A study is reported that investigated American children's use of subjects in early speech and compared this cross-sectional data to longitudinal data on Italian children's production of subjects. Twenty-one American children aged 1.10 to 2.8 years were recorded in mother-child interactions and grouped by mean length of utterance (MLU) produced.…

Cross-sectional and longitudinal acquisition data for English, German, Italian, and Turkish children ranging in age from approximately 1 to 4 provide a preliminary answer to the question of whether there is a consistent interlanguage order of development of notions of conjunction. It was found that children first conjoin sentences by simple…

A study was conducted to test various explanations of the error of unmarked noun plurals made by first generation Italian immigrants. The error appeared to be "fossilized" or not eradicated over a period of time. (SW)

This study investigated sensitivity to morphological, semantic, and syntactic cues to grammatical gender among 64 students of college-level Italian. Results showed sensitivity to cues in word-final phonemes, but low awareness of gender associations of derivational suffixes. Students had more difficulty dealing with multiple cues, particularly when…

Although the Italian system of address pronouns is relatively complex, scant attention is paid to the issue in L2 manuals designed for English-speaking learners of Italian. After showing that Italian L2 manuals are not necessarily accurate in the limited detail they provide, we examine specifically the frequent claim that so-called informal…

Children with specific language impairments (eight learning Italian, eight learning English as a first language) were studied for grammatical deficits. Italian-speakers used noun inflections, verb inflections, copula forms more than English-speaking counterparts, matched by utterance length. Articles were used similarly. Results were consistent…

This annotated bibliography provides a guide to books on the theory and practice of language teaching. Instructional materials for classroom use are not included. Eight sections of materials are contained in the work: (1) language, (2) language teaching, (3) English for speakers of other languages, (4) French, (5) German, (6) Italian, (7) Russian…

A study investigated the linguistic behavior of three groups of speakers in reacting to accusatory complaints: (1) native speakers of Italian residing in Italy (SI); (2) native speakers of Canadian English residing in Toronto (CE); and (3) speakers of Italian residing in Toronto, first-generation immigrants, defined as speakers of Italian as a…

Papers delivered at the conference on linguistics include: "On the Metrical Unity of Latinate Affixes"; "Epistemic Small Clauses and Null Subjects"; "Scrambling as Non-Operator A'-Movement: Variable vs. Null Epithet"; "Polarity, Inversion, and Focus in English"; "Phrasal Input to Derivational Morphology…

Evaluates methods used by New Zealand researchers on language maintenance and shift among ethnic minorities to collect data on community languages. Points out that there are many communities in that country whose patterns of language use are mostly unknown. Makes a case for the social, cultural, and educational benefits of research on community…

Reports on two studies designed to prove three hypotheses: (1) five-year-olds can successfully learn a second language (L2); (2) early L2 learning has a positive effect on the development of children's cognitive and first language linguistic abilities; and (3) early L2 learning assists socio-economically disadvantaged children in overcoming…

Student papers presented at a sociolinguistics conference include: "La variation phonologique [d'une voyelle] a Hull"; "La force illocutoire des pronoms personnels 'je' et 'tu' en tant qu'insignes des places d'ou parlent les femmes et les hommes"; "L'emploi des modes indicatif et subjonctif dans le francais parle de la…

A yearly cross-section of current work in Edinburgh University's Department of Applied Linguistics is offered with the aim of eliciting reactions and criticism. Papers in this compilation are: "Discursive Aspects of Metafiction: A Neo-Oral Aura?"; "The Reaction of Learners to Tape-Based Listening Comprehension Materials in French,…

A study was conducted in 1972-73 in Berkeley, Rome, Dubrovnik, and Istanbul, in order to examine the differences and similarities in the sequence of the development of locative expressions in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish. The subjects consisted of 48 two-, three-, and four-year-olds in each field site. Groups of three girls and…

Children and adults speaking English, Hungarian, and Italian were asked to describe sets of pictures which manipulated the pragmatic category of givenness. The working hypothesis was that there exist rule-governed relations between the perception of certain categorical aspects of the communicative situation and the use of certain conventional…