Miniature language learning has been widely used to study the causality of language universals. However, factors that have been shown to affect language acquisition in other paradigms are understudied in miniature language learning, which calls into question results that claim to uncover universal biases. In this dissertation, I ask how the…

The study investigates the relationship between lexical encoding and production in order to establish whether learners are able to produce a difficult contrast in words that they merged in their mental lexicon. Forty American English learners of Russian were tested on their production and lexical encoding of familiar and highly-frequent words with…

The article studies theoretical issues of modern anthropocentric paradigm of scientific knowledge from the history of anthropocentric linguistics development as a special field of language science. The purpose of this study is to answer the question about human influence on the semiotic system. The material result is the unification of specific…

The Possible Word Constraint, or PWC, is a speech segmentation principle prohibiting to postulate word boundaries if a remaining segment contains only consonants. The PWC was initially formulated for English where all words contain a vowel and claimed to hold universally after being confirmed for various other languages. However, it is crucial to…

This study tests the hypothesis that distributional information can guide infants in the generalization of word order movement rules at the initial stage of language acquisition. Participants were 11- and 14-month-old infants. Stimuli were sentences in Russian, a language that was unknown to our infants. During training the word order of each…

The aim of the present study is twofold. One, we will show that Talmy's (1985, 1991, 2000) motion typology that groups Russian and English together as satellite-framed languages may be justified on linguistic grounds but is inadequate from a psycholinguistic point of view. Two, we will argue that the shortcomings of the typology may account…

Language testing and second language acquisition research are both concerned with proficiency in the second language; given this shared interest, the rapprochement between these two domains may prove revealing and productive not only in terms of teaching practices, but also in taking a wide view of language, ranging across cognition, society and…

Experimental evidence on word frequency and its effect on speech production and perception are discussed. Methods of estimating word frequency and psychometric methods used are explained. (RM)

Traces the evolution of thought in the field of psycholinguistics ("theory of verbal activity" in Russia) and discusses current research being done in the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union. A valid method of teaching language cannot be developed without a theory of language acquisition. (Text is in Italian.) (CFM)

This paper represents a partial condensation of the results of a study covering 14 months in a Russian-speaking child's phonological development. Evidence supports a theory of phonological acquisition formulated by Olmsted (1971), and offers detailed information on the child's acquisition of specific phones. (CHK)

In addressing questions of semantics and grammar in child language, this study focuses on the generation of speech activity. Specific attention is on the formation and development of speech units during speech generation. The study looks at the process by which preschool children master various linguistic items and categories using semantics,…

The fourteen papers are: "Developmental Psycholinguistics," by David McNeill; "Comments on 'Developmental Psycholinguistics'," by Dan I. Slobin; "How to Learn to Talk: Some Simple Ways," by Jerry A. Fodor; "The Acquisition of Russian as a Native Language, " by Dan I. Slobin; "Some Questions on the Child's Learning of Phonology," by Ruth H. Weir;…

The research discussed here, primarily that of P.J. Gal'perin and his associates at the University of Moscow, is an experimental demonstration of basic tenets of Vygotsky's theory. According to Gal'perin, grammatical knowledge is formed first by teaching the students material grammatical actions; these actions are ultimately to become mental…

The research resumes presented here comprise the responses received by the Stanford Child Language Project to a general request for reports on research in progress. These reports include all those distributed at the Child Language Research Forum in April 1973. The resumes cover a wide range of topics and present, in order, the following…

THIS TECHNICAL REPORT PRESENTS, IN SUBSTANCE, THE CONTENTS OF THE FIRST CHAPTER OF A BOOK IN PREPARATION DEALING WITH STANFORD UNIVERSITY EXPERIMENTS ON PARTICULAR ASPECTS OF THE LEARNING OF RUSSIAN BY AMERICANS WITH NO PREVIOUS EXPOSURE TO SLAVIC LANGUAGES. THE GENERAL AIM OF THE COMPLETED VOLUME WILL BE TO APPLY CERTAIN PRINCIPLES AND RESULTS OF…