bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Comprehension of grammatically modified and nonmodified sentences by second language learners
Authors: Issidorides Diana C. , Hulstijn Jan H.
Published: December 2008

At issue in the present research is whether native speakers' “simplified” or modified utterances, as in foreigner-talk (FT), actually facilitate comprehension for nonnative speakers hearing such utterances. It was hypothesized that (grammatical) Dutch inversion sentences (AdvVSO) that have proven to be problematic in studies on Dutch second language (L2) acquisition - as reflected both in the (ungrammatical) output of L2 learners and in the (ungrammatical) FT input to L2 learners - would not be problematic in terms of comprehension, when compared with modified, ungrammatical AdvSVO and AdvSOV sentences, as long as such sentences do not express an implausible state of affairs. Three subject groups participated in the experiment: 20 English and 22 Turkish L2 learners of Dutch and 30 Dutch native speakers (control group). Subjects heard and interpreted declarative Dutch sentences, in which word order (NVN, VNN, NNV) and animacy configurations (Al [i.e., animate/inanimate], AA, LA) were systematically manipulated. Subjects had to name the noun (first or second) that functions as actor/subject of the sentence. Positive evidence was found for the hypotheses. It is concluded from the present study, as well as from a previous study (Issidorides, 1988), that linguistically more complex input will not necessarily impede comprehension. The fact that normative speakers have difficulties in producing a certain grammatical structure (e.g., the AdvVSO structure) does not imply that such a structure is also more difficult to understand in the speech of others.
Is there a comprehension problem for children who speak nonstandard English? A study of children with Hawaiian-English backgrounds
Authors: Speidel Gisela E. , Tharp Roland G. , Kobayashi Linda
Published: December 2008

Students speaking Hawaiian-English may have difficulty understanding the information presented in the classroom and thereby have less success at school. Children from standard English-speaking backgrounds and from Hawaiian-English-speaking backgrounds were randomly assigned to one of six listening conditions. The conditions consisted of the same selections, but the selections were either in standard English, standard English with Hawaiian pronunciation, or Hawaiian-English. Each of these three versions, in turn, had a simple or a complex syntax version. The semantic content remained constant over all conditions. There was no difference between Hawaiian-English and standard English groups when all comprehension conditions were considered, indicating that the two groups of children did not differ in comprehension ability. However, Hawaiian-English children gave more correct answers when the selections were in their dialect than in standard, while standard English children tended to give more correct answers when the selections were in standard rather than in Hawaiian-English. Contrary to expectations, use of simple syntax and use of Hawaiian-English pronunciation did not facilitate comprehension of standard English by Hawaiian-English children. Implications for educational accommodations will be discussed.
Defense of the syntactic deficit hypothesis: A reply to Goodluck
Authors: Stein Cecile L. , Zurif Edgar B. , Cairns Helen S.
Published: December 2008

At the outset we wish to thank the editors of Applied Psycholinguistics for inviting us to reply to Goodluck's criticisms of our paper, “Sentence Comprehension Limitations Related to Syntactic Deficits in Reading Disabled Children” (Vol. 5, No. 4). Our response can be summarized in two points: First, the theoretical questions raised by Goodluck are largely unresolved and premature. Second, and most important, is the point that however the theoretical issues are ultimately resolved, one of the basic conclusions of the Stein, Cairns, and Zurif article remains unassailed – viz., that the interpretation of temporal complement constructions in English reveals a deficit in the grammatical System of some reading disabled children. This note will bear an organization analogous to that of Goodluck.
Productive phonology and phonological awareness in preschool children
Authors: Webster Penelope E. , Plante Amy Solomon
Published: December 2008

This article reports on a longitudinal examination of the relationship between productive phonological ability and phonological awareness in children under 6 years of age. This study followed 45 subjects with variant productive phonology levels from the mean age of 3;6 to 6;0. The Khan-Lewis Phonological Analysis (KLPA) (Khan & Lewis, 1976), which ranks children from 0 to 4 on phonological process usage, was given at 6-month intervals, along with two measures of phonological awareness. Logit analysis showed that children with poor productive phonology, as measured by process usage, had a lower probability of meeting criterion on both of the phonological awareness measures. Further, a change in KLPA rank from poor to good speech predicted significant exponential increases in the probability of success on the two dependent variables. We concluded that, as a child matures in productive phonology, accompanying exponential growth in phonological awareness occurs.
Semantic influences on pronoun assignment in aphasia
Authors: Grober Ellen , Kellar Lucia
Published: December 2008

