It has been known for several decades that young children have difficulties with universal sentences. In this article, I present an analysis of the main errors that have been reported in the literature. My proposal is based on an old idea, namely, that children's errors are caused by a noncanonical mapping from syntactic form to semantic…

Academic language is the linguistic glue that holds the tasks, texts, and tests of school together. If students can't use this glue well, their academic work is likely to fall apart. According to the author of this article, "academic language" is defined as the set of words and phrases that (1) describe content-area knowledge and procedures; (2)…

Previous investigations of the variable marking of past time by the L2 learner have given rise to a number of hypotheses which predict the patterns of acquisition and use of past time markers in interlanguage (IL). However, given the complicity between their predictions, it has been previously noted that hypotheses such as the aspect and discourse…

Mathematics is a central part of school curricula around the world. There has been much interest in linguistic aspects of the teaching and learning of mathematics, both from mathematics educators and from applied linguists. This short paper introduces a set of five articles exploring the intersection between these two communities. The articles all…

In traditional classifications of languages by inflectional subsystems, both creole languages and the results of untutored SLA (interlanguages) are classified as isolating. We focus on remnants of verbal inflectional morphology in French-related creoles and ask: (a) Can the properties of verbal morphology be attributed to SLA, and (b) what does…

This report has two sections: an account of the meeting on autodidaxy, or self-directed learning; and a collection of studies and papers on the subject. The first part considers the following: (1) the conceptual domain of autodidaxy; (2) the constitutive elements of autodidaxy, and the plurality of definitions attached to it; (3) aspects of…

This report is a brief overview of the work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in Australia during 1988 in the areas of literacy, linguistics, and translation. The background of the SIL, its operations, and its membership are described. The activities of the Culture Studies Department are highlighted, and special events, workshops, and…

Several conclusions about child language were drawn from the data collected during the Bristol longitudinal study, "Language at Home and at School": (1) the amount of speech that adults address to their children is significantly associated with the children's rate of progress; (2) although many topics are introduced by parents, an equal…

This project was designed to develop machine-searchable files of linguistic data to be interrogated by researchers looking for patterns, examples, and other kinds of evidence bearing on language universals. This preliminary report of the project focuses on a detailed description of the computer program system used, MARC (Machine-Readable Catalog),…

A series of computer programs to handle natural language retrieval and analysis in a manner analogous to that of a statistical package is discussed. The document presents an overview of several language analysis projects currently underway, and of several research approaches to problems in language analysis. The manner in which the Language…

Research on second language reading and writing development in children suggests (1) children who speak little English are reading some of the print in their environment, (2) they can read English before they have complete oral control of it, (3) their comprehension is influenced by their knowledge and culture, and (4) their second language…

Analysis of two studies (interpreted in terms of the distinction between language acquisition and language learning) showed that subjects tended to cluster the -s's on a few verbs rather than randomly, suggesting that the morpheme may be acquired not in isolation but attached to particular verbs. (SL)

Discusses the implementation of microcomputer technology into a secondary level English as a second language classroom. Clarifies how technology is used in class and indicates how to develop language skills by using the computer. Emphasizes, however, that it is critical to maintain communication between people, rather than solely between a person…

Language, once a cultural asset in Europe, has become an economic commodity. The national language institutes now have the task of providing the means for making knowledge available in the national language and distributing locally produced information worldwide. This includes not only training more translators, but also developing the necessary…

EVA, a text processing tool designed to be self-contained and useful for a variety of languages, is described briefly, and its extensive coded character set is illustrated. Features, specifications, and database functions are noted. Its application in development of a Slovenian literary dictionary is also described. (MSE)