Examines language frontier and transitional zones along the Belgium-northwestern France linguistic border as area occupying important position in linguistic contact research. Gives examples of variant forms in the morphosyntactic, semantic, stylistic, and lexical forms. (Author/BK)

The value of teaching children to look objectively at language as they make the transition from reality-bound sentences to linguistically correct sentences is examined. (HTH)

Describes a study which examined learning disabled children's understanding of conversational rules for initiating repair of a communication breakdown. Results show learning disabled children were less likely to request clarification of inadequate messages and made fewer correct referent choices than normal children, but analyses suggest this…

Analyzes the uses of "quien" as an interrogative and a relative pronoun with numerous examples from standard spoken Spanish. Emphasizes syntactic and contextual factors, as well as stylistic variations, and explains the contrast between "quien" and "que" as subjects of a relative clause. (MES)

The authors review research on attempts to promote speech acquisition in severely handicapped students. Studies on verbal imitation, syntactic forms, and semantics are summarized. Implications for instruction are noted, including careful selection of responses likely to occur in the child's normal environment and which have intrinsic reinforcing…

Presents an analysis of the similarities and differences between the temporal conjunctions "when" and "while." (AM)

Two experiments offer clear support for an interactive view of sentence comprehension; semantic factors do interact with syntactic factors. (RL)

Discusses how patterned reading materials may be used in initial reading to help students use their semantic and syntactic knowledge to predict meaning. (DD)

Reports results of an acquisition experiment with a group of Spanish-speaking children regarding their knowledge of a semantic restriction that prevents a referring expression from coreferring with a pronoun in certain syntactic configurations if its referent lacks consciousness. Sixteen children participated in a modified Truth-Value Judgment…

Reviews the research that led to the development of a hierarchic scheme of terms with vocabulary control features, called Classaurus, and describes a project aimed at writing software that could be used for the automatic generation of an online alphabetic Classaurus. The problems encountered are discussed and suggestions for further research are…

Presents a study of young children's understanding that pronouns and proper names cannot be modified by pronominal adjectives. Some nonsyntactic theories are discussed that support the claim that children understand knowledge of word order through the rules that order abstract linguistic categories. (31 references) (GLR)

Six autistic children and seven children with relatively specific language impairment were asked to act out a series of sentences. Both groups made little use of a semantically based probable event strategy but were more likely to use a syntactically based word order strategy, similar to normals matched for receptive language age. (Author/DB)

Suggests that visual signs help to define form and structure and are significant in their semantic function. Discusses a series of typographic studies that examine the relationship of designer, text and interpreter in the dialectical process of communication in which meaning is rendered and made explicit. (RS)

A model is described for the analysis of information management and cohesion in written discourse. Concepts of discourse analysis are defined, specifically information management, syntax, semantic reference, lexicon, cohesion, and intonation, with examples taken from scholarly publications in psychology, biology, and history. (48 references) (VWL)

Classifies explicit verbal comparisons in 53 popular children's books both syntactically and semantically. Comparison types found in these books were contrasted with comparisons used as comprehension stimuli in extant developmental research. Implications for the design of future stimulus sets are discussed. (17 references) (GLR)