The process of interference in second language learning is examined. A case study involving the acquisition of English in a natural environment by a 33-year-old French speaker is presented. Spontaneous speech was recorded in 30-minute sessions at 1- to 2-week intervals over a period of 4 months. Analysis indicates that the process of lexical…

A study investigated the development of children's metalinguistic understanding of the meanings of two non-ostensive words beyond the usual semantic acquisition period. The words, whose meanings cannot be associated with an object by pointing, were "pain" and "pretend". Two specific questions were addressed: What types of…

The absolutive voice is a fact of life for Guatemalan children who speak the Mayan language K'iche' and one that enters their verbal lexicon fairly early. Data suggest that by the time the children are 3-year-olds they have encountered several instances of verbs that alternate between active and absolutive forms, which may supply the evidence…

Verb nominalization in Navajo is a strategy by which children create category labels when the adult lexical item is not known; it allows for the creation of uniquely descriptive category labels. This study was based on a series of interviews with Navajo children aged four-and-a-half to approximately ten years, all native speakers of Navajo with…

The loss of the copula in Black English Vernacular (BEV) is demonstrably traceable to norms of pidginization that have their roots in West African languages and in contact among those languages. An extensive examination of the verb systems of a number of West African languages reveals that in every case a variety of verbal forms serves the many…

The linguistic philosophies of H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin are discussed, and ways of applying their ideas to learning activities for gifted students are suggested. Grice's work focuses on prerequisites for successful conversation, the cooperative principle, and features of conversational implicature. Austin's work analyzes the distinction…

Research in the active-passive verb relation has indicated that there is an interaction between syntactic form and verb semantics among children of preschool age. The present study examines the contribution of active-passive syntax and verb semantics to comprehension difficulty for preschoolers, 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and adults. An additional…

Analysis of two Restructuring constructions in Italian, "equi" and "raising" structures, suggests that while lexical functional grammar (LFG) does not offer the kind of analysis previously used on this kind of structure, it does offer an insightful and interesting analysis of Restructuring in Italian. This approach treats…

This study examines the use in Japanese of verb forms containing -(r)are in syntactical expressions. The meaning and function of the adversative passive and its behavior vis-a-vis the non-adversative or plain passive is discussed, and the related non-derived constructions and their relationships to the adversative passive are analyzed. Finally the…

This study of the choice of verbs of motion by native speakers of Russian focused on four factors: quantifiers, sequencing, singularization, and progressive meaning with explicit reference to emotional state. Eight native speakers of Russian were asked to rate the grammatical acceptability of certain verbs in specific texts in which repeated…

A classification of propositions (consisting of a verb and its arguments) is presented with a stipulation of the properties of each type, and clarification is given for how the classfication and the properties function in the interaction between propositions and Japanese aspectual auxiliary verbs. The different types of verbs include: (1) state…

This experiment was designed to investigate the possibility that young children use syntax to constrain and focus verb meanings in their interpretations of novel scenes and novel verbs. Subjects were 24 children, 12 males and 12 females, of 23 to 27 months, all raised in English-speaking homes. Their mean productive vocabulary was 240 words. A…

Arguments in favor of a particular decompositional approach to word meaning are presented and contrasted with other theories. The approach in question uses semantic markers to represent word meanings. The semantic marker analysis of English causative verbs is outlined and illustrated, showing how such an analysis could account for the semantic…

First language acquisition studies reveal that children overextend the minimal distance principle (MDP) during their acquisition of infinitive complement structures. The MDP dictates the interpretation of the logical subject of the infinitive in these structures and overrides marked lexical features such as subject control. Misinterpretations by…

Lexical semantics deals with the determination and description of the semantic knowledge or structure embodied in the lexicon. A description of lexical structure focuses on the meaning of a single lexical item in terms of its place in a structure consisting of related lexical items. This study concerns Japanese and English verbs of judging with…