Reports on a study comparing the nouns in the Dolch word list with four recently published word lists to determine which nouns are most frequently used. (RB)

A correspondence is shown between grammatical categories and grammatical functions in Chinese. Some syntactic properties distinguish finite verbs from nonfinite verbs, nominals from other categories, and verbs from other categories. (Contains seven references.) (LB)

In three experiments, adults and 30-month-old children (1) selected a novel object as the referent for a novel term; (2) extended the new word to another exemplar; and (3) allowed the new word to preempt another novel label from applying to the just-named object. (BC)

A study charting the development of 120 participants to define is presented. Participants were asked to define eight concrete and eight abstract nouns. Results indicate that there are significant differences in the way concrete and abstract nouns are defined. (32 references) (GLR)

Examined in 2 studies 2- to 4-year-olds' learning of novel words and novel facts and extension of the words and facts to additional exemplars. Found that children extended the novel word to more category members than they extended the novel fact. By age 2, children observe extendibility of novel count nouns but are uncertain about extendibility of…

Expands upon a previous study of the gender of Spanish nouns which indicated that feminine gender nouns typically end in unstressed -is, while other -s words are presumed masculine, with the most common masculine gender markers being -l, -o, -n, -e, and -r. (SL)

In these three experiments with kindergartners, comparisons were made on subjects' acquisition of nouns under three conditions: no picture; picture related to word; and unrelated picture. It was concluded that pictures could be used with advantage, if the child was aware of the relationship between word and picture. (Author/SJL)

Ten language-impaired children, aged 4-6, were found to exhibit more pronounced syntactic deficits than 10 normal children matched by mean length of utterance. Language samples were analyzed with respect to: grammatical marker need index; grammatical marker error index; and grammatical marker errors for nouns, verbs, bound, and unbound forms.…

Compared the proportions of nouns and verbs in early vocabularies of English- and Mandarin-speaking toddlers and their mothers. Found that Mandarin-speaking children had relatively fewer nouns and more verbs than English-speaking children. When reading books, children's vocabularies were dominated by nouns but not when playing with toys. Mothers…

Analyses for stress patterns of the first 1,000 nouns and 500 verbs from a high-frequency Russian vocabulary list. The most irregular patterns are seen in the most frequently occurring items and, therefore, should be learned early in the study of Russian. (Author/LMO)

Examined 2-year-olds' comprehension and production of novel nouns, verbs, or actions at 3 intervals after training conducted in massed or distributed exposures. Found that for comprehension, children learned all item types in all training conditions at all retention intervals. Production was better for nonverbal actions than for either word type…

Describes and quantifies aspects of the comparative clauses conjoined with correlatives "than" and "as." The data are compared to show patterns of distribution, their spread across different genres, and the similarity or otherwise of their use in Britain and Australia. Findings show that the scalar comparative clause does not…

The relation between similarity and dissimilarity of context was analyzed for synonymous nouns. New semantic similarity and dissimilarity rating tests with an empirically determined series of linguistic anchors and conventional, arbitrarily anchored semantic similarity ratings were compared. Contextual similarity was elicited by a sorting test…