Semantic factors affecting pronoun assignment were studied in a group of aphasie patients. Their ability to assign reference in sentences of the type John telephoned Bill because he needed some information was facilitated by the causal bias of the main verb known to influence the direction of pronoun assignment in normal speakers. The addition of gender constraints (e.g., John telephoned Sue because he needed some information) improved their performance as well. Explicit mention of the referent's name (e.g., John telephoned Bill because John needed some information) did not improve performance any more than did the addition of gender constraints. When these cues were eliminated so that pronoun assignment required a full syntactic analysis, their performance dropped to chance.
Interrelationships among text elements in fictional prose
Authors: Stanners Robert F. , Price James M. , Painton Scott
Published: December 2008

The present study employed a concept comparison method to investigate the memory representation of concept interrelationships produced by reading an O. Henry short story. Readers rated all pairings of characters and locations from the story on the basis of how closely the text elements were interpreted as being connected. The interrelationships among the characters and locations were generated by multidimensional scaling. The scaling solution contained the temporal dimension of the story as well as groupings of characters and locations very similar to the groupings in the story. In the first experiment instructional set was found to affect specific interrelationships among the plot elements rather than the overall pattern. In the second experiment a 21-day retention interval produced an effect on the overall structure of the interrelationships.
Speech perception and frequency discrimination in good and poor readers
Authors: De Weirdt Willy
Published: December 2008

The relation between speech perception and reading ability was investigated. Identification and discrimination tests with stimuli on a stop consonant place of articulation continuum (/PA/-/IA/) were presented to various groups of good and poor readers (normal first graders on a reading continuum in Study 1, moderately and severely dyslexic and high- and low-achieving normal children in Study 2). In both studies, reading-related perception differences were especially marked in a comparison of actual and predicted (from identification test) discrimination scores, suggesting that the poor readers have special difficulty with a discrimination-specific task demand. In Study 3, reading-group differences still show up if the stimulus pairs of the discrimination test are simply to be repeated (eliminating the similarity judgment factors), and are also very pronounced on a nonspeech discrimination test (with 130 ms pure tones of slightly different frequencies). In Studies 1 and 3 identification slope and phoneme boundary differences between reader groups were found as well. Though these results do not definitely prove the auditory perception hypothesis, they support it. The conditions that should be satisfied by auditory perception tasks in future reading acquisition research are briefly discussed.
Comprehension process of second language indirect requests
Authors: Takahashi Satomi , Roitblat Herbert L.
Published: December 2008

This study examined the comprehension of English conventional indirect requests by native English speakers and Japanese learners of English. Subjects read stories inducing either a conventional or a literal interpretation of a priming sentence. Reading speeds did not vary as a function of the interpretation. Subsequent target sentences that paraphrased either the literal or the conventional interpretation of the prime sentence were read more quickly when they paraphrased a conventional interpretation of the sentence than when they paraphrased a literal interpretation. Target sentences were also read more quickly if they paraphrased the interpretation induced by the context than if they did not match. The results suggest that both native and nonnative speakers process both meanings of an ambiguous conventional request.
Computer-aided conversation: A prototype system for nonspeaking people with physical disabilities
Authors: Todman John , Alm Norman , Elder Leona
Published: December 2008

This article describes the development, use, and initial evaluation of a prototype computer system to enable nonspeaking persons with severe disabilities to engage in conversation on broad topics. The conversational aid produced (via a voice synthesizer) speech acts that were selected from a prestored menu, which was constructed by the user. Features of the system included facilities for switching the conversational perspective between the speaker and listener (i.e., “your experiences and views” vs. “my experiences and views”), providing a range of comments on what the other speaker had said, effecting repair when there was a conversational breakdown, and following predicted sequences of speech acts. The initial trials of the system produced dialogues that proceeded in a natural way and achieved encouraging conversational rates.
Distinctions between two phonological output deficits
Authors: Kohn Susan E. , Smith Katherine L.
Published: December 2008

