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…

THIS REPORT GIVES AN OVERVIEW OF THE ENTIRE ACLS (AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES) PROGRAM OFFICIALLY KNOWN AS "RESEARCH AND STUDIES IN URALIC AND ALTAIC LANGUAGES" WHICH WAS ORGANIZED AND IMPLEMENTED BETWEEN 1959 AND L965 BY OVER 70 SCHOLARS REPRESENTING 42 INSTITUTIONS. THE PROGRAM WAS PLANNED ON TWO DIMENSIONS--(1) LANGUAGES TO BE…

DURING THE FALL QUARTER OF 1965 AT KALAMAZOO COLLEGE, IN MICHIGAN, A FACULTY MEMBER AND A SENIOR STUDENT JOINTLY SHARED THE TEACHING OF TWO BEGINNING GERMAN COURSES WITH, IN EACH COURSE, SOPHOMORES AND SOME FRESHMEN FROM ALL ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS. THE STUDENT TEACHER, IN ADDITION TO HIGH SCHOOL AND UNDERGRADUATE STUDY, HAD SPENT A YEAR-AND-A-HALF…

TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECTS OF THE LANGUAGE LABORATORY ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING, THE BUREAU OF AUDIO-VISUAL INSTRUCTION OF NEW YORK CITY CONDUCTED EXPERIMENTS IN 1ST-, 2D-, AND 3D-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL CLASSES. THE FIRST EXPERIMENT, WHICH COMPARED CONVENTIONALLY TAUGHT CLASSES WITH GROUPS HAVING SOME LABORATORY TEACHING, SHOWED THAT GROUPS WITH…

THE FIFTH IN A SERIES OF LANGUAGE RESEARCH IN PROGRESS REPORTS, THIS ISSUE CONTAINS INFORMATION ABOUT ON-GOING DOCUMENTED LANGUAGE RESEARCH IN THE U.S. AND ABROAD BETWEEN JANUARY AND AUGUST, 1967. PROJECTS ARE CLASSIFIED IN THREE PARTS--(1) MAIN AND SUB-CATEGORIES OF SUBJECTS OF LANGUAGE RESEARCH, (2) AN ALPHABETICAL LISTING OF ALL RESEARCH…

THE WAYS LANGUAGE IS USED BY CHILDREN IN VARIOUS SUBCULTURE GROUPS WERE INVESTIGATED, AND AN EVALUATION WAS MADE OF WHETHER OR NOT THE LANGUAGE OF ANY GROUP CAN BE CONSIDERED DEFICIENT BY USE OF SOME CRITERIA. THE AUTHOR EVALUATED RESEARCH IN LINGUISTICS, DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, AND ANTHROPOLOGY DONE WITH CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT SOCIAL…

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PROGRAMED LEARNING IN AN AUDIOLINGUAL FRENCH COURSE WAS INVESTIGATED. THE EXPERIMENT INTENDED TO DETERMINE WHETHER A SELF-INSTRUCTIONAL COURSE WAS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN A COURSE TAUGHT UNDER TRADITIONAL CLASSROOM CONDITIONS, WHETHER THE PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS DROPPING OUT COULD BE REDUCED SIGNIFICANTLY, AND WHETHER STUDENT…

The use of gestures by four infants was recorded as they interacted with their mothers. Waving, extending objects, and headshaking generally achieved a threshold of at least 10 instances within one month of acquisition. Both waving and headshaking were often first used in imitative and game routines with the mother before they became…

This is a quarterly report of a project involving the analysis of the language of four Puerto Rican children living in the Boston area who are learning Spanish as a first language. The children, all male, ranged in age from 17 months to 37 months during the period of study. All had some contact with English. The data were transcriptions of…

Techniques of teaching the English finite verb to speakers of other languages must account for meaning that is signalled by the structure alone and meaning derived from the context. Accordingly, this study attempts to distinguish the semantic components of the finite verb structure. The structure is viewed as being always composed of the following…

Major findings are reported of a longitudinal, naturalistic study of grammatical morpheme development in an aphasic child from 5;5 to 6;1. The majority of the morphemes were not acquired in the same order nor at the same mean length of utterance (MLU) levels reported for normal children. As an alternative to the normal acquisition model, based on…