Investigates the role of accent in attributing guilt to persons accused of a crime. A 3x3 repeated-measures design required three groups to rate three accents (Received British Pronunciation, Broad Australian, Asian) on their probability of having committed a particular crime (embezzlement, damage to property, violence against a person). Results…

Three lexical decision experiments tested the claim that lexical access is based on a word's basic orthographic syllabic structure (BOSS). No evidence was found that BOSS is a word's unique lexical access entry, and one experiment suggested that morphemic units are more likely to be access codes than purely orthographic units. (MSE)

A discussion of whether there has been any progress in the discipline of historical linguistics focuses on the theories and recent publications of David Lightfoot and Roger Lass. The author's approaches to language change and language study are examined and compared. (MSE)

Reports the results of interviews with 20 high school students and four teachers that seem to indicate they have two responses to growing up in a society dominated by a standardized language: the significance of using standard English is either a matter of intelligibility or a matter of social suitability. (AEA)

Discusses linguistic competence and performance and how analyzing second language learners' errors can provide clues about their interlanguage, which is useful not only for pedagogical reasons, but also for the forwarding of general linguistic theory. (EKN)

It is argued that if theoretical goals are formulated to account for language learnability, a different markedness construct than the linguistic and psycholinguistic constructs usually applied is necessary--the projection model. The theoretical considerations for such a model are delineated, and the model is tested. (MSE)

Reviews some problems which have risen from the neglect of actual language behavior data in favor of data comprised solely of intuitions as to sentences' grammaticality. Discusses a study of syntactic variation across sex in Japanese as an example of research using socially situated real speech. (EKN)

Case studies of a few naturally bilingual children are reported in the context of a larger research project with bilingual children living in Rome. Studies focused on personality traits present from birth and concomitant with bilingual development. Data confirm full psychological normality on the part of bilingual children. (Author/AMH)

Examines children's errors in interpreting 'ask' as 'tell' in the framework of pragmatic development. Results indicate that if the children do not know the information, they relay the question, i.e., 'ask.' If they do know the answer, they supply it, i.e., 'tell.' (EKN)

Argues that sentences in the "have a V" frame are not idiosyncratic, but exhibit orderly and systematic behavior and are governed by strict semantic rules. Discusses 10 subtypes, each with a slightly different semantic formula. (EKN)

Emphasizes the importance of teacher investigations of language in the classroom by reviewing the work of practicing teachers working in a graduate course. (RL)

Examines the language processing and acquisition abilities of the right hemisphere. Discusses functions performed by the right hemisphere that could play an important role in second language acquisition. (EKN)

Cautions against direct application of neurolinguistic research to second language learning and teaching and discusses why brain research will not provide a quick answer to teaching problems. (EKN)

Research results show that it may be possible, within limitations, to facilitate discrimination by infants of inappropriate from appropriate verbal descriptions of a visual event, by emphasizing the agent component in a simple sentence. (Author/JB)

Young children were found to overextend and underextend newly uttered but previously understood words. The data are discussed in terms of differences between children's and adult's word meanings and between comprehension and production. (Author)