Responds to 12 commentators who commented on an essay by the author about Adele Goldberg's recent book, "Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure," which develops the theory of construction grammar for a set of problems associated with verb-argument structure. (SM)

Examines a mixed pattern of subject omission in Hebrew. Longitudinal data is presented from three children whose first and only language is Hebrew. Findings show very early acquisition of the null subject system. (Author/VWL)

Summarizes claims made in three studies that adopt a morphological approach to nonnative speaker-native speaker divergence. Examines these claims in terms of the morphological and syntactic theories presupposed and points to a number of problems. (Author/VWL)

Examined children's ability to draw on functional information to predict the similarity of function across exemplars and to extend new words from an initial exemplar to one of two others. The cognitive difficulties associated with judgments concerning material function are discussed in relation to additional factors that could lead children under…

Compared the performance of participants with Williams Syndrome on two past tense elicitation tasks with that of four typically-developing control groups. Results were consistent with the hypothesis that the Williams Syndrome language system is delayed, because it developed under different constraints. (Author/VWL)

This study, involving 424 deaf secondary and postsecondary students, evaluated the interaction between vocabulary knowledge and syntax competence, finding a significantly greater correlation for students in the highest quartile of syntactic competence. It concludes that, unless deaf readers have achieved a reasonable level of syntactic competence,…

Reviews book on the current state of psychological semantics for researchers in language development. Notes points of agreement among contributors, including: study of semantics has been too oriented toward substance nouns; assigning novel words to real objects or events is more difficult using verbs than nouns; and syntax is more integrally…

Investigated adult English speakers' production of subject and object relative clause sentences using a picture/symbol-based augmentative and alternative communication (ACC) system with speech output. Most participants avoided the potential ambiguity that resulted from the absence of grammatical markers. Results indicate the combined effects of…

Presents the results of an empirical study of the interpretation of left branch "combien" (how many) extractions in English-French interlanguage. Results show that knowledge of the interpretation of left-branch "combien" extraction is detectable in English-French interlanguage. (Author/VWL)

Explores the syntactic structure, cognitive functions, pedagogical features, and communicative characteristics of questions asked by graduate students in an asynchronous learning environment. Results show students used fewer syntactic forms and asked more rhetorical questions than in face-to-face classrooms and exhibited higher levels of…

Investigated the development of syntactic awareness in Cantonese-speaking children. Fifty-six subjects from four age groups were asked to judge the grammaticality of 40 sentences and to correct the grammatically-deviant sentences. There was a significant age effect on subject's performance in both judgment and revision tasks. (Author/VWL)

Discusses first- and second-language word order acquisition. A version of the OV/VO parameter is developed that is not construction specific. It relates various empirical domains, including basic word order, scrambling, exceptional case marking, and the distribution of particles. (Author/JL)

Details findings indicating that most early linguistic competence is item based. Maintains that language development proceeds without evidence of system-wide syntactic categories, schemas, or parameters. Suggests that findings are not easily explained by the development of children's skills of linguistic performance, pragmatics, or other external…

Suggests that a narrow kind of bilingualism exists within every language and is present whenever two properties exist in a language that are not statable within a single grammar. This theoretical bilingualism is defined in terms of the minimalist theory of syntax presented by Chomsky (1995). (Author/VWL)

Seven peer commentaries are included in response to an article on the notion that a narrow kind of bilingualism exists within every language and is present whenever two properties exist in a language that are not statable within a single grammar. This theoretical bilingualism is defined in terms of the minimalist theory of syntax presented by…