Two aphasics with a similar level of phonological production difficulty are compared to distinguish the properties of disruption to two stages in the phonological system for producing single words: activation of stored lexical-phonological representations versus construction of phonemic representations. A set of distinguishing behavioral features for breakdown at each stage is generated on the basis of a model of single word production. Important variables for analyzing output include: (a) the unit of phonological encoding (morpheme versus syllable), (b) the phonemic relationship between targets and responses, (c) the effects of target consonant-vowel (CV) structure, and (d) the level of pseudoword production. On a set of production tests, the expected behavioral pattern for impaired lexical-phonological activation was displayed by LW, while the expected behavioral pattern for impaired phonemic planning was displayed by CM.
First language acquisition in a second language submersion environment
Authors: Verhoeven Ludo Th. , Boeschoten Hendrik E.
Published: December 2008

In the present paper a linguistic description is given of the process of first language acquisition of Turkish children aged 4 to 8 in a Dutch submersion environment in the Netherlands. On the basis of the assumption that language development involves the acquisition of distinct subskills in differential patternings, the development of lexical, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic abilities have been investigated separately. Furthermore, these longitudinal data are compared with cross-sectional language data of five- and seven-year-old children in Turkey. This comparison was made in order to be able to interpret whether the Turkish language skills of native Turkish-speaking children in the Netherlands were showing delay, stagnation, or attrition of skills. The overall results suggest that in the age range of 4 to 8 years the acquisition of first language skills by Turkish children in the Netherlands can best be characterized as stagnated.
Characteristics of words determining how easily they will be translated into a second language
Authors: Murray David J.
Published: December 2008

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that variables such as word frequency, which are known to affect semantic memory, would have more influence on how quickly words were translated from English to French, or vice versa, than would variables such as imagery, which are known to affect episodic memory.

Students whose second language was French were presented with 145 words, with instructions that they translate them into French. Measures of accuracy and reaction time were taken. French-English translation of the same words was also investigated. Seventeen other characteristics of these words were also known from previous surveys. The results of a multiple regression analysis and a factor analysis indicated that translation efficiency was most strongly influenced by the frequency of the word in the language, its familiarity, and the similarity of the French equivalent to the English word. Variables such as emotionality and imagery, known to influence retrieval in episodic memory paradigms, had little influence on translation time.
The case of total deafness II: Phrasing in the prelinguistic vocalizations of a child with congenital absence of cochleas
Authors: Lynch Michael P.
Published: December 2008

Recent work has suggested that phrasing occurs in prelinguistic vocalizations, and that audition significantly influences prelinguistic vocal development. The present report is about the continuing study of a child who is referred to as congenitally acochlear because he was born with complete bilateral absence of cochleas. The only prior report on the vocal development of an acochlear child was provided in a previous article in this journal about the present subject (Lynch, Oiler, & Steffens, 1989). Because this child was not producing meaningful speech during the 27 to 42 months of age in which he was studied, investigation of him provided a unique opportunity to observe prelinguistic vocal development in the complete absence of auditory information. In the prior study of the acochlear child, the analytical focus was on developmental changes in relations between his syllable characteristics and those of mature speech. In the present study, the analytical focus was on a recently introduced approach to the study of prelinguistic vocalizations involving the description of syllable groupings within a prosodic hierarchy. Adult judges identified a hierarchy of syllables embedded within utterances and utterances embedded within prelinguistic phrases in the acochlear child's vocalizations. Similar to the prelinguistic phrases of typically developing infants and infants with Down syndrome previously reported on (Lynch, Oller, Steffens, & Buder, 1995), the present child's prelinguistic phrases were characterized by a systematic lengthening of phrase-final syllables and cohesive temporal patterning. In addition, the durations of the acochlear child's prelinguistic phrases were similar to those of typically developing infants. However, in contrast with those of typically developing infants and infants with Down syndrome, the durational features of the prelinguistic phrases of the acochlear child were relatively unstable across development. Overall, the results indicate that audition is not necessary for the formation of prelinguistic phrasing, but hearing does influence certain aspects of prelinguistic phrasing. Based on the data obtained on this subject, typically developing infants, and infants with Down syndrome, essential characteristics of well-formed prelinguistic phrases are proposed. These are termed “canonical” phrases; their production and development may be important in the acquisition of meaningful speech.
Voiced stop spiratization in the ESL speech of native speakers of Spanish
Authors: Zampini Mary L.
Published: December 2008

