Teaching composition as involving merely syntax and paragraph structure has no clear relation to an education in the liberal arts or to significant growth in understanding. Work in mechanics needs to be subordinated to the communicative and logological (how words act rather than their content) functions of language. One hopeful approach to…

Syntactic synonymy enables the speaker to use syntactic devices to say the same thing in a number of different ways. It is based on three criteria: (1) similarity of semantic content, (2) certain syntactic similarity between the components of the synonymous structures, and (3) differences in surface structures. The third criterion separates…

The acquisition of expressive sign language was studied in four autistic children (ages 10-15 years). Ss were taught expressive sign labels for common objects using a training procedure consisting of prompting, fading, and stimulus totation. The signing of three of the Ss was found to be controlled solely by the visual cues associated with the…

Examines the form that poetic function assumes in American Sign Language, a language that has a structural organization different from oral languages and where the possibilities for poetic organization are radically different. Examples of a complex type of composition called art-sign distinguished by three levels of structure are analyzed.…

The author looks at some trends that mark our worship. He states that liturgical models are beginning to develop: models of hospitality, the faith of the community, the challenge of the gospel, or the otherness of God. (Author/KC)

The writing style of many college students is deplorably florid; in the hope of sounding "educated" they use long words where short ones will do just as well. (JD)

The article discusses several linguistic and nonlinguistic teaching strategies to foster language acquisition and increase spontaneous language in preschool children with language delays. Techniques include having the child complete unfinished sentences and intentionally violating an expected routine to elicit the child's language. (DB)

Matrix training strategies were used to teach three severely mentally retarded children syntactic rules for combining known words into two- and three-word utterances. Training only a limited number of responses was sufficient to promote recombinative generalization in the trained modality and transfer to untrained responses in the opposite…

Using two modes of production, writing and dictation, the study compared the story production, coherence, and fluency of learning-disabled (LD) children (N=47) with that of normal-achieving and low-achieving subjects across three grade levels. Among results were that mode of production had no effect upon story production or fluency for any…

An approach to treating mild to moderately severe cases of the speech disturbance, apraxia, focuses on helping the patient establish a conscious knowledge of how an accurate response is produced through a five-phase training program. (DB)

The concurrent and predictive relations of sensorimotor behavior and play to language in the second year were assessed among 19 preterm and 20 full-term infants tested at 13 1/2 and 22 months of age. Numerous associations between play and language were identified; sensorimotor behavior and language in the same age period were relatively loosely…

The nature of word-finding deficits among children with learning disabilities is analyzed; research on the relationship between word-finding ability and reading is reviewed; and classroom implications regarding teacher language, student verbal fluency and flexibility, and student social perception are noted. (CL)

Eighteen language disabled kindergarteners participated in a five-month intervention program emphasizing the development of expressive grammar. Ss made significant gains in expressive syntax, receptive morphology, expressive language, and one aspect of receptive language. Control Ss only made significant gains in one aspect of receptive language.…