Examines the semantics of Persian modal auxiliaries, considering them in the light of comparable verbs in English. A discussion of dimension of modality in English is provided for clarification. (Author/VWL)

This study, with five adults diagnosed with Broca's aphasia with agrammatism, evaluated the acquisition and generalization of complex-sentence production using Linguistic Specific Treatment (LST) and the utility of syntactic theory in evaluating treatment effects. The study's findings support the use of LST, which applies syntactic theory to…

Comments on several quantitative approaches to semantic knowledge representations (the focus of this special issue). Points out some of the ways in which Latent Semantic Analysis and Hyperspace Analog to Language fall short of being plausible theories about psychological reality. Examines in-principle failures and wrong-kind failures that arise in…

Assessed a large sample of twins between the ages of 7 and 13 years on language comprehension tests sensitive to grammatical specific language impairment (G-SLI), including 37 same-sex twin pairs selected for presence of language impairment and 104 pairs from the general population. Qualitative markers of G-SLI were derived from the tests.…

Suggests that children follow different paths into learning verbs, and that there are several forces guiding the learning process: cognitive as well as language specific matters, such as morphology, semantics, and discourse. Sketches the basic characteristics of verbs in Tzotzil and examines two children's productions at the end of their…

Explores whether the functional element effect (Muysken, 1997), often observed in production, is replicated in on-line comprehension results. Compared results of published frequency counts involving Spanish-English code switches with comprehension-timed experimental results. (Author/VWL)

Reviews what is known about fillers, proposes a reasonably unified set of criteria for identifying them, and suggests an approach that will promote their further study. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on two approaches to research in second language acquisition: (1) various types of acceptability judgments or probes aimed at assessing acquisition of syntactic structure; and (2) various types of stimulated recall designed to gather learners' accounts of their own thought processes. (Author/VWL)

In some psycholinguistic models, processing is characterized by generation of multiple outputs using information from higher processing levels. Such models are considered autonomous in word recognition domain but interactive in sentence processing domain. This confusion arises not from differences between lexical and syntactic processing, but from…

Five experiments support the argument that symmetry predication a is property of lexical items and has no special syntax; structural positioning of noun phrases in symmetricals-containing sentences sets their status as figure and ground or variant and referent, even for nonsensical nouns; and symmetrical predicate behavior varies as a function of…

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures were used to study the potential effects of individual differences in verbal working memory capacity on the processing of sentences with a local syntactic ambiguity in German. Results indicate that syntactic processes in language comprehension are related to individual differences in…

Some research has posited a natural order of acquisition of English grammatical morphemes common to all learners of English as a Second Language. This meta-analysis investigated whether a combination of five determinants--perceptual salience, semantic complexity, morphophonological regularity, syntactic category, and frequency) accounts for a…

Argues that Tomasello's (2000) interpretation of young children's conservatism in language production depends on questionable premises. Reviews evidence against the assumptions, showing that children learn item-specific facts about verbs and other lexical items. Asserts that researchers must explore the interactions of lexical and more abstract…

Describes a study that investigated the use of natural language questions on Web search engines. Highlights include query languages; differences in search engine syntax; and results of logistic regression and analysis of variance that showed aspects of questions that predicted significantly different performances, including the number of words,…

This study examined the association of chronological age (CA) with syntax and vocabulary comprehension in 102 children and adolescents with mental retardation. Results indicated that intelligence scores accounted for 55% and 29% of the variability of syntax and vocabulary scores, respectively. Introduction of CA into the regression equation…