This study examines the role that voiced stop spirantization plays in the acquisition of English/b d g/ and /dgr;/ by native Spanish speakers. The results of a data-based experiment show that accuracy in English pronunciation is hindered by native language transfer, including the transfer of spirantization and LI syllable structure constraints. Furthermore, the suppression of spirantization is not achieved at an equal rate for all voiced stops: /d/ is spirantized the least often. It is proposed that the phonemic value of /δ/ in English contributes to this disparity. An examination of the L2 pronunciation of /δ/ further reveals that learners do not assign phonemic status to /δ/ in all contexts; it is acquired in postvocalic position first and only more gradually acquired elsewhere.
Toward understanding the problem in severely disabled readers Part II: Consonant errors
Authors: Werker Janet F. , Bryson Susan E. , Wassenberg Karen
Published: December 2008

The present research was designed to systematically examine consonant errors made by severely disabled readers in an attempt to clarify the nature of their underlying disability. In our first study, three groups of disabled readers were compared to both age- and reading-level matched controls on their performance reading a list of 96 one-syllable nonsense words. As predicted, subjects in all five groups made many more phonetic feature substitutions than orientation reversal substitutions. This is consistent with previous work indicating that reading errors typically result from linguistic- rather than visual-processing difficulties. Further, subjects from all three reading disabled groups, but not from the control groups, made more consonant addition errors than any other error type. A qualitative, post-hoc analysis of the errors suggested that these additions were quite systematic for the reading disabled subjects. The second study was designed as a replication and extension of the first. Results were consistent with those obtained in Study 1. These results are discussed with reference to the possible underlying cause(s) of severe reading disability.
Literate discourse and cognitive organization: Some relations between parents' talk and 3-year-olds' thought
Authors: Watson Rita
Published: December 2008

Implicit in much work on literate discourse and its consequences is the question of what relation exists between forms of discourse and cognitive organization. The focus of this article is the relation between specific features of literate discourse and paradigmatic organization in children's thought. Nineteen parent–child dyads were videotaped during bookreading when the child was 2½ years old. Three levels of object labels and reference to propositional attitudes were coded in parents' talk during bookreading episodes with their children. Three measures of paradigmatic organization in the child's thought were obtained at age 3½. The features of parents' talk were then correlated with measures of the child's thought. A significant correlation was found between superordinate level labels in parents' talk and all three measures of children's paradigmatic organization, but basic and subordinate level labels were not correlated. Parents' use of cognitive verbs and verbs referring to labeling and interpretation were also correlated with children's paradigmatic organization. The results are interpreted as indicating situation-specific organizational preferences in talk and thought.
Describing developing phonological systems: A surrebuttal
Authors: Gierut Judith A.
Published: December 2008

This article refutes the reanalysis of a phonologically disordered child's use of fricatives as developed by Fey (1989) within a relational framework. Evidence in the form of nonsystematic correspondences between this child's substitution patterns and the target sound system is used to further establish the accuracy of the original independent generative analysis developed by Gierut (1986). This evidence supplements and supports the initial claims that this child exhibited a pattern of complementary distribution among the fricatives [f] and [s] and, moreover, the remediation program successfully induced a phonemic split.
Recognition of isolated words: The dynamics of cohort reduction
Authors: Wayland Sarah C. , Wingfield Arthur , Goodglass Harold
Published: December 2008

