This study investigated students' knowledge of derivational morphology and the relationship between this knowledge and their ability to spell derived words. The subjects (fourth, sixth and eighth graders) were given the Wide Range Achievement Test, Spelling subtest, and experimental tests of their ability to generate base and derived forms orally, to spell the same base and derived words, and to apply suffix addition rules. The results indicate strong developmental trends in both the mastery of derivational morphology and the spelling of derived words; however, spelling performances lagged significantly behind the ability to generate the same words. Success generating and spelling derived words depended on the complexity of transformations between base and derived forms. Further, mastery of phonological and orthographic transformations most strongly distinguished the three grades in both spelling and generating derived words. Indications that the older students were using knowledge of morphemic structure in spelling derived words were found in analysis of the spelling of base and derived word pairs and the application of suffix addition rules.

The early evidence pertaining to the development of phonological segmentation abilities and their relation to reading was collected with English-speaking subjects. Although data from other languages have been obtained, explicit cross-language comparisons have not been made. It was considered that since languages vary in their phonological structures, they may also vary in the demands they make on the beginning reader. The present study compared the segmentation abilities of Italian children with those of English-speaking (American) children using the same methods of assessment and the same subject-selection criteria. At the preschool level, though the Italian children manifested a higher level of performance overall, their pattern of performance paralleled that obtained earlier with American children. In both groups, syllable segmentation ability was stronger than phoneme segmentation. After school entrance, this pattern remained unchanged in American children but was reversed in Italian beginning readers. In both language groups, however, phonemic segmentation ability distinguished children of different levels of reading skill. The discrepancies between the language groups were seen as reflecting phonologic and orthographic differences between the languages.

This study was designed to determine whether children's conceptualization of the component sounds in words is influenced by their knowledge of the words' spellings. For example, the spelling of pitch may lead learners to discover the phonetic element [t] in its pronunciation and to conceptualize this as a separate phoneme, whereas the spelling of rich should not. Positive results were obtained in a phonemic segmentation task with real and made-up words taught to fourth graders. Findings are interpreted to show that phonemic segmentation skill may be a consequence of as much as a prerequisite to learning to read words. Results are consistent with a theory of printed word learning in which visual spellings are retained in memory through a sound symbolization process.

Two empirical studies set out to explore the relation between breadth and depth of word knowledge and to link these concepts with language acquisition and frequency of language input. In the first study, the breadth and depth of word knowledge of 50 Dutch monolingual and bilingual kindergartners were investigated using receptive vocabulary, description, and association tasks. The second study examined the relation between the probability of knowing a word and the input frequency of that word in 1,600 Dutch monolingual and bilingual 4- and 7-year-olds. These studies found that there was no conceptual distinction between breadth and depth of vocabulary, and that breadth and depth were affected by the same factors for both monolingual and bilingual speakers. Very high correlations were found between monolingual and bilingual speakers with respect to the probability of knowing a word, which was strongly related to the input frequency in primary education.

It has recently been suggested that the developmental association between nonword repetition performance and vocabulary knowledge reflects the contribution of phonological memory processes to vocabulary acquisition (e.g., Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989). An alternative account of the association is that the child uses existing vocabulary knowledge to support memory for nonwords. The present article tests between these two alternative accounts by evaluating the role of phonological memory and linguistic factors in nonword repetition. In a longitudinal database, repetition accuracy in 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds was found to be sensitive to two independent factors: a phonological memory factor, nonword length, and a linguistic factor, wordlikeness. To explain these combined influences, it is suggested that repeating nonwords involves temporary phonological memory storage which may be supported by either a specific lexical analogy or by an appropriate abstract phonological frame generated from structurally similar vocabulary items.

Three experiments were conducted to compare the development of orthographic representations in children learning to read English, French, or Spanish. Nonsense words that shared both orthography and phonology at the level of the rhyme with real words (cake-dake, comic-bomic), phonology only (cake-daik, comic-bommick), or neither (faish, ricop) were created for each orthography. Experiment I compared English and French children's reading of nonsense words that shared rhyme orthography with real words (dake) with those that did not (daik). Significant facilitation was found for shared rhymes in English, with reduced effects in French. Experiment 2 compared English and French children's reading of nonsense words that shared rhyme phonology with real words (daik) with those that did not (faish). Significant facilitation for shared rhyme phonology was found in both languages. Experiment 3 compared English, French, and Spanish children's reading of nonsense words (dake vs. faish) and found a significant facilitatory effect of orthographic and phonological familiarity for each language. The size of the familiarity effect, however, was much greater in the less transparent orthographies (English and French). These results are interpreted in terms of the level of phonology that is represented in the orthographic recognition units being developed by children who are learning to read more and less transparent orthographies.

Gathercole, Willis, Emslie, and Baddeley (1991) present a reanalysis of some of their earlier data concerned with the relationship between nonword repetition and the development of vocabulary knowledge in young children. In the present article we outline some theoretical differences between ourselves and this group in the interpretation of nonword repetition and discuss how best these differences could be resolved.

Two competing explanations exist regarding the nature of morphological difficulty in adult second language acquisition: competence deficit versus performance deficiency. This study tested these explanations by examining English as a second language (ESL) learners' morphological performance in reading comprehension tasks. Chinese ESL speakers were asked to read English sentences for comprehension in three self-paced word by word reading experiments. Their reading times were measured to determine if they were sensitive to idiosyncrasies/disagreement in sentences that do and do not involve the number morpheme. The results show that they are not sensitive to number disagreement, but sensitive to other idiosyncrasies tested. This insensitivity to the number morpheme suggests that their morphological knowledge is not an integrated part of their automatic second language competence.

This paper investigated the predictive ability of expressive vocabulary size and lexical composition at age 2 on later language and literacy skills from ages 3 through 11. Multivariate analysis of covariance was performed to compare 16 language and literacy outcomes between children with large expressive vocabulary size at 24 months (N = 1,073) and those with smaller expressive vocabulary size. Comparisons between large and small verb size groups as a measure of lexical composition were also conducted. Our findings indicate that, after controlling for gender, birth order, ethnicity and socioeconomic status, total vocabulary size at age 2 can significantly predict subsequent language and literacy achievement up to fifth grade. Moreover, vocabulary size is a better predictor of later language ability than lexical composition.

A recent large-scale study identified a subgroup of children with autism who had a language profile similar to that found among children with specific language impairment (SLI), including difficulties with nonsense word repetition, an ability that has been implicated as one clinical marker for SLI. A second clinical marker for English-speaking children with SLI is high rates of omission of grammatical morphemes that mark tense in obligatory contexts. This study used experimental probes designed to elicit third person and past tense morphology with a large heterogeneous sample of children with autism. The subgroup of children with autism who were language impaired showed high rates of omission of tense marking on the experimental tasks. In addition, some of the children with autism made performance errors that were specific to the autistic population, such as echolalia. These findings further refine the characteristics of language impairment found in a subgroup of children with autism.

This study examines the relationship between the production and perception of English /r/ and /l/ by native Japanese adults learning English in the United States. For some subjects, production of the contrast was more accurate than their perception of it, replicating and extending a previous finding reported by Goto (1971) in Japan. The difficulty in perception of the liquid contrast varied with its position in the word. Prevocalic /r/ and /l/ in consonant clusters yielded the greatest perceptual errors, while word-final liquids were accurately perceived. This pattern of errors is not predictable on the basis of contrastive phonological analysis, but might be the result of acoustic-phonetic factors. Implications for second language pedagogy are discussed.

A number of studies have shown that approximately one-quarter of children in potentially bilingual environments do not become bilingual. This article explores several key factors that influence the likelihood that a child who has access to interactions in two languages will learn them both. The five factors discussed are input, language status, access to literacy, family language use, and community support, including schooling. It is argued that the quantity of input has the greatest effect on whether a minority language will be learned, but language status and attitudes about language also play a role. When families are proactive and provide daily activities for children in the minority language, the children respond by learning it. In addition, dual-immersion, “two-way” schooling is shown to benefit children's level of language proficiency in the minority language without diminishing their progress in the community language.

We examine the use of film subtitles as an approximation of word frequencies in human interactions. Because subtitle files are widely available on the Internet, they may present a fast and easy way to obtain word frequency measures in language registers other than text writing. We compiled a corpus of 52 million French words, coming from a variety of films. Frequency measures based on this corpus compared well to other spoken and written frequency measures, and explained variance in lexical decision times in addition to what is accounted for by the available French written frequency measures.

This study compared monosyllabic word recognition in quiet, noise, and noise with reverberation for 15 monolingual American English speakers and 12 Spanish–English bilinguals who had learned English prior to 6 years of age and spoke English without a noticeable foreign accent. Significantly poorer word recognition scores were obtained for the bilingual listeners than for the monolingual listeners under conditions of noise and noise with reverberation, but not in quiet. Although bilinguals with little or no foreign accent in their second language are often assumed by their peers, or their clinicians in the case of hearing loss, to be identical in perceptual abilities to monolinguals, the present data suggest that they may have greater difficulty in recognizing words in noisy or reverberant listening environments.

Tasks of speeded naming, phonological awareness, word identification, nonsense word repetition, and vocabulary, along with two measures of morphological awareness (morphological structure awareness and morpheme identification), were administered to 115 kindergartners and 105 second graders. In the combined sample, 48% of the variance in vocabulary knowledge was predicted by the phonological processing and reading variables. Morphological structure awareness and morpheme identification together predicted an additional unique 10% of variance in vocabulary knowledge, for a total of 58% of the variance explained; both measures of morphological awareness were uniquely associated with vocabulary knowledge. Results underscore the potential importance of different facets of morphological awareness, as distinct from phonological processing skills, for understanding variability in early vocabulary acquisition.

This paper reports on an experiment investigating the acquisition of Spanish, a language that has a gender feature for nouns and gender agreement for determiners and adjectives, by speakers of a first language (L1) that also has gender (French), as well as an L1 that does not (English). Number (present in all three languages) is also investigated. Subjects were adult learners of Spanish, at three levels of proficiency, as well as a control group of native speakers. Oral production data were elicited. Subjects were also tested on an interpretation task, in which the selection of pictures corresponding to particular sentences depends on number and gender contrasts. The results from both tasks show significant effects for proficiency; low proficiency groups differ significantly from native speakers, but advanced and intermediate groups do not. There were no significant effects for L1 or for prior exposure to another second language with gender. The findings are discussed in the context of two different theories as to the possibility of parameter resetting in nonnative acquisition, namely, the failed functional features hypothesis and the full transfer full access hypothesis. The results are consistent with the latter hypothesis.

To examine possible explanations of the reported inaccuracies of children with specific language impairment (SLI) on nonword repetition, we compared the repetitions of 54 children with SLI and their peers in terms of number and type of error as well as latency and duration of response. We found no evidence of differences between the groups in auditory discrimination or response processes, but we did find some evidence suggesting differences in either the formation or storage of phonological representations in working memory. Because repetition accuracy was significantly correlated with expressive, but not receptive, measures of language, we hypothesized that the problem lay with the nature of phonological representations in working memory and not with the ability to hold phonological information in working memory.

Ten native Chinese-speaking children and adolescents who immigrated to the United States between ages 5 and 16 were studied for 3 years. The changes in their language preferences, language environments, and proficiency in English, their second language (L2), as well as Chinese, their first language (L1), were measured quantitatively and qualitatively. Participants with arrival ages of 9 or younger switched their language preference from L1 to L2 within the first year, were exposed to a significantly richer L2 than L1 environment, and became more proficient in L2 than in L1. The older participants maintained their preference for L1 across the 3 years, were exposed to a significantly richer L1 than L2 environment, and maintained L1 as the more proficient language. Interactions among L1 proficiency, peer interactions, social abilities, and cultural preferences jointly influenced the dominant language switch or maintenance processes.

For the monolingual population, research has shown that vocabulary knowledge is closely related to reading achievement. However, the role of vocabulary has not been studied as extensively in the bilingual population. It is important to look at vocabulary to better understand reading achievement in the bilingual population in the United States. This study investigated the predictors of Spanish and English vocabulary for 96 fifth-grade Latino English language learners. Our results suggest that becoming or staying proficient in English did not require parental use of English in the home. However, proficiency in Spanish required both instructional support at school and social support at home; it is likely that the low social status of Spanish is related to its greater dependence on home support.

This study investigated narrative abilities and their relation to theory of mind in autistic and mentally retarded subjects, who were matched for their linguistic competence on standardized measures of comprehension and production. We asked 27 autistic, 27 mentally retarded, and 17 normal subjects (whose age range matched the verbal mental age ranges of the developmentally disordered groups) to tell the story from a wordless picture book. Following their spontaneous narratives, a set of probe questions was asked about the story characters' feeling states. The autistic and mentally retarded subjects were also given a standard test of false belief. The main findings were that, when closely matched on language ability, no significant group differences were found on measures of narrative length, use of lexical cohesion devices, and mental state terms. On the probed questions, the autistic and mentally retarded subjects gave fewer appropriate emotion responses than the normal subjects, and the autistic subjects had difficulty explaining the emotional states correctly. For the autistic sample, the narrative measures were significantly correlated with performance on the theory of mind task. The findings are interpreted in terms of the contributions of both linguistic and social–cognitive factors in narrative ability.