Since general principles of first language acquisition and environmental input have been clarified by research of the last decade, more differentiated questions are explored in the present study. The main goal is the investigation of similarities and differences in the language teaching and learning processes involved in the verbal interactions…

Speakers of languages without a surface case system tend, when learning German, to place predicate nominals erroneously in the accusative case when the verb is passive or the sentence governs a passive rather than an active situation. Three hypotheses are offered to explain this phenomenon: (1) the learner carries over the deep structure relations…

The present paper describes results of a study that investigated 209 bilingual Puerto Rican college students' ability to solve verbal deductive reasoning problems administered in Spanish and English in relation to their reading comprehension skills in either language. A series of confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the data on reasoning and…

The interaction of two elementary-age American children with their bilingual mother and French-speaking peers was monitored to determine learning strategies in a natural French immersion situation. Seven strategies were discovered, each of which provided the necessary ingredients of processible input, practice, and feedback to the language…

The essays in this volume are divided into four sections: (1) "Ethnic Diversity and National Language," (2) "Bilingualism: Its Causes and Consequences," (3) "Models and Methods," and (4) "Language Spread: A New Direction," The first part deals with the social conditions that influence acquisition of a second…

A research and development effort undertaken to test the hypothesis that concept-learning techniques should be used to teach sophisticated vocabulary concepts is described in this report. The first section provides background information. Specifically, it reviews the need for and the current state of vocabulary development instruction; delineates…

The effects of sentence imitation and picture verification on the recall of subsequent digits were studied. Stimuli consisted of 20 sentences, each sentence followed by a string of five digit names, and five structural types of sentences were presented. Subjects were instructed to listen to the sentence and digit string and then either immediately…

A study of the utterances of young children, aged 7 to 22 months, is described. These utterances, varying in length from one to 17 syllables, contain only suprasegmental information because the verbal content was incomprehensible to hearers who were not acquainted with the child and the situation in which the utterances occured. In the corpus,…

The first five issues of the "SLANT" Newsletter for researchers in second language acquisition are included. Highlights include: (1) a bibliography on theories of second language learning by Larry Selinker, (2) descriptions of research in progress in England, and (3) the syllabus for the diploma in applied lingusitics at the University…

A polemic is made for frame semantics and the linguistic phenomenon of anaphoric reference without noun phrase (NP) antecedent is examined within this frame. Non-syntactic anaphora is that which does not point out into the real world but rather points back into the discourse in a frame which has been built up between the speaker and hearer in a…

Criteria for defining individual members of the preposition word class are set forth. Arguments are presented against calling prepositions meaningless, yet it is conceded and explained that those which occur in wider contexts are vaguer due to their greater variability. The unitary, polysemous, and/or homonymous nature of prepositions are…

In a study extending and refining Carol Chomsky's research, 48 Arabic speaking children aged six, eight, and ten were tested for their comprehension of imperatives using the complement-requiring verbs Ask, Tell, and Promise. Clear support for children's overgeneralization of the minimal distance principle was found only with Promise constructions.…

The following articles on syntax and semantics were researched at the Harvard Syntax Workshop: (1) "Clause Reduction in Spanish," by Judith Aissen and David Perlmutter; (2) "Reduced WH-Questions," by Robin Bechhofer; (3) "Reduction in Conjoined WH-Questions," by Robin Bechhofer; (4) "On Subject-to-Object Raising…

The English and Spanish utterances of 19 bilingual preschool children were monitored as they conversed with experimenters. Characteristics of the children's language are reported for a bilingual prestage (exhibited by the youngest subject) and for four developmental stages in English and Spanish. These stages are characterized by approximately…

VERY LITTLE IMPORTANT RESEARCH HAS BEEN DONE IN THE FIELD OF LANGUAGE ARTS, AND THE RESEARCH INTEREST IN THAT FIELD ENDS WITH THE PUBLICATION OF RESEARCH REPORTS WHICH OFFER PRONOUNCEMENTS RATHER THAN RESEARCH EVIDENCE. THE PURPOSES OF RESEARCH OR HOW ITS FINDINGS COULD BE USED HAVE NOT BEEN CLARIFIED. THERE IS ALSO BLIND ACCEPTANCE OF WHAT…