This book reports the proceedings of the conference on the role of speech in language, the fifth conference in the "Communicating by Language" Series, sponsored by the Growth and Development Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The focus of the first group of papers is on the development of speech in man and…

This report examines the question of whether grammatical rules are globally learned and applied. It also attempts to determine the underlying word order in English as well as the developmental sequence of the acquisition of Aux. A sentence-repetition test using positive statements, positive questions, and negative questions was administered to 30…

Some aspects of a theory of grammar are presented which derive from a formal theory of language acquisition. One aspect of the theory is a universal constraint on analyzability known as the Freezing Principle, which supplants a variety of constraints proposed in the literature. A second aspect of the theory is the Invariance Principle, a…

Research on the role of semiosis--a process in which something functions as a sign to an organism--in information processes is described. The object of the study is the structure of various types of signs, and a determination of the relationship between sign structure and information properties. The two goals focused on during the period for which…

The language patterns of low socioeconomic Negro, Spanish-surname, and Anglo children are sufficiently different from the middle class language patterns used in schools to put these children at a distinct educational disadvantage. By comparing the speech patterns of these children, this study sought to determine whether their language development…

This book is a selected distillation of linguistic scholarship which describes from both a historical (diachronic) and a contemporary (synchronic) viewpoint that conglomerate set of dialects and idiolects called English. The emphasis is on contemporary American English. But foreign language examples are also given in an attempt to demonstrate the…

This study tested the effect upon comprehension of repatterning passages from a tenth grade social studies text by approximating the syntactic patterns found in a transformational analysis of the writing of the tenth grade subjects expected to read the text. The thirty-four subjects were asked to write 1,000 words of prose dealing with social…

Universal trends and individual variations in the language development process of the child are described and their relationships to beginning reading instruction are discussed. Child language begins with single word utterances to name things or to express needs and feelings. With a two-word utterance, the child can describe relationships more…

Human beings who have been forced to acquire language through non-auditory modalities characteristically display an impoverished syntactic system. I.M. Schlessinger (1970) has shown, for example, that users of sign language have difficulty in communicating syntactic relations such as "subject of main verb,""object of the verb," and "indirect…

Most second language texts not only do not emphasize negotiation of meaning, but are also structured to mislead learners in their attempt to express meaning (in the learners' native language). Examples from German, Spanish, and French are used to illustrate the need for second language learning to stand alone and independently from the native…

The use of a semiotic approach to foreign language literature appreciation and criticism at the college level is advocated as a means of analyzing texts. What is sought first of all is the meaning of the text with the semiotic-linguistic levels of organization that produce the meaning. (MSE)

The aim of this grammar is to analyze in some detail the mechanisms of the Aleut language as represented by older speakers and by earlier sources, and is intended for both students of Aleut and linguists in general. An introductory chapter gives background on the language's history, linguistic documentation, Aleut dialects, and outside influences.…

A checklist for teachers of English as a Second Language who are teaching the expression of comparisons is presented. It is intended to assist in the systematic classroom presentation of features of comparison, with adaptation for any proficiency level. Broadly, it addresses how both the units being compared and the points of comparison need to be…

This study, consisting of two experiments, investigated the role of verb information in resolving ambiguous noun phrases (NPs) in reading comprehension. Both experiments extended earlier studies. The first measured and compared reading time for sentences containing temporarily ambiguous subject complements and unambiguous complements, which were…

A study of intrasentential code-switching in 21 Finnish-English bilinguals focuses on the characteristics of two types of switches: those that are fluent and those that reflect repair phenomena. Data are drawn from naturally occurring conversations. Analysis highlights patterns in the use of Finnish case morphology in 550 instances of switched…