In the experiment reported here, subjects heard the beginnings of spoken words, followed by increasingly larger segments of word-onset information until the words could be correctly identified. The likelihood of word identification at any given point was found to be an inverse power function of the number of words in a dictionary count that began with the same sounds as the stimulus. Subjects' prerecognition responses consisted of words drawn from a wide range of word frequencies. The variance in frequency decreased with increasing amounts of word-onset information. Results are discussed in terms of word-initial phonology as a trigger for response activation.
Effects of reading skill on component spelling skills
Authors: Bruck Maggie , Waters Gloria
Published: December 2008

This study examined the influence of reading experience on the development of component spelling skills. Three groups of sixth-grade children were identified – good readers-good spellers (Good), good readers-poor spellers (Mixed), and poor readers-poor spellers (Poor). The children completed three different spelling tasks that assessed component spelling skills involving the use and knowledge of sound-spelling, orthographic, morphological, and visual information. Good subjects performed consistently better than Mixed and Poor subjects. Mixed and Poor subjects did not differ on measures requiring use and knowledge of sound-spelling, orthographic, and visual information. Mixed subjects performed better than Poor subjects on measures assessing use and knowledge of morphological information. It is suggested that, as a result of their greater experience with print, Mixed subjects have better knowledge of some of the linguistic, but not the visual, characteristics of words.
A phonological exploration of oral reading errors
Authors: Mościcki Eve K. , Tallal Paula
Published: December 2008

Younger readers, mean age 6;11, and older readers, mean age 8;7, matched on IQ and SES, read 18 consonant phonemes embedded in nonsense CVCs. Results indicated that (a) within groups, younger readers made significantly more errors on digraphs than graphs; (b) younger readers made significantly more errors on graphs in the final position; (c) there was no position effect for either group in reading digraphs. Analysis of errors based on the number of distinctive features shared within stimulus-response pairs revealed that (a) on graphs, both groups made significantly more errors that shared two distinctive features; (b) on digraphs, the majority of errors for younger readers shared one distinctive feature; (c) the predominant strategy on digraphs for both groups was to read one letter. These findings demonstrate that most oral reading errors produced by beginning readers are not random, but rather are systematically related to the stimulus.
Patterns in verb use by preschoolers with normal language and specific language impairment
Authors: Kelly Donna J.
Published: December 2008

Preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) and two groups of children developing language normally (age-equivalent and MLU-equivalent) described motion and change-ofstate scenes while viewing a video program in a controlled experimental setting.Patterns of verb use were then analyzed across the three groups of children. Two findings were of particular interest. First, while the children with SLI relied heavily on the use of general all-purpose (GAP) verbs while describing the video scenes, the normally developing children produced an even higher percentage of CAP verbs. Second, the children with SLI made significantly more semantic errors in verb use. Unlike the normally developing children, the children with SLI were much more likely to produce a change-of-state verb. Hence, they produced cross-domain errors for motion-eliciting scenes (e.g., a moving figure was said to be “cracking” or “changing color”) and within-domain errors for change-of-state-eliciting scenes (e.g., a figure changing shape was said to be “changing to green”).
A method for measuring the attrition of communicative competence: A pilot study with Spanish L3 subjects
Authors: Nakuma Constancio
Published: December 2008

This article introduces, illustrates, and discusses a method for measuring the attrition of communicative competence using data from spontaneous, freestyle, multiperson conversations. The illustration is based on speech production data of Spanish L3 subjects' from Ghana. The method involves the creation of a multiple-factor (composite) index using defined temporal variables, frequency counts of selected verbal behaviors, and grammatical information; it can be used to measure either the rate of attrition or its reverse, which, for lack of a better term, is called the “accumulation of competence.”
Phonological translation in bilingual and monolingual children
Authors: Oller D. Kimbrough , Cobo-Lewis Alan B. , Eilers Rebecca E.
Published: December 2008

Bilingual children face a variety of challenges that their monolingual peers do not. For instance, switching between languages requires the phonological translation of proper names, a skill that requires mapping the phonemic units of one language onto the phonemic units of the other. Proficiency of phonological awareness has been linked to reading success, but little information is available about phonological awareness across multiple phonologies. Furthermore, the relationship between this kind of phonological awareness and reading has never been addressed. The current study investigated phonological translation using a task designed to measure children's ability to map one phonological system onto another. A total of 425 kindergarten and second grade monolingual and bilingual students were evaluated. The results suggest that monolinguals generally performed poorly. Bilinguals translated real names more accurately than fictitious names, in both directions. Correlations between phonological translation and measures of reading ability were moderate, but reliable. Phonological translation is proposed as a tool with which to evaluate phonological awareness through the perspective of children who live with two languages and two attendant phonemic systems.
Visual and phonological processes in poor readers' word recognition
Authors: Assink Egbert , Lam Merel , Knuijt Paul
Published: December 2008

