Problems encountered by Russian language students caused by noncorrespondence of meaning are described. It is argued that many of the difficulties which students encounter in learning vocabulary result from semantic shifts within Russian. (RM)

A non-English portion of the universal initial-cluster hierarchy is cognitively represented in English-speaking monolingual children and adolescents. Subjects in an experiment were asked to select frequency of non-English consonant clusters, and they were able to reconstruct the phonological hierarchy. (CK)

The effect of presuppositions on the applicability of grammatical rules is discussed. It is argued that the speaker's presupposition may cause a grammatical rule to become optional. (RM)

AN APOPHONE MAY BE DEFINED GENERALLY AS A POLYSYLLABIC VOWEL SEQUENCE SUCH THAT EACH CONTAINED VOWEL IS LOWER OR MORE RETRACTED THAN THE VOWEL WHICH PRECEDES IT --"SING, SANG, SUNG," AND "CLINK, CLANK, CLUNK" ARE EXAMPLES IN ENGLISH. FOR NEARLY EVERY CASE OF GRAMMATICAL APOPHONY IN ENGLISH THERE IS A NON-GRAMMATICAL (YET…

A child acquiring a language must learn to correctly match the phenomena of the realworld which he perceives with the lexical items and the segregates and perhaps some of the grammatical categories of the language to be learned. He must correlatively learn the organization in meaning of and among these last named elements, that is, the internal…

Describes a study that examined phonological features of a group of 10 Urdu speaking children (20 to 30 months) to determine if a general theory of language learning can be deduced on the basis of Jakobson's theory of language universals. Addresses the question of how far such a theory is applicable to Urdu speaking children acquiring their native…

Discusses the notion of explanatory adequacy with reference to a theory of generative phonology. An approach is suggested which defines the notion of possible processes based on natural language rules, rather than one which defines the notion of possible rules based on universal processes. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

Three experiments using 3- and 4-year-olds as subjects tested the hypothesis that focal colors are more salient than nonfocal colors for young children and are the areas to which color names initially become attached. (NH)

Examines language frontier and transitional zones along the Belgium-northwestern France linguistic border as area occupying important position in linguistic contact research. Gives examples of variant forms in the morphosyntactic, semantic, stylistic, and lexical forms. (Author/BK)

A model of language transfer is proposed. It examines the nature of language transfer, identifies which language phenomena are transferred, and predicts conditions for language transfer occurrence. The model includes notions of language universals, language distance, and surface language phenomena. (PMJ)

Bliss Symbols form a language system of 100 basic symbols based not on the sound of words but on their meaning. Physically handicapped persons of a wide age and intellectual range are benefiting from the system. (Author/MLF)

Considers how reading has universal properties that can be seen across the world's writing systems. Discusses the most important universal language constraint: All writing systems represent spoken languages, a universal with consequences for reading processes. Draws on observations and research from Chinese and Korean to examine these universal…

Discusses whether the hypothesis, within Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, that the conditional and counterfactual constructions are semantic universals is justifiable in the case of Japanese. It is concluded that there is an unambiguous equivalent of the "if"-construction in Japanese, and that while there is an unambiguous…