The number meaning of grammatically plural nouns is to some extent context sensitive. In negative sentences, plural nouns typically receive an inclusive reading referring to any number of individuals (one or many). This contrasts with their more frequent exclusive reading referring to a group of two or more individuals. The present study…

The use of present and past participles and gerunds was summarized and illustrated from various examples cited or given, on the basis of the writer's teaching experience, and extensive review of different English grammar books, reference books, magazines, newspapers, books, English dictionaries, and online articles, in order for English language…

Subject-verb (SV) agreement helps listeners interpret the number condition of ambiguous nouns ("The sheep is/are fat"), yet it remains unclear whether young children use agreement to comprehend newly encountered nouns. Preschoolers and adults completed a forced choice task where sentences contained singular vs. plural copulas…

We studied English-learning children's ability to learn the meanings of novel words from sentences containing truth-functional negation (Exp1) and to use the semantics of negation to inform word meaning (Exp2). In Exp1, 22-month-olds (n = 21) heard dialogues introducing a novel verb in either negative-transitive "("Mary didn't blick the…

Purpose: Language difficulties are prevalent among children born preterm. Existing studies have largely used standardized language tests, providing limited scope for detailed descriptive examination of preterm language. This study aimed to examine differences in conversational language between children born < 30 weeks and at term as well as…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to characterize grammatical production in Jamaican Creole (JC) and English using the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn; Scarborough, 1990) in a sample of typically developing bilingual Jamaicans. Method: Spontaneous language samples were collected in JC and English from 62 preschoolers aged 4-6 years.…

Language is a major tool for an individual to communicate. The phonological & morpho-syntactic components are involved in functions of language processing & executions. Case marker is one of the morpho-syntatic feature, which describes the abstract meaning of the grammatical components of nouns & verbs and in formation of meaningful…

The current research argues that definiteness in Arabic can be used for formal purposes. The definite article and the nunnation suffix "-n" (NnnS) manage the information flow in the sentence through maintaining accepted informativity balance. Additionally, the study assumes that NnnS, "-n," is not an indefinite article. Its…

Many studies on bilingual language processing have shown that lexical access is not selective with respect to language. These studies typically used nouns as word stimuli. The aim of the present study was to extend the previous findings on noun processing to verb processing. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performed a lexical…

This study investigates whether children's production and recognition of obligatory liaison sequences in French depend on the singular/plural orientation of nouns. Certain nouns occur more frequently in the plural (e.g., "arbre" "tree"), whereas others are found more often in the singular (e.g., "arc-en-ciel" "rainbow"). In the input, children…

We assessed whether and under what conditions noncanonical agreement patterns occur in Russian, with the goal of understanding the factors involved in normal agreement. Russian is a morphosyntactically rich language in which agreement involves features for number, gender, and case. If consistent, overt specification of number and gender agreement…

Rapid acquisition of linguistic categories or constructions is sometimes regarded as evidence of innate knowledge. In this paper, we examine Polish children's early understanding of an idiosyncratic, language-specific construction involving the instrumental case--which could not be due to innate knowledge. Thirty Polish-speaking children aged 2; 6…

This paper explains some properties and restrictions involved in phenomena of topicalization in Japanese. The first section reviews certain properties involved in simplex topical sentences; the second section reveals certain constraints on topicalization involved in complex sentences. Section Three pursues one consequence suggested by those…

Five experiments, using a subject-verb agreement error elicitation procedure, investigated syntactic planning processes in production. The experiments examined the influence of semantic integration--the degree to which phrases are tightly linked at the conceptual level--and contrasted two accounts of planning: serial stack-based systems and…

A first and modest beginning toward a grammar of the Hualapai language, a Pai branch of the Yuman language family, this reference book is intended for use by: the Hualapai people to reaffirm the vitality of their language; the Hualapai teachers in their preparation of language materials for teaching; younger Haulapais to find the regularity and…