Through analyses of text corpora, sentence completion, and self-paced reading, examined role of structurally defined parsing principles, local information (lexically specific biases), and contextual information (referential pragmatics) in resolving syntactic ambiguities. Subjects were 32 undergraduate native English speakers. Found that local and…

Discusses the language of criminal justice ("rehabilitation" and "incapacitation") and public policy. Uses statistics from the United States Bureau of Justice to show that United States society deals with convicted felons with an approach that does not put much emphasis on either rehabilitation or incapacitation. (SR)

Presents a critical review of the published accounts of the "Genie Case," involving psycholinguistic research conducted by Susan Curtiss and others in the 1970s with an adolescent with extremely limited language ability. The review maintains that serious discrepancies still remain in the accounts of the subject's language abilities. (21…

This case study examined the development of language skills in a bonobo and a chimpanzee raised by human caregivers since infancy, focusing on the primates' ability to comprehend simple speech, understand referential symbol use, and engage in intentionally communicative routines. It is argued that comparative results from these primates can…

This article responds to MacIntyre's (1995) critique of the Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis (LCDH), which posits that language aptitude is the primary source of individual differences in foreign language (FL) achievement. It defends the LCDH and suggests that difficulties exist with theories that attribute affective and social context…

This article responds to Sparks and Ganschow's (1995) defense of their Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis (LCDH), arguing that the LCDH ignores the context in which language learning occurs. It asserts that LCDH is so focused on the learning of the sound system of language that it ignores affective variables. (22 references) (MDM)

This article examines the acquisition of wh-questions and relative clauses in Sesotho, a language with no wh-movement in either questions or relatives, and in which wh-questions must be clefted. (10 references) (JL)

Evidence is presented from an experimental study with 21 children ages 4 to 5 years suggesting the coincident emergence of certain Determiner Phrases (DPs) as barriers to wh-movement and as separate binding domains. It is argued that the default assumption for children's grammar may be to assume NP is the maximal projection for a structure until a…

Addresses native monolingual U.S. and Chinese incipiently bilingual children's ability to detect and identify inter- and intraword boundaries. Young children demonstrate similar patterns in their segmentation behavior and there is a developmental progression in this behavior. Mandarin Chinese subjects learning to read Chinese and English…

Varying definitions of formulas, or apparently nonproductive utterances in children's speech, are compared, and criteria for formula recognition are reviewed. A preference rule system is proposed, which distinguishes conditions for formula recognition. Formulas found in the data of one child acquiring Irish are examined. (29 references) (KM)

This study shows that the noun bias in early vocabularies rests only in part on the acquisition of object names. An analysis of vocabulary composition from 45 children at I;8 indicates that more nouns are acquired than all other word classes but that only about half of the nouns acquired are the names of basic level object classes (BLOCs). (KM)

This article notes seven key problems in language learning strategy concepts and classification systems as they relate to empirical research in the area of second- and foreign language development and suggests ways to resolve these problems and thereby increase unity, coherence, and meaningfulness of language learning strategy research. (99…

Incompleteness of competence--lack of command of certain second-language (L2) aspects--and divergence--interlanguage representations of L2 properties different from native representations--are distinct states of grammatical competence, as seen in French and English speakers of Italian (L2). Discussion argues that competence differences reflect…

This study explores the role that gesture plays in the earliest stages of language learning. A description is provided of how one-word speakers use gesture in combination in combination with speech in their spontaneous communications and interpret gesture presented in combination with speech in an experimental situation. (JL)

The applicability of transferability principles to language contact in the British Isles, especially Ireland, is shown with a detailed discussion of absolute constructions, structures with interesting relations between syntax and discourse, and with susceptibility to cross-linguistic influence. Evidence for transferability of absolutes in…