Examines evidence relevant to the determination of the configurational/nonconfigurational character of clause structure in Modern Greek. The analysis is developed within a framework that accounts for nominative assignment in the context of predication theory. An explanation for the fact that SVO is a routine alternative in Greek is provided. (46…

Three studies investigated Spanish and English readers' interpretations of sentences with complex noun phrases (NPs). In contrast to earlier findings, results provided evidence for cross-language universality of the late closure parsing principle. Results suggest that late closure is not language-specific but specific to only certain classes of…

Presents a quantitative study of children's noun plural overregularizations on recent comparisons of connectionist and symbolic models of language. The speech of 10 English-speaking children aged 1;3 to 5;2 were analyzed. Results pose challenges to connectionist models, but are consistent with the blocking-and-retrieval-failure model in which…

This study shows that the noun bias in early vocabularies rests only in part on the acquisition of object names. An analysis of vocabulary composition from 45 children at I;8 indicates that more nouns are acquired than all other word classes but that only about half of the nouns acquired are the names of basic level object classes (BLOCs). (KM)

Reports on the results of a descriptive study of the noun phrase agreement behavior exhibited by three first-year Spanish language students during a series of oral interviews conducted over six months (two academic quarters).(13 references) (JL)

Reports on initial steps in performing linguistic analyses on textual material found in a bibliographic database and suggests that useful data can be provided for information retrieval systems by using research methods from linguistic inquiry. Searches of noun phrases in the ERIC database are described, and further research is suggested. (10…

Discusses ergative case marking system in Anatolian branch of Indo-European in which neuters inflect ergatively and common-gender nouns inflect accusatively. Development from instrumental to ergative that occurred in prehistory of Gorokan languages of Papua New Guinea is also discussed. It is suggested that this process is a general mechanism for…

Three experiments tested 3-year-olds' subordinate classification. The first experiment found that novel noun presentation hindered classification. The second and third experiments found that provision of information for the purpose of distinguishing relevant subclasses, and introduction of novel nouns in conjunction with familiar basic level…

This study analyzed data from a diary study of a child's lexical development. Correct forms and errors in the use of the plural morpheme were recorded from 18 to 30 months. Morphology was acquired before syntax, and there was evidence for a syntactic definition of noun by the age of 20 months. (BC)

Addressed whether hierarchical relations and word order can be separated in sentence production. Assessed in two experiments whether subject-verb agreement errors require linear proximity of a so-called "local" noun to the verb. Found evidence for a stage in language production in which a syntactic structure is built prior to stage in which words…

Categorization of lone lexical items from one language embedded in another is often difficult due to their ambiguous status as either loanwords or codeswitches. Following variationist principles, a comparative method is used to disambiguate lone English-origin nouns in Acadian-French discourse. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the effect of time and attention on formal accuracy in the linguistic performance of 36 adult language learners with regard to the third person singular verb "-s" and the plural from of nouns, using a story retelling task as its elicitation technique. Results suggest that the attention variable had a significant impact on grammatical…

Three studies examined adults' generic noun phrases in English and Mandarin Chinese from child-directed speech of caregivers interacting with their toddlers. Found that generic noun phrases were reliably identified in both languages. Generic noun phrases most frequently referred to animals. Non-generic noun phrases were used most frequently for…

Discusses the advantages and disadvantages of what has become the standard approach to teaching relative clauses. To overcome the disadvantages, proposes a hierarchical teaching method that begins by introducing noun phrases that contain relative clauses before comparing them with similar structures in the learner's first language. Shows an…

The present research examined how 3- and 5-year-old Japanese children map novel nouns and verbs onto dynamic action events and generalize them to new instances. Studies 1 to 3 demonstrated that although both 3- and 5-year-olds were able to map novel nouns onto novel objects, only 5-year-olds could generalize verbs solely on the basis of the…