We present in this article corpus analyses, two experiments, and a preliminary English-French comparison on children's acquisition of "wh"-in-situ. Our examination of 10,000 "wh"-questions from CHILDES reveals that the reported empirical picture of "wh"-question acquisition in English is incomplete: A type of…

In this dissertation I set out to solve a series of puzzles related to the notion of a DP periphery, defined as an area around the edge of a given domain targeted by operations such as movement and agreement. In solving these puzzles, I argue for a peripheral area in the nominal domain. Early arguments for a peripheral boundary in the nominal…

Language acquisition may be one of the most difficult tasks that children face during development. They have to segment words from fluent speech, figure out the meanings of these words, and discover the syntactic constraints for joining them together into meaningful sentences. Over the past couple of decades, computational modeling has emerged as…

Reports two parallel experiments conducted in French and in English in which subject-verb agreement errors were induced to explore the role of syntactic structure during sentence production. Aims to understand how syntactic structure contributes to the occurrence of errors. (Author/VWL)

Defines and illustrates the importance of lexical function in second language learning based on the "meaning-text" model of I. A. Mel'cuk. Examples in French and in English demonstrate that it is possible to combine lexical and grammatical learning. (DJD)

Discusses various definitions of markedness in terms of second language acquisition and describes a study testing one such definition which found that second language learners did not accept preposition stranding in the second language but did accept double object construction and suggested that transfer took place only with one of two marked…

Describes a reading experiment with two groups of English speaking children attending French immersion programs. The two groups, from grades 3 and 6 respectively, were tested in both English and French for their ability to recognize spelling patterns and to make positive transfers from one language to the other. (MES)

It is argued that anglicisms in Canadian French cover a much broader spectrum than in any European variety of French, with traits of the English language incorporated into spelling, pronunciation, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and phraseology. A typology of these features is proposed, with examples. (Author/MSE)

Examination of business letters in English, French, and Japanese, focusing on prescriptive accounts in the respective languages, found that, despite amazingly similar surface characteristics, American business letters were reader-oriented, French business letters were writer-oriented, and Japanese business letters were oriented to the space…

The linguistic complexity of humor is illustrated with examples of word play translated from French to English and English to French. Examples from the writings of James Joyce and Marcel Proust are highlighted. (CB)

Reviews the history of machine translation (MT) research in China. Describes Chinese MT techniques as based on syntactic analysis, full use of fixed phrases, the key role of funtion words, and emphasis on formal analysis without neglecting meaning. (Available from ALLC, Dr. Rex Last, German Dept., Univ. of Hull, Hull HU57RX, England.) (Author/MES)

The comparison of languages can be an effective instructional technique if used well. The comparison of isolated elements is less effective than the examination of languages at several levels: system, norm, and usage. (MSE)

A study suggests that the nature of linguistic borrowing in a group of 14 African languages termed Togo remnant languages--Basila, Lelemie (Buem), Aogba, Adele, Likpe, Santrokofi, Akpafu-Lolobi, Avatime, Nyangbo-Tafi, Bowili, Aklo, Kposo, Kebu, Animere--is similar to that of the Akebu language. Analysis focuses on the origins and itineraries of…

Describes four experiments on the speech segmentation procedures of English listeners listening to English words and compares them to earlier work based on French speakers listening to French words. The results indicate that the segmentation process characteristically employed by French speakers and English speakers differs. (SED)

This original comparative study explores two central questions in the study of first language acquisition: What is the relative impact of structural and functional determinants? What is universal versus language-specific during development? The study addresses these questions in three domains of child language: reference to entities, the…