Presents results of a study involving 54 8- to 12-year-old children with specific language impairment who are compared with a control group on a referential communication task. The children were asked to describe a picture from an array of eight similar items so that the listener could identify it. (18 references) (GLR)

A study examined the effects of valency (associative value representing the number of two-kanji words containing the first-positional kanji of the word) on recognition of two-kanji words in Japanese. Frequency and valency of the first constituent kanji were significant factors for word recognition, and frequency of the first constituent kanji was…

Develops the distinction between "referential" and "modalizing" aspects of language and describes their functional dissociation, as observed in various manifestations of aphasia and in the speech of hemispherectomy and commissurotomy patients. (Author/JL)

Study examined the relationship between comprehension and production of lexical items when children are taught to both comprehend and produce new lexical items and when children are taught either to comprehend or produce new lexical items. Study involved teaching 12 adults and 12 children a miniature language. Results indicate production training…

Presents study exploring oral reading errors of normally developing readers to determine any developmental differences in learning phoneme-grapheme units; to discover if the grapheme representations of some phonemes are more difficult to read than others; and to replicate results reported by Fowler, et. al. Findings show most oral reading errors…

Describes a study of gist recall in language impaired children. Stories were read to groups of normal and language impaired children and oral recall was requested immediately. The groups differed primarily in the amount of accurate recall. It seems that language impaired children are deficient in recall for material within their linguistic grasp.…

Presents a comparison study of language learning in American children and adults using various Japanese locatives. The subjects were pre- and posttested to determine if locatives that were semantically similar to their English equivalents would yield better transfer than terms that deviated in meaning and phonemic structure in English. (BK)

Advances the hypothesis that learning a miniature artificial language (MAL) can be regarded as a means of furthering knowledge on inductive second-language (L2) learning. Suggests that more creative use of MAL methods can have pedagogical manipulation of input. (Author/BK)

Reports on a study in which subjects heard the beginnings of spoken words, followed by increasingly larger segments of word-onset information until the words could be correctly identified. Results are discussed in terms of word-initial phonology as a trigger for response activation. (34 references) (Author/OD)

Three experiments explored young children's metalinguistic awareness. Results showed that children between the ages of 4.5 and 6.5 demonstrate vigorous development of word segmentation skills, using increasingly complex strategies--first phrasal, then syllabic, and finally a full word strategy, and a growing knowledge of function and content…

Studied differences in the initiation of communication between 2 year olds with normal language abilities and 2-year old "late-talkers." Late-talkers expressed significantly fewer intentions and used fewer verbal forms. The predominant form of expression for normally skilled toddlers was word combinations whereas late-talkers used…

Describes a study of adult listeners' perceptions of infant babbling. Adult judges were unable to identify language background significantly above chance level. Findings do not support the babbling drift hypothesis which predicts that babbling begins to approximate characteristics of the mother tongue as infants approach meaningful speech. (SED)

Presents a system for coding and analyzing dialogue involving preschool age children. Each participant assumes roles of initiator and responder and is evaluated according to different scales. Illustrates the system through recorded dialogue between mothers and their three-year-old daughters. (Author/BK)

Describes a follow-up study of 25 boys who had been diagnosed with Specific Expressive Language Delay (SELD) at 24 to 30 months of age. At three to four years, half of the boys continued to exhibit poor expressive language skills, suggesting that young children diagnosed with SELD are at considerable risk for continuing language problems. (33…

Describes immersion programs in the United States and Canada and reviews results of evaluative research pertaining to them. Discusses findings with respect to students' native-language development, academic achievement, and second language proficiency. Also discusses the suitability of immersion for students with distinctive, potentially…