Reviews research dealing with language acquisition to show that there are developmental trends in the acquisition of syntax. (FL)

Examines research studies that provide a useful basis for assessing what teachers may realistically expect from sentence combining. Divides those expectations into two categories: those relating to increased syntactic fluency and those relating to the improvement of writing quality. (HTH)

A procedure called "contrast training" is described as a method to overcome the generalization problem by contrasting sentences so that young language handicapped learners can learn to recognize which parts of a sentence occur regardless of the presence or absence of the target form. (Author/SW)

Investigates the syntactical level of spontaneous and echolalic utterances of 26 autistic boys at different stages of phrase speech development. Speech samples were collected over a 90-minute period in unstructured settings in participants' homes. Imitations were not deliberately elicited, and only unprompted, noncommunicative echoes were…

Presents five principles for restructuring classroom activities to obtain a maximum amount of oral language. Claims that by expanding children's oral language, their semantic and syntactic cuing systems to print will also be strengthened. (FL)

Study examines possibility that certain story constituents are better recalled than others, suggesting a universal, underlying representation for a story by controlling for semantic content of settings, initiating events, internal responses, consequences, and reactions across versions of same story. Results show subjects transformed syntactic form…

Proposes that rather than "water down" children's reading materials, educators should help students deal with the complexities of connected discourse so that they can learn to appreciate the richness of the language. Offers a number of teaching ideas for achieving this goal. (FL)

Contains five articles titled: "How to Fill an Application,""How to Utilize Outdated Documents,""Old and New (1 & 2)," and "Discovering the Future." (MES)

Reviews the methodological issues raised by previous research into the language used by thought-disordered and nondisordered schizophrenics. (FL)

A comprehension task employing English animate third person pronouns was run on 100 children from three to seven years of age. Results show that comphrehension of forms beyond chance level first appears at age five, with continuing improvement through ages six and seven. Mastery of gender distinction preceded number and case. (Author/PJM)

Analysis of the communicative skills of a nine-year-old deaf boy with minimal schooling showed pantomiming and gestures to be his major mode of communication. Certain semantic patterns prevailed. Use of left or right hand also had semantic correlates. Formal and idiosynacratic signs were discovered in the boy's vocabulary. (Author/PJM)

Reports on one of a series of sociolinguistic studies of the speech of children of foreign workers in Berlin, "Gastarbeiterdeutsch," addressing the question of potential creolization. The paper has three sections: (1) a social and linguistic background of "Gastarbeiterdeutsch"; (2) the study methodology; and (3) results of the…

Two hypotheses were tested about how young children (four-to seven-year-olds) answer questions with the quantifiers "all" and "some": (1) that children use syntactic cues in determining which noun phrase is quantified, and (2) that children evaluate a some-statement as part of evaluating an all-statement. (Author/MP)

The article describes the Diagnostic Evaluation of Writing Skills (DEWS), a diagnostic teaching tool containing criteria of assessment to determine a student's deficiencies in reading and writing. (DLS)

Analyses the syntactical, semantic, and stylistic characteristics of English passive constructions and stresses the frequency of their occurrence in scientific and technical English. Recommends that for adequate mastery of this special purpose dialect, teachers make students consciously aware of these grammatical structures and of their usage.…