Discusses some syntactic evidence gathered in a recent study which suggests not only that the dialect of Puerto Rican Spanish spoken in the New York area may be undergoing greater change than has previously been documented, but also that English interference cannot adequately account for the nature of that change. (EKN)

Examines within an experimental paradigm phonological selection and avoidance patterns of infants and discusses the role of these patterns in early lexical acquisition. (EKN)

Confirmed the hypothesis that a relationship exists between the reading of stories and the spontaneous production of passive verb constructions by children. Concluded that learning strategies which incorporate use of story reading at home and at school provide a powerful tool in shaping language behaviors of children. (PD)

Examines and compares two measures of adult second language learner performance: cued production and elicited imitation. Discusses the utility of each in terms of the contrasting results of the tasks on a carefully delineated area of grammar, namely the related structure of third person simple present and present progressive in WH-questions. (EKN)

Examines the syntactic aspects of affixation and compounding, processes accounting for the great majority of new word formations documented in "6,000 Words" (1976). (AM)

The partitive genitive and other types of genitive are examined to show that despite Latin's rigid, well-defined case system, irregularities in the functioning of the system occur. This allows the system to maximize structural characteristics to offset potential ambiguities. (PMJ)

Discusses the relationship in language and specifically in French between the standard language norm, the various registers and styles available to native speakers of a given language, and second language learning. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This article is concerned with the pragmatic aspects of linguistics research, i.e., the characteristics of language use such as the psychological motivations of speakers, the reactions of the hearers, and discourse analysis, insofar as they relate to second language learning. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Inferences about linguistic competence in children are typically based on spontaneous speech. Children's use of complex object and adverbial noun phrase is seen as a reflection of pragmatic factors. Similar adult patterns indicate children's lack of subject clauses may be due to the nature of spontaneous speech. (CHK)

A study tested models concerning syntactic categories in early multiword speech by investigating overlap in contexts in which children (n=11) used determiner types. Results indicate children have little knowledge of relationships between different determiner types, suggesting development of an adultlike syntactic determiner category may be…

Preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLIs) and two groups of linguistically normally developing children described motion and change-of-state scenes while viewing a video, and patterns of verb use were analyzed. Although SLIs relied heavily on general all-purpose verbs, normally developing children used them more. SLIs made more verb…

Describes the transition from single to multiple word utterances in one child. The development illustrates the initial dissociation and later coordination of the temporal chaining of elements and meaning relatedness between elements and also the importance of repetition for the change from single-word utterances to meaning-related, multiword…

Explains the differences between constituency and dependency theories for structural linguistics. Reasons are provided for why the former has been indirectly responsible for the neglect of lexical acquisition in language acquisition research and for proposing a notation based on dependency theory for describing learners' segmentation of initially…

Examination of the use of short "tongue-twister" phrases in eliciting spontaneous slips of the tongue in five year olds indicated that the technique was a feasible and beneficial method for collecting spoonerism data from children. (24 references) (CB)