In two experiments, poor and normal Dutch readers, matched for reading age, were presented with visual matching tasks on a computer screen. In Experiment 1, word and pseudoword letter strings were used. The strings consisted of either uppercase/lowercase congruent (e.g., o/O) or uppercase/lowercase incongruent letters (e.g., a/A). Poor readers needed significantly more time to decode uppercase/lowercase incongruent pairs, especially when the pairs consisted of pseudowords. Experiment 2 investigated whether this effect was phonologically or visually mediated. Strings of letters, digit strings, and abstract figure symbols were used. Letter strings included words, pseudowords, and nonwords. Poor readers needed more time to match incongruent letter case pairs, consistent with Experiment 1. Poor readers performed more poorly on letter and digit string matching but not on the figure–symbol matching task. No evidence was found for the differential use of orthographic information in terms of multiletter constraints. The combined data on the letter, digit, and graphic symbol matching experiments suggest that an inadequate command of grapheme–phoneme associations is a critical factor in reading disability. Evidence for poor visual processing as an independent source of reading disability could not be established.
Spelling skills of children in whole language and phonics classrooms
Authors: Bruck Maggie , Treiman Rebecca , Caravolas Marketa , Genesee Fred , Cassar Marie
Published: December 2008

The spelling skills of grade 3 children who had received whole language instruction since they began to learn to read were compared with those of grade 3 children attending a phonics program. The children were asked to spell a list of words and nonwords. Overall, the phonics group produced more accurate word spellings than the whole language group. In addition, the phonics children's spellings of nonwords included more conventional, phonologically accurate patterns. There were no group differences on measures of orthographic acceptability or on preservation of skeletal structure.
Maternal sensitivity to vocabulary development in specific language-impaired and language-normal preschoolers
Authors: Evans Mary Ann , Wodar Susanne
Published: December 2008

This study examined mothers' accuracy in predicting the responses their children gave and the scores they achieved on two standardized vocabulary tests. Three groups of 16 mothers and their preschool children (specific language-impaired; age-matched, language-normal; and younger, language-matched, language-normal) completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Mothers overestimated their children's standardized receptive and expressive scores, with the exception that the mothers' estimates of the receptive vocabulary scores for language-impaired children did not differ from the actual test scores. Mothers of age-matched normals were best able to predict the labels their children used to name various pictured items. However, the overall estimates by mothers of language-impaired children were more accurate than those by mothers of language-normal children.
The influence of contextual information on the resolution of ambiguous pronouns by younger and older adults
Authors: Leonard Carol L. , Waters Gloria S. , Caplan David
Published: December 2008

Two experiments were conducted with the purpose of investigating possible age effects on the abilities of older and younger adults to use contextual information to resolve ambiguous pronouns. In both experiments, subjects were presented with pairs of sentences (a leading sentence followed by a pronominal sentence) and were required to indicate the referent of the ambiguous pronoun. In both experiments, the older adults responded more slowly and were less accurate than the younger adults. However, both groups of subjects were equally influenced by the contextual information available, which was located in the leading sentence to aid in the resolution of the pronouns. Older adults did not demonstrate a specific impairment in the ability to use contextual information to resolve ambiguous pronouns. Nevertheless, agerelated difficulties in resolving pronouns may emerge, possibly as a function of an underspecified discourse model.
Valency, secondary frequency, and lexical access: A Japanese study
Authors: Yamada Jun , Kayamoto Yuriko
Published: December 2008

