This report describes a study conducted to discover whether children with language delay would respond differently from normal children on two identically itemed tests of knowledge of adjectives and prepositions, one of which using objects as stimuli and the other using pictorial stimuli. It was hypothesized that the test using objects would be…

This study examines linguistic form and communication style in working-class and middle-class black preachers of two types: those who are not seminary trained, who preach spontaneously, and those who are seminary trained, who read from a prepared text. Ten sermons were tape-recorded in natural settings at two churches in Washington, D.C. Analyses…

The linguistic literature contains many studies of the structure of the noun phrase. Syntactic structures that occupy NP position but which don't have the internal characteristics of a substantive (infinitives and THAT clauses, for example) are distinguished from lexical structures that occupy NP position and do have the internal characteristics…

This study is designed to investigate the relationship between the extent of visualization of poetically elicited mental images (V) and five other variables involved in response to poetry: extent of verbal interpretation of the meaning of poetry; extent of recall of poetry; accuracy of recall of poetry; extent of liking of poetry; and level of…

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which practice in the use of figurative comparisons in the composing of poetry, in both oral and in written form, will increase the use of figurative comparisons in the writing of prose. The study tested oral composition of poetry vs. written composition of poetry, and intensive treatment in…

This dissertation describes the grammatical structure of Shuswap, an American Indian language of the Salishan family spoken in British Columbia, Canada. The research was carried out on the Naskanlith Reserve near Chase, British Columbia, during the summers of 1966-69. Prior to this study, the language was last investigated before the turn of the…

This study examined the paralinguistic behavior of three presidential candidates in on-camera and on-mike speeches made during their campaigns. Using tape recordings, a detailed micronotation was made of candidates' paralinguistic patterns, both while speaking on-camera and on-mike and while speaking under circumstances that were not for a mass…

This study investigated whether mothers' responses to their infants' gestures play a role in their infants' vocabulary development. Eight infants were observed interacting at home with their mothers on 2 occasions, when the infants were 10 to 12 months old, and 16 to 18 months old. Videotapes of the observations were transcribed and coded for…

An integrated analysis of the syntax and semantics of serial verb constructions (SVCs) in a group of West African languages is presented. With data from Dagaare and closest relatives, a structural definition for SVCs is developed (two or more lexical verbs that share grammatical categories within a clause), establishing SVCs as complex predicates.…

The purpose of this study was to gather information on the acquisition of non-Indo-European languages. The field work was conducted in the village of Faleasao on the island of Ta'u in the Manu'a group of American Samoa from June, 1968 to June, 1969. The data collected consists primarily of tape recordings of naturally occurring and elicited speech…

This study examines, through the use of a group screening instrument, the oral language comprehension skills of elementary school children. The screening instrument was composed of 60 experimental sentences of varying syntactic complexity. Each sentence contained a specific function word or combination of function words which conveyed a direction…

The studies reported here constitute part of a project on language development and social influence. The question of what to do to obtain a linguistic development that is not retarded by an unfavorable environment is discussed, relative to different value systems. In the first three chapters a theoretical background is given in which…

The purposes of this study were to develop an informal language inventory for classroom teachers to use in screening a child's speech, to have classroom teachers use the inventory with students to determine if they could use it, and to determine if teachers would use the assessment form after they had had some experience with it. The development…

Following a review of related work on intonation, both phonetic and phonemic descriptions of intonation in Italian are presented. Using recordings of radio broadcasts as data, a system of assigning pitch levels to syllables was devised, based on four pitches. The close relationship between stress placement and pitch level was considered. In order…

The cognitive levels of 60 children from grades one, three, and five were compared with their linguistic performance on selected examples of similes and metaphors. Cognitive level was measured using Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices; a new instrument was developed to assess children's linguistic performance. Results indicated a significant…