Despite the fact that they play a prominent role in everyday speech, the representation and processing of fixed expressions during language production is poorly understood. Here, we report a study investigating the processes underlying fixed expression production. "Tip-of-the-tongue" (TOT) states were elicited for well-known idioms…

This article examines one of the ways in which matters of truth, appropriateness, and acceptability are raised and managed within the course of everyday conversation. Using the methodology of conversation analysis, we show that by repeating what another participant has said and doing so with a high rise-fall intonation contour, a speaker claims…

Formulaic sequences are found to be processed faster than their matched novel phrases in previous studies. Given the variety of formulaic types, few studies have compared processing on different types of formulaic sequences. The present study explored the processing among idioms, speech formulae and written formulae. It has been found that in…

In Inner Mongolia, those Mongolian students face lots of difficulties in learning English. Especially the English translation ability of Mongolian students is a weak point. It is worth to think a problem that how to let our students use the English freely on a certain foundation. This article investigates the problems of Mongolian English learners…

In this article we report two studies: a detailed longitudinal analysis of errors in "wh"-questions from six German-learning children (age 2 ; 0-3 ; 0) and an analysis of the prosodic characteristics of "wh"-questions in German child-directed speech. The results of the first study demonstrate that German-learning children…

This article presents a corpus-based investigation on English prepositions of time presented in the argumentative essays of Form 4 and Form 5 Malaysian secondary students in the MCSAW corpus. The aims were to find out the distribution patterns and the common errors in the use of preposition of time, "on" and "at". This corpus…

In order to explore the impact of a degraded semantic system on the structure of language production, we analysed transcripts from autobiographical memory interviews to identify naturally-occurring speech errors by eight patients with semantic dementia (SD) and eight age-matched normal speakers. Relative to controls, patients were significantly…

Urges extended and broadened use of error analysis in school activities because observing how children perform during varied literacy activities can allow clues to their linguistic rules for using oral and written language and the sociolinguistic rules children are discovering in the classroom. (DF)

Explores the predictors of early mastery versus error in children's acquisition of American Sign Language. Hypothesizes that the most frequent values for a particular parameter in prelinguistic gesture will be the most frequent in early signs and the most likely sources of substitution when children make errors. (Author/VWL)

Analyzes the omission, overgeneralization, and misuse errors in the compositions of first- through third-year university Spanish students, with major emphasis placed on the role errors play in the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. (EKN)

Semantic or vocabulary errors were measured among 6 children with autism and mild learning disability (ages 7-8) and 6 with mild learning disability. Vocabulary errors were similar, except under extension, which was not used by children with autism. Children with autism tended to use all mechanisms in order to name something. (Contains…

The flow of normal conversation is often impeded by error. These errors can be divided into at least three categories: phonological, lexical, and pragmatic. A study was designed to assess whether different kinds of errors affect conversation in different ways. Forty-four subjects listened to tapes of conversations. Each conversation contained…

Data from a transcript database of 12 children collected in 1-hour samples every month from 1;0 to 3;0 support the hypothesis that there should be strong differences in the frequency and types of errors between pronouns with suppletive nominatives and those without. The suppletive nominative forms "I" and "she" are blocked from overextension in a…

Examines some of the theoretical and practical objections to error analysis and proposes it would be more appropriate for teachers to lead students through the use of creative language exercises into the use of many of the possible sentences in a language. (HOD)

A study of the signing of six deaf preschoolers found that they produced phonological and morphological errors, and semantic overgeneralizations, comparable to those made by hearing children when learning to speak. This suggests that deaf children actively construct sign language rules in the same way that hearing children build up the rules of…