This study examines the effect of valency (defined as the associative value that represents the number of two-kanji words containing in first or second position the first-positional kanji of the word) on the recognition of two-kanji words in Japanese. Lexical decisions were 24 ms faster for words in the high-valency condition than in the low-valency condition, but were 26 ms slower for nonwords in the high-valency condition than in the low-valency condition. While these results suggested a significant interaction between valency and wordness, a regression analysis indicated that the frequency and valency of the first constituent kanji are significant factors for word recognition, and that the frequency of the first constituent kanji is a significant factor for nonword recognition. The secondary-frequency effect hypothesis is put forth to explain the effects of valency and other variables on lexical decision time.
Toward operationalizing the process of attention in SLA: Evidence for Tomlin and Villa's (1994) finegrained analysis of attention
Authors: Leow Ronald P.
Published: December 2008

This study investigates, from a task-based approach and at a morphological level, Tomlin and Villa's (1994) fine-grained analysis of attention in second language acquisition. Four groups of beginning learners of Spanish completed one of four crossword puzzles designed to isolate the effects of alertness, orientation, and detection. Repeated-measures ANOVAs performed on the raw scores obtained on the pretest and three posttests of a recognition and written production task revealed significant main effects for type of attentional function, time, and significant interactions. The results lend strong empirical support to Tomlin and Villa's (1994) fine-grained analysis of attention while indicating short-term effects of detection.
Bilingual memory research: From storage to processing issues
Authors: Hummel Kirsten M.
Published: December 2008

A review is offered of various bilingual memory studies that have been carried out during the past quarter century. The vast majority of these studies have employed lexical items as the investigative tool, tested outside of a grammatical or semantic context. Some of the major limitations of such lexical studies are discussed. A number of arguments are provided to support the trend in recent studies to examine bilingual memory within the framework of contextualized language units. In contrast to the earlier lexical studies, which largely focused on storage issues, the more recent studies tend to examine issues concerned with lexical access and processing of the bilingual's two linguistic codes. It is argued that studies employing contextualized linguistic units are more reflective of natural language processing.
Beyond zebra: Preschoolers' knowledge about letters
Authors: Treiman Rebecca , Tincoff Ruth , Richmond-Welty E. Daylene
Published: December 2008

Children in the United States and in other English-speaking countries often learn a good deal about letters before they begin formal reading instruction. We suggest that one important and previously unrecognized type of knowledge about letters is knowledge of the phonological structure of the letters' names. In two experiments, preschoolers with a mean age of 4;8 judged whether various syllables were letters. The children made significantly more false positive responses to syllables such as /fi/, which have a phonological structure shared by a number of letters, than to syllables such as /fa/ and /if/, which sound less like real letters. This was true even for children who could recite the alphabet without error. Learning the alphabet, we conclude, forms the basis for generalizations about the structure of letter names.
Linguistic transfer and the use of context by Spanish-English bilinguals
Authors: Nagy William E. , Mcclure Erica F. , Mir Montserrat
Published: December 2008

In this study, Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals used brief English contexts to choose among possible meanings for unfamiliar words. Two types of errors were compared: transfer errors, which were answers consistent with Spanish, but not English, syntax, and nontransfer errors, which were inconsistent with the syntax of both languages. Nontransfer errors were found to be negatively correlated with reading proficiency in both Spanish and English. Transfer errors, on the other hand, were positively correlated with reading proficiency in Spanish and were unrelated to reading proficiency in English.
Measurement of deceptive voices: Comparing acoustic and perceptual data
Authors: Rockwell Patricia , Buller David B. , Burgoon Judee K.
Published: December 2008

This study compared vocal features of deception that can be measured by acoustic equipment with vocal features of deception that can be measured perceptually by human coders. As deception researchers have traditionally measured vocal behavior with either acoustic or perceptual methods (but not both), it is uncertain what correspondence, if any, exists between these methods. This study attempted to determine the degree of this correspondence. Deceptive interactions from an earlier study (Burgoon, Buller, Ebesu, & Rockwell, 1994) were used to conduct a detailed analysis of the vocal features of deceptive speech. The vocal samples were analyzed perceptually and acoustically. Results indicated moderate correlations between some acoustic and perceptual variables; neither measurement type, however, proved conclusively superior to the other in discriminating between truth and deception.
The Venetian privilege and music-printing in the sixteenth century
Authors: Agee Richard J.
Published: December 2008

Any scholar involved in the study of sixteenth-century music printed in Venice is bound to be familiar with the phrase ‘con gratia et privilegio’; yet within the framework of music-printing as a whole, the uses and significance of the printing privilege have remained somewhat obscure. The Venetian prints on which the privilege indication appears now lie scattered across the globe, but Venice continues to guard part of her brilliant past – the archives of the Serenissima Repubblica still yield documents which clarify our understanding of the production and protection of prints during the Cinquecento.
New sources of English fourteenth- and fifteenth-century polyphony
Authors: Bowers Roger , Wathey Andrew
Published: December 2008

Recent years have witnessed a steady flow of newly discovered sources of late-medieval English sacred music. These have served both to document familiar repertories and practices more fully, and also to establish the identity and character of those that are more peripheral and idiosyncratic. Five of these new sources are described here. Four contribute to the hitherto relatively poorly represented indigenous sources and repertories of Mass music of the middle and the second half of the fifteenth century; one, Lincoln Cathedral MS 52, supplements the known body of fourteenth-century polytextual music.
The mystical music of Jean Gerson
Authors: Irwin Joyce L.
Published: December 2008

With some justification musicologists have virtually ignored the group of writings by the Parisian chancellor Jean Gerson (1363–1429) entitled De canticis. The title notwithstanding, these three treatises, written between 1423 and 1426, provide much more commentary on the affects of the soul than on the effects of the vocal cords. Gerson, a reform-minded mystical theologian active at the Council of Constance, had no intention of becoming a music theorist; at times in these treatises he explicitly precludes any explanation of technical musical terms. Though many such terms are used, the reader is presumed to understand their literal meaning. It is the allegorical meaning that Gerson purports to explicate. Indeed the allegorical level is the most appropriate one for treating musical instruments, for the organ is virtually the only instrument from biblical times that was still used in late-medieval churches. Yet by the fifteenth century the treatment of instruments as symbols of states of the soul had long been commonplace, and Gerson fails to arouse new interest. Even less attractive to the modern reader is the spiritualisation of Guido's hexachord. By deleting one of the As (by changing fa to mi in mutation from soft to hard hexachords), the six syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la can be reduced to the five vowels A, E, I, O, U, which in turn signify the five primary affections or emotions: joy, hope, compassion, fear, sorrow.
European politics and the distribution of music in the early fifteenth century
Authors: Strohm Reinhard
Published: December 2008

Early-fifteenth-century music seems to be different from that of previous ages not only in that it contains new stylistic elements, but also in the way in which its novelty was brought about. Perotinus composed in a more advanced style than Leoninus, Philippe de Vitry superseded Petrus de Cruce: in such cases a renewal takes place within a tradition, or even a ‘school’, which may be unrelated to the state of music-making in other areas. The novelties introduced in the music of certain centres (which were emphasised by the musicians who belonged to these centres), could then spread to other areas and affect more traditionally minded musicians elsewhere. A distinction between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, between ‘creation’ and ‘distribution’ can be suggested, although it may have to be modified by assuming polycentrism, that is, several centres, and several networks of distribution.
A central European repertory in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14274
Authors: Ward Tom R.
Published: December 2008

Codex latinus monacensis 14274 of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, the so-called St Emmeram codex, has been well known to musicologists since its discovery and description by Karl Dèzes in the late 1920s. Since Dèzes's very perceptive study, however, its contents have been explored only insofar as individual pieces were related to a particular task: the study of another manuscript, the preparation of an edition, or the exploration of a genre. In this way much has been learned about the works of major composers such as Dufay and Dunstaple and the manuscript has been seen as similar in many ways to other contemporaneous manuscripts in its presentation of a collection of works by major continental and English composers within a context of music of its more immediate surroundings. These more immediate surroundings, the place of origin of the manuscript, have yet to be securely established.
Music, ritual and patronage at the Church of Our Lady, Antwerp
Authors: Forney Kristine K.
Published: December 2008

The development of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sacred polyphony is linked closely not only to the Mass and divine services of the Roman Catholic Church, but equally to the rise of lay devotional