases and…

An analysis of gender attribution in native and second-language French acquisition shows how learners can develop explicit models of acquisition and explores the nature of the cognitive processes involved in encoding representations of acquired language. (105 references) (Author/CB)

Provides 79 annotations of books and articles on research in writing; language; literature; and teacher education. (RAE)

Examines the implications of connectionist models of cognition for second-language theory, in which all knowledge is embodied in a network of simple processing units joined by connections that are strengthened or weakened in response to regularities in input patterns. A connectionist framework is proposed within which hypotheses about…

Discusses the minimal requirements that any serious theory of language acquisition must meet, including the particular properties of the human language processor and linguistic and nonlinguistic input. A review of literature regarding the role of Universal Grammar in second-language acquisition suggests alternative theories to investigate for…

Examines language as a multimodal sensory enhancement system, integrating recent neuroanatomical and neurophysiological findings on the ontogenesis of neuronal structures with the generative concept of Universal Grammar for determination of fundamental differences between primary and secondary language acquisition. (Author/CB)

Examination of a profoundly deaf child's fingerspelling in more than 100 hours of interaction videotaped at intervals over six years revealed a gradual acquisition of the rules for fingerspelling and knowledge of the relation of fingerspelling to signs and to printed and spoken words. (Author/CB)