Most current models of sentence comprehension assume that the human parsing mechanism (HPM) algorithmically computes detailed syntactic representations as basis for extracting sentence meaning. These models share the assumption that the representations computed by the HPM accurately reflect the linguistic input. This assumption has been challenged…

Purpose: To examine the production of plural morphology in children acquiring a dialect of Spanish with syllable-final /s/ lenition with the goal of comparing how plural marker omissions in the speech of these children compare with plural marker omissions in children with language impairment acquiring other varieties of Spanish. Method: Three…

Previous research in the area of children's knowledge of number agreement morphology has yielded mixed results. Some researchers have found evidence for sensitivity to agreement morphology at as early as 16 months, while others report that children do not comprehend number agreement morphology until as late as five or six years old. Studies of…

In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with…

Investigated whether infants can construe the same set of objects as an object category or as embodying an object property. Results of 2 experiments involving 48 and 64 14-month-olds respectively suggest that infants have begun to distinguish nouns from adjectives, they expect different grammatical forms to highlight different aspects, and that…

Examination of the types of linguistic knowledge that affect three- to nine-year-olds' (N=60) and adults' (N=12) ability to understand and produce novel compounds in Hebrew revealed that comprehension was achieved ahead of production. Knowledge of morphological form had little effect on comprehension, but was crucial to production. (Author/CB)

A study investigated the extent to which English compound nouns are problematic for learners of English as a second language and identifies some causes of this comprehension difficulty. Subjects were 34 university students, of widely varying language backgrounds, in courses in English for academic purposes. Each was administered an instrument…

Research was conducted to study systematically the comprehension and production of the pronouns "he, she, him, her" in the language of normal and linguistically deviant children. The purposes of the study were to: observe the manner in which normal children comprehend and produce these four pronouns, in terms of both their use and their…