The present study investigates the real-time costs of sentence processing in early Spanish–English bilinguals. Our results indicate that bilinguals use an amalgam (a combination of L1 and L2 strategies) of monolingual strategies in choosing the agent of a sentence. The reaction time (RT) data, however, reveal a slightly larger language specific component than the choice data. That is, bilinguals appear to fall more “in between” the two monolingual groups in their choice profiles than in their RT profiles. This implies that early bilinguals may be paying a language-specific processing cost in order to maintain an “in between” profile. The nature of the bilingual/monolingual dichotomy and its implications for the study of bilingual language processing are discussed.

One current definition of language delay, on the basis of the Cognitive Hypothesis model, assumes that children who have similar levels of language and cognitive development are unlikely to gain from specific language intervention. Children who have cognitive skills developed to a greater degree than their language skills, in contrast, are identified as appropriate candidates for specific language facilitation. In order to examine this premise, the present study compares the effects of language intervention over a 1-year period for two groups of young children with delayed language: one group with cognitive skills markedly above their language level, and the other group with similar delays in cognitive and language skills. Eighteen subjects (13 boys, 5 girls, mean age 4;11) had cognitive skills developed above their language level, and 32 subjects (20 boys, 12 girls, mean age 5;3) had similar delays in language and cognition. Evaluation measures were Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R), MLU, Preschool Language Assessment Instrument, and Basic Language Concepts Test (BLCT). Of the four measures, only the BLCT resulted in significant gain differences favoring the students with higher cognitive than language skills. PPVT-R standard scores indicated that both groups made gains at a faster rate during intervention than prior to intervention. Clinical implications of the results are discussed.

Vocabulary scores, word span, nonword repetition, rhyme detection, and articulation rate measures were obtained for a group of 30 preschool children with a mean age of 4;11. After allowing for age and intelligence, it was found that the best predictors of vocabulary were memory span, rhyme detection, and nonword repetition, accounting for 19%. 15%, and 13% of the variance, respectively. Of these children, 28 were tested again on the same measures 13 months later. At the later stage, memory span and rhyme scores again predicted vocabulary to a significant extent, but nonword repetition score did not. Of the measures taken initially, memory span and rhyme detection significantly predicted later vocabulary scores, whereas nonword repetition just failed to reach significance. Cross-lagged correlations showed (hat memory span and rhyme detection on the first test predicted later vocabulary after partialing out initial vocabulary scores. However, initial vocabulary scores did not predict later memory span (or rhyme detection) after partialing out the initial span (or rhyming) scores. Articulation rate was not significantly related to vocabulary at either age. The results are interpreted as indicating that the phonological store of working memory (required by word span, rhyme detection, and nonword repetition, but independent of articulation rates) contributes to vocabulary development.

Although the organization of first language (L1) and second language (L2) lexicosemantic information has been extensively studied in the bilingual literature, little evidence exists concerning how syntactic information associated with words is represented across languages. The present study examines the shared or independent nature of the representation of verb argument structure in the bilingual mental lexicon and the contribution of constituent order and thematic role information in these representations. In three production tasks, Greek (L1) advanced learners of English (L2) generated an L1 prime structure (Experiment 1: prepositional object [PO] and double object [DO] structures; Experiment 2: PO, DO, and intransitive structures; Experiment 3: PO, DO, locative, and “provide (someone) with (something)” structures) before completing an L2 target structure (PO or DO only). Experiment 1 showed L1-to-L2 syntactic priming; participants tended to reuse L1 structure when producing L2 utterances. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this tendency was contingent on the combination of both syntactic structure and thematic roles up to the first postverbal argument. Based on these findings, we outline a model of shared representations of syntactic and thematic information for L1 and L2 verbs in the bilingual lexicon.

Speakers of English and Dutch vary in how strongly they use various syntactic (e.g., word order, prepositions, case inflection) and semantic (e.g., noun animacy) cues to interpret native language sentences. For example, in simple NVN sentences, English speakers rely heavily on word order, while Dutch speakers rely on case inflection. This paper compares the cue usage of English/Dutch and Dutch/English bilinguals with varying amounts of second language exposure to that of native speaker control groups. For all constructions tested, dative constructions, simple NVN sentences, and relative clauses, it was found that with increasing exposure, cue usage in the second language gradually shifts from that appropriate to the first language to that appropriate to the second. A model of cue learning originally proposed to account for monolingual data is found to be compatible with the learning pattern exhibited by bilinguals.

This cross-linguistic comparison of metalinguistic development in French and English examines early ability to manipulate derivational suffixes in oral language games as a function of chronological age, receptive vocabulary, and year of schooling. Data from judgment and production tasks are presented for children aged between 5 and 8 years in their first, second, or third school year in the United Kingdom and France. The results suggest that metamorphological development is accelerated in French relative to English. The French advantage encompasses knowledge of a broader range of suffixes and a markedly greater facility for generalizing morphological knowledge to novel contexts. These findings are interpreted in relation to the word formation systems of English and French, and the educational context in each country.

An African gray parrot, previously taught by an interactive modeling technique to vocalize labels for several objects and instances of color and shape, was similarly taught to employ the vocalization “want” before an object label so as to discriminate functional “labeling” from “requesting.” The parrot's use of “want” subsequently generalized to novel situations. There was no decrease in the accuracy of labeling ability during training, a problem that arose when nonmodeling techniques were employed with chimpanzees. The results suggest that the procedure might be applicable to intervention programs for humans with specific communicative deficits.

Three studies are reported that deal with individual differences among children in the use of consonants during the early period of phonological development. The findings indicated that (1) children differ in their early phonologies, yet these differences do not extend beyond certain limits, (2) the linguistic environment cannot account for a number of these phonological differences, and (3) such differences are due in part to the fact that children's use of sounds varies considerably with the lexical items being produced. Modifications in theories of child phonology are suggested in order to account for these findings.

This paper examines the role of morphology in gradeschool children's learning to read nonpointed Hebrew. It presents two experiments testing the reading of morphologically based nonpointed pseudowords. One hundred seventy-one Hebrew-speaking children and adolescents in seven age/schooling groups (beginning and end of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 11th grade) and a group of adults participated in the study. Participants were administered two tasks of reading aloud nonpointed pseudowords with morphological composition: words in isolation and words in sentential context. Results pinpoint the developmental milestones on the way to efficient nonpointed word recognition in Hebrew: learning to use morphological pattern cues to fill in missing phonological information, where second grade is an important “watershed” period; and overcoming homography by learning to detect morphosyntactic cues, an ability that develops more gradually and over a longer period than pattern recognition.

Longitudinal case studies of the successive phonological acquisition of two Cantonese–English bilingual children, aged 2;3 to 3;1 years and 2;9 to 3;5 years, are presented. The children were assessed at 4-week intervals. The first assessment of their phonology occurred when they had been exposed to English for three months. Phoneme acquisition and phonological process data revealed that both children had separate phonological systems for the two languages. The two phonological systems for each child developed in similar ways to monolingual children acquiring Cantonese and English. However, a number of error patterns, indicative of disorder in monolingual children, were evident in the children's phonological systems in English and in Cantonese. These patterns have been documented as normal error patterns for successive bilingual Cantonese–English speaking children. The difference between normal successive bilingual phonological development and normal monolingual development is addressed.

This study examined the relationship between morphological awareness and spelling. We show that French children in Grades 3 and 4 appear to use morphological information in spelling; spelling of sounds for which there are several alternatives was more accurate in derived than in nonderived words. The link between morphological awareness and spelling seems to be general, given that morphological awareness correlated with multiple spelling scores, including those that did not involve morphology. Further, the relationship between spelling and morphological awareness seems to be affected by both the developmental level of the child and the phonological structure of the items in the morphological awareness task. We discuss the implications of this research for clarifying the relationship between morphological awareness and spelling.

This study examined learning disabled children's understanding of conversational rules for initiating the repair of a communicative breakdown. Learning disabled and normal children in grades 1 through 8 played the listener role in a referential communication task requiring them to select referents based on messages varying in informational adequacy. Learning disabled children were less likely to request clarification of inadequate messages and, consequently, made fewer correct referent choices than normal children. Only young learning disabled girls were less able than their normal age-mates to appraise message adequacy. Analyses of response latencies and request type also suggest that the failure to request clarification cannot be attributed solely to linguistic deficits. Results are discussed in terms of the relative contributions of syntactic-semantic ability and social knowledge to conversational competence.

Bilingualism is often considered an inappropriate developmental choice for children with specific language impairment (SLI) because, according to a widespread belief, these children's limited capacity for language would be overtaxed by learning two linguistic systems. However, there has not been adequate empirical investigation of SLI in bilingual children to support, or refute, this belief and the professional practices that are based on it. On the theoretical side, two opposing perspectives concerning the nature of the deficit in SLI make different predictions for the outcome of children with SLI learning two languages, and one set of predictions is consistent with the popular belief stated above. This article is aimed at addressing both the applied concerns and the theoretical debate with evidence from two studies examining the morphological acquisition of French–English bilingual children with SLI as compared to French and English monolinguals with SLI.

The authors analyzed 104 language samples, obtained from 42 different normal language learning children at 25, 29, and 35 months of age, for the proportional use of 11 grammatical morphemes: plural -s, possessive 's, progressive -ing, regular and irregular past, and regular and irregular present, as well as the contractible and uncontractible forms of the copula and auxiliary to be. Wide variability was found among the samples in the proportional use of each morpheme, whether the samples were grouped by age or mean length of utterance (MLU). At ages 25 and 29 months, the range of proportional use was over .95 for 9 of the 11 morphemes, and at 35 months, it was .50 or greater for 8. At an MLU level of 2.50–2.99, the range of scores was .90 or greater for 8 of the morphemes, and over .65 for the remaining 3. By MLUs of 4.00 or more, ranges had narrowed but were still .50 or greater for 4 of the morphemes. Rank order of acquisition by MLU level varied somewhat from that previously reported in the literature (e.g., contractible copula was ranked higher and irregular past was ranked lower than has been reported in other studies). Correlations of MLU and morpheme use ranged from .11 to .74, with rho > .60 for only 3 and <.35 for 4 morphemes. Comparisons of these data with those reported in the literature on specifically language-impaired (SLI) children indicated that group means were generally lower for SLI children, but that many of the SLI children's scores overlapped with those of the children studied here.

Letter names bridge the gap between oral and written language among English speaking children. This study examined whether letter names have a similar function in Hebrew. Despite their common historical source, Hebrew letter names differ from English: they are longer and not as regular phonologically. However, they follow the acrophonic principle, unlike many English letter names. Israeli kindergartners, whose mother tongue was Hebrew, were asked to orally provide initial or final letters of spoken words, to spell words in writing, and to select one written word out of two as standing for an oral word. First graders were tested on orally providing the initial letter and spelling. Children were found to rely on letter names in performing all these tasks. They succeeded more in providing the initial letter or in spelling it if the word started with a letter-name sequence, like kaftor (button), which is spelled with k (Kaf). They succeeded more in selecting the correct word between two if the words started with a letter-name sequence. In grade 1 the effects decreased and became limited particularly to phonemes spelled with homophonic letters. Partial letter names (impossible in English) affected performance but to a lesser extent than entire names. Reliance on letter names both facilitated and impaired performance but in different ways than in English. The educational implications are discussed.

The task of all language learners is to match form and meaning. This study investigates the associations of form and meaning in the developing tense and aspect systems of adult learners of English as a second language. A cross-sectional study of 135 learners at six levels of proficiency was conducted using a cloze passage and compositions on the same topic. The interlanguage tense and aspect systems can be characterized as showing high formal accuracy, but relatively lower appropriate use across all levels. During the period when appropriate use lags behind formal accuracy, learners seem to associate form and meaning through alternative interim hypotheses related to lexical aspect and discourse function.

We tested 20 language-impaired children, 20 age-matched normal children, and 20 language-matched normal children. In free recall, children simply remembered as many words possible; in cued recall, the experimenter provided the category names as retrieval cues; in repeated free recall, children recalled the list three times in succession. The principal results were that (1) language-impaired children recalled fewer words than their agemates in both free and cued recall, and (2) the pattern of repeated free recall suggested that language-impaired children were less likely than their agemates to store a word when presented, and were less consistent in their retrieval of words. Our discussion concerns the roles of lexical acquisition and lexical retrieval in language-impaired children's word-finding problems.

In this article, we present data from a longitudinal investigation of the development of language and communicative skills in infants suffering from focal brain injury in the pre- or perinatal period. We focus on phonological analyses of babbling and first words, and parental reports of the use of gestures for communicative purposes, word comprehension, and word production. Results indicate that all children were delayed in the number of gestures they were reported to produce, as well as in reported lexical production. Reported comprehension was also typically well below age level; however, age-appropriate comprehension was observed in one child throughout the period sampled. Phonological analyses revealed both similarities and differences between the early vocalizations of the neurologically involved children and those of the control group. Most notably, the vocalizations of the children with brain injury contained a smaller proportion of “true” consonants at the earliest session. The children who showed an increase in the proportion of consonant production by the third testing session were those who had also begun to produce words by this period. Thus, phonological and lexical developments were both observed during the period studied here, with improvement most evident in children with damage to anterior (as opposed to posterior) brain areas. Lastly, like normally developing children, children with brain injury displayed idiosyncratic patterns of consonant articulation. These tendencies were observed in all vocalizations, both babble and words, suggesting that continuity of consonant place and manner is evident even in the face of general delay in the acquisition of communicative abilities.

The present study addresses a long-standing assumption in the field of applied linguistics: that presenting new second language (L2) vocabulary in semantically grouped sets is an effective method of teaching. Participants learned 32 new L2 labels for concepts from four different semantic categories in either a related or unrelated condition. At test, participants translated words in both translation directions. We found a semantic interference effect both during the encoding of information into memory and during the retrieval of information in translation. We discuss these findings in terms of theoretical models of L2 lexical representation and development, as well as in more practical terms of L2 curriculum design and vocabulary instruction.

An unusual facet of American Sign Language (ASL) is its use of grammaticized facial expression. In this study, we examine the acquisition of conditional sentences in ASL by 14 deaf children (ages 3;3–8;4) of deaf parents. Conditional sentences were chosen because they entail the use of both manual signs and grammaticized non-manual facial expressions. The results indicate that the children first acquire manual conditional signs, e.g., SUPPOSE, before they use the obligatory grammaticized conditional facial expression. Moreover, the children acquire the constellation of obligatory non-manual behaviors component by component, rather than holistically.