Two experiments and two corpus studies focus on homophone dominance in the spelling of regularly inflected verb forms, the phenomenon that the higher-frequency homophone causes more intrusion errors on the lower-frequency one than vice versa. Experiment 1 was a speeded dictation task focusing on the Dutch imperative, a verb form whose formation…

This study investigates associative learning explanations of the limited attainment of adult compared to child language acquisition in terms of learned attention to cues. It replicates and extends Ellis and Sagarra (2010) in demonstrating short- and long-term learned attention in the acquisition of temporal reference in Latin. In Experiment 1,…

This study examines the role of functional morphemes in the earliest stage of lexical development. Recent research showed that prelinguistic infants can perceive functional morphemes. We inquire whether infants use frequent functors to segment potential word forms. French-learning 8-month-olds were familiarized to two utterance types: a novel noun…

Researchers have long noted that children's grammatical morphemes are variably produced, raising questions about when and how grammatical competence is acquired. This study examined the spontaneous production of determiners by two French-speaking children aged 1 ; 5-2 ; 5. It found that determiners were produced earlier with monosyllabic words,…

This study describes how young Spanish-speaking children become gradually more adept at encoding temporality using grammar and discourse skills in intra-conversational narratives. The research involved parallel case studies of two Spanish-speaking children followed longitudinally from ages two to three. Type/token frequencies of verb tense,…

The present study investigated the existence of a Japanese mental syllabary and units stored therein for speech production. Experiment 1 compared naming latencies between high and low initial mora frequencies using CVCVCV nonwords, indicating that nonwords with a high initial mora frequency were named faster than those with a low frequency initial…

Within linguistics, words with a complex internal structure are commonly assumed to be decomposed into their constituent morphemes (e.g., un-help-ful). Nevertheless, an ongoing debate concerns the brain structures that subserve this process. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study varied the internal complexity of derived…

This study investigated the technical adequacy of curriculum-based measures of written expression (CBM-W) in terms of writing prompts and scoring methods for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Twenty-two students at the secondary school-level completed 3-min essays within two weeks, which were scored for nine existing and alternative…

Turkish as spoken in the Netherlands (NL-Turkish) sounds "different" (unconventional) to Turkish speakers in Turkey (TR-Turkish). We claim that this is due to structural contact-induced change that is, however, located within specific lexically complex units copied from Dutch. This article investigates structural change in NL-Turkish…

Limited vocabulary knowledge has been cited as a key factor in the literacy achievement gap, particularly for students with learning disabilities, students of color, and English-language learners. Recent authorities have recommended multipronged approaches to assist vocabulary growth in classrooms. In addition, authorities have called for…

This study provides an account for a long-term selective loss of L1 (Russian) morpho-syntactic and content components in early immigrants to the U.S. The analysis of naturally occurring data is carried out from the perspective of two theoretical approaches--three models developed within language contact (Myers-Scotton 2002, 2005) and the…

This dissertation is a comprehensive description of the grammar of Sierra Popoluca (SP, aka Soteapanec), a Mixe-Zoquean language spoken by approximately 28,000 people in Veracruz, Mexico. This grammar begins with an introduction to the language, its language family, a typological overview of the language, a brief history of my fieldwork, and the…

This dissertation describes the phonetic characteristics of a phenomenon that has previously been denominated "unstressed vowel reduction" in Andean Spanish based on the spectrographic analysis of 40,556 unstressed vowels extracted from the conversational speech of 150 residents of the city of Cusco, Peru. Results demonstrate that this…

The literature on grammatical skills in persons with Cri du chat syndrome (CCS) is very limited, and the need for more knowledge in this area is thus evident, in particular for speech and language therapists working with individuals with this syndrome. This case study report describes the syntactic skills of a 14-year-old Norwegian girl with CCS.…

Morphological Analysis as a vocabulary acquisition strategy has both its advocates and antagonists. Criticism from opponents is often warranted when programs omit one or more of the three critical criteria that establish the framework behind a successful curriculum. The intent behind this paper is to disseminate and explicate these three criteria,…