Part one of this study discussed the characteristics of errors involving single fricative consonants made by English children learning their first language. Here, the second part discusses the distinctive features of the single fricatives most commonly mispronounced, as well as the characteristics of errors with clustered fricatives. (34…

Argues that oral grammar correction in second-language classrooms produces overwhelming problems both in making corrections and dealing with their harmful side effects, and that the practice should be discontinued. Research evidence suggests that oral correction does not improve learners' ability to speak grammatically, and no good reasons have…

Examines whether storybook exposure and the amount of teaching in reading and writing skills reported by middle-class parents were related to oral language skills and written language skills of kindergarten children. Shows that storybook exposure explained statistically significant unique variance in children's oral language skills but not in…

Circumlocution can prevent communication breakdown and is a required function at the Advanced level on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Scale. To encourage this communicative strategy, researchers conducted a study of two intermediate college French classes: one that encouraged circumlocution and…

Examined whether infants imitate the vocal pitch characteristics of adult caregivers and differentially adjust their vocal pitch or fundamental frequency toward that of their caregivers. Data are presented from a longitudinal case study of an infant recorded over several months, interacting with each parent. The infant did not demonstrate…

Seventeen native English speakers participated in an investigation of language users' knowledge of English main stress patterns. First, they produced 40 two-syllable nonwords of varying syllabic structure as nouns and verbs. Second, they indicated their preference for first or second syllable stress of the same words in a perception task. Finally,…

This study examines the acquisition of English syllable codas by two native speakers of Vietnamese. Data were collected at three intervals over 1 year. Results indicate that a developmental sequence may exist and that this sequence may not be linear, with some longer (i.e., two and three member) codas emerging before some singleton codas.…

The aim of the present study was to advance the knowledge of the linguistic development of students with prelingual profound deafness, especially the acquisition and use of prepositions in Spanish, a lexical category with an important role in verbal comprehension. The researchers sought to learn the level of mastery students with prelingual…

This study reports on preliminary findings of two research projects conducted during the 1988-89 and 1990-91 in Cordoba, Argentina, that examined fixed, idiomatic, Spanish-language expressions that are very common, but often ignored, in oral Spanish discourse. Study 1 subjects were 13 university-educated, adults, born in the city; study 2 subjects…

A study of the phonetics of everyday conversational interaction looked specifically at the occurrence of the "oh" particle, a signal of the receipt of new information. Focus was on the phonetic characteristics of the "oh" utterance in this context. Data were drawn from British and American recorded telephone conversations. It was observed that…

Word and nonword vocalizations produced by two groups of children aged 8-28 months were studied. The first group included six children whose speech was recorded monthly for 12 months. The second group contained 21 children. In both, only spontaneous vocalizations were recorded. Each sample was examined for frequency of word and nonword forms. A…

This study reports a replication of an earlier study by Kilbourne and Ginsberg (1980) which indicated the occurrence of a transition from predominantly coacting to predominantly alternating infant-mother vocalization patterns. In addition, the present study examined the modulating influences of nursing activity and mother's focus of attention upon…

Teacher interventions in the spontaneous arguments of seven preschoolers 3 to 5 years of age were analyzed. Twenty hours of data were audiotaped over a 3-month period in a small, church-affiliated private school while children were involved in free play and classroom activities. Interactions that might be taken as arguments were first transcribed…

McCarthy and Prince (1986, 1990) have put forward the prosodic Morphology Hypothesis to account for morphological processes, such as reduplication and truncation, that typically require that their output conform to a particular shape of template. This hypothesis claims that morphological templates are analyzable in terms of prosodic units. This…

Papers on language research in this volume include the following: "Temporalite en francais de France. Differences dans la conceptualisation du temps et son expression dans un texte narratif oral" ("Differences in the Conceptualization of Time and Its Expression in Oral Narratives") (Natalia Dankova); "La traduction des…