This longitudinal case study describes an anomalous error produced by a child with specific language impairment (SLI), MM, whose language development was documented from ages 3 through 7 years. Twelve spontaneous language samples were analyzed. Across nine language samples MM produced the phonetic sequence heard in the [there/their/they're homonym…

The acquisition of noun gender on articles was studied in a sample of 21 young German-speaking children. Longitudinal spontaneous speech data were used. Data analysis is based on 22 two-hourly speech samples per child from 6 children between 1 ; 4 and 3 ; 8 and on 5 two-hourly speech samples per child from 15 children between 1 ; 4 and 2 ; 10. The…

This is a quarterly report of a project involving the analysis of the language of four Puerto Rican children living in the Boston area who are learning Spanish as a first language. The children, all male, ranged in age from 17 months to 37 months during the period of study. All had some contact with English. The data were transcriptions of…

Describes a study which examined the phoneme acquisition process by monitoring children's progress toward the goal of being able to use a target behavior in multiple situations after treatment has been withdrawn. This was done to determine whether progress continues if treatment is withdrawn before the end goal is reached. (SED)

Reports on an experiment to check whether the use of articles by Italian preschool children corresponds to that of their English counterparts and on a second experiment to investigate the probability that subjects might produce the correct response distribution by following a rule based on the speaker's familiarity with the referent, not the…

Investigates the relationships between the occurrence of mazes (garbles, word tangles, or false starts), sentence complexity, and the use of connectives in 20 fifth-grade students. (HOD)

A study was undertaken to test the theory that canonical sentence schemas can sometimes assign argument structure to verbs. The theory has the advantage of explaining errors without postulating the acquisition of erroneous lexical entries that have to be learned, and it can be extended to other kinds of errors in the choice and placement of…

In a study of the application natural language processing to second-language instruction, two versions of the Nihongo-CALI (computer-assisted language instruction) system were developed. Empirical data support the possibility/effectiveness of intelligent CALI to facilitate second-language acquisition. (19 references) (LB)

Part one of this study discussed the characteristics of errors involving single fricative consonants made by English children learning their first language. Here, the second part discusses the distinctive features of the single fricatives most commonly mispronounced, as well as the characteristics of errors with clustered fricatives. (34…

Investigated the hierarchical organization of the semantic system in preschoolers with and without word-finding deficits. Children named a series of objects at multiple levels of the noun hierarchy in response to contrast questions. Children with word-finding deficits had similar abilities to the other children but did not have enough stored…

A study found 36 children (ages 3-5) with specific language impairment (SLI) produced more errors with third person singular pronouns than did age-level peers, but did not make more errors than peers matched for mean length of utterance. Error patterns were similar in children with SLI and their language-level peers. (Contains references.)…

Analyzed correct wh-question production and subject-auxiliary inversion errors in one child's wh-question data. Argues that two current movement rule accounts cannot explain patterning of early wh-questions. Data can be explained by the child's knowledge of particular lexically-specific wh-word+auxiliary combinations, and inversion and universion…

Many current generativist theorists suggest that young children possess the grammatical principles of inversion required for question formation but make errors because they find it difficult to learn language-specific rules about how inversion applies. The present study analyzed longitudinal spontaneous sampled data from twelve 2-3-year-old…

Although there is extensive documentation of the morphological limitations of children with specific language impairment (SLI), few studies have reported on complex syntax acquisition in children with SLI. This case study examined the development of complex syntax in a child with SLI between 3 and 7 years. Twelve conversational samples were…

A study investigated the effects of the prompting procedure and the fading procedure upon the acquisition of word recognition skills in beginning readers. The prompting procedure is designed to overdetermine correct reading responses during word acquisition, while the gradual fading of the prompts results in transfer of control from the prompt to…