A computer program for classifying elements of a language corpus for large-scale analysis is discussed. The approach is based on the assumption that there is a natural unit in speech processing and production, called a tone unit. The program "tags" the five grammatical phrase types (verb, adverb, adjective, noun, and prepositional) to…

Cloze procedure, a testing method which systematically deletes words in written prose and then measures the accuracy of the information is reviewed from a historical viewpoint. Redundancy is placed in a verbal context and can be noted on three separate levels of language: (1) surface syntactic structure; (2) deep syntactic structure; and (3)…

A collection of 14 papers in contrastive linguistics includes: "Some Comments on Language Data in Contrastive Analysis" (Ruta Nagucka); "Contrastive Sociolinguistics Reconsidered" (Karol Janicki); "Variations in Polish Nasal /e/: A Contribution to the Development of Contrastive Sociolinguistic Methodology" (Jane…

Taking the lexicogrammatical resources (i.e. the vocabulary and syntax) of English as a starting point, this report explores the demands those resources put on the design of the part of a text generation system that supports the process of lexicogrammatical expression. The first section of the report notes that a reason for using the lexicogrammar…

This paper explores the implications of presumed language universals and language particulars for second language teaching and learning. It is felt that an awareness of the universal features of language design builds confidence in the student who can concentrate on features which distinguish the target language from the native language. Examples…

In an attempt to answer some of the questions concerning the roles of syntactic vs. semantic cues and the similarities and/or differences between the first (L1) and second (L2) language reading strategies, a pilot study was conducted with 47 English-speaking students enrolled in French as a second language classes at a bilingual, English-French…

Preschoolers' ability to understand grammatical relations in passives and to generalize was studied using animate referents. Three- to five-year-old children were taught to produce passive sentence descriptions of events in which animacy of the actor and acted-on object were varied. After pretesting to determine passive sentence comprehension, the…

Two possible iconic models of the acquisition of verb agreement in American Sign Language (ASL) are developed and contrasted with a third, morphological account of the acquisition of this aspect of ASL. Additionally, data from spontaneous conversation of deaf children who have deaf parents are considered to test these three models. An iconic model…

To find an area of weakness in disabled readers that might profitably be strengthened, the level of language development of disabled secondary readers was compared with that of competent secondary readers. The group of disabled readers used in the study consisted of 20 high school students in a corrective reading class; the comparison group…

The chapters in this volume represent a type of current psycholinguistic research that focuses both on the nature of human information processing and the coding of linguistic structure. The chapters and authors are as follows: (1) "The Wherefores and Therefores of the Competence-Performance Distinction," by V. Valian; (2) "Levels of Processing and…

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…

A study investigated one aspect of the speech/reading comprehension relationship--that between the ability to select the correct standard English verbal endings (-s and -ed) and the ability to recognize the tense of a passage when time information was encoded primarily in the verbs and adverbs. Subjects were 135 third, sixth, and ninth grade…

This paper addresses itself to the way in which K'ekchi speakers identify the subject and the object in simple sentences. An attempt is made to determine: (1) whether K'ekchi has a basic word order, (2) the possible functions of any derived word order, and (3) whether there are any constraints on the logically possible word orders in K'ekchi. A…

These proceedings contain six conference papers with commentary and discussion: (1) Dell Hymes, "On Communicative Competence," (2) David McNeill, "How to Learn a First Language," (3) Wayne O'Neil, "A Theory of Linguistic Performance," (4) William Stewart, "Social Dialect," (5) Paul Cohen, "Some Methods in Sociolinguistic Research," and (6) S. Alan…

A study was conducted to compare the relative performance on yes-no questions of bilingual and monolingual children and to discuss the relationship of semantic development and linguistic development, both in the bilinguals and monolinguals. Eighteen English monolingual, eighteen Japanese monolingual, and eighteen Japanese-English bilingual…