Identifies the languages and language groups in the Nilo-Saharan family (Songhai, Saharan, Mabau, Fur, Coman, and Chari-Nile). (DS)

A system for verb classification is developed and 214 irregular verbs are classified accordingly. (FWB)

A study of 140 seventh-grade students receiving morphographic spelling instruction indicated that morphographic techniques produced significant gains on program-fair and retention posttests. Morphographic instruction had a small, but significant, effect on conventional spelling. (Authors/CJ)

Twenty-four good beginning readers and 24 poor readers from 12 suburban first grades were tested on three measures of grammatical morpheme use: sentence recall, speech production, and language compehension. The two groups did not differ in sentence recall. Good readers produced more correct grammatical morphemes than poor readers, but the…

Five experiments are described which examine how polysyllabic words are stored and retrieved from lexical memory. The first four experiments look at interference effects caused by the accessing of inappropriate lexical entries. The fifth reveals that frequency of the first constituent of a compound word influences classification times. (CHK)

Surveys the development of second language acquisition research in the area of tense and aspect. Research in this area has grown from the incidental investigation of tense-aspect morphology as part of the morpheme-order studies to investigations of the construction of interlanguage temporal semantics. (Author/VWL)

Late talkers with normal receptive language were compared with typically developing peers at ages 3 and 4 on grammatical suppliance during speech samples. At age 4, "late bloomers" did not differ from typically developing children, but late talkers with "continuing delay" differed on several grammatical variables. Findings are discussed in terms…

Examines Krashen's (1977) theory that postulates a distinction between language acquisition and language learning, reviewing recent studies on morpheme order, code-focused instruction, and grammatical rules that support the theory. Contrary to what has been claimed, the theory is not insulated against attempts to disconfirm it. (87 references)…

Applies prototype theory to the question of how to understand the concept of polysyllabic morphemes in Chinese. Analysis reveals that, because there is considerable disagreement on whether particular examples are in fact members this category, the traditional view that membership is an either/or matter is not accurate. (39 references) (MDM)

Twenty-five preschool children with specific language impairment and 25 controls were evaluated on generalization of trained bound morphemes to untrained vocabulary stems, in 2 training conditions: explicit, trainer verbalization of the affixation "rule" and an "implicit rule" condition. Findings indicated that explicit presentation of…

Details six major research findings regarding second-language acquisition, including transitional stages for acquiring syntax; fixed-order emergence of grammatical morphemes; language acquisition progress from unmarked to marked elements; first-language influence; rule-governed learner output; and learner access to input. (27 references) (CB)

The typology of planned languages, the number of such linguistic projects, and the most commonly used morphemes for these created languages are discussed. A total of 11 morpheme types are identified. (14 references) (Author/LB)

Two experiments examined young children's sensitivity to linguistic contexts in which particular function morphemes occur. Results showed that children who did not produce articles in spontaneous speech were able to distinguish between sentences, verbally presented in picture identification tasks, that contained grammatical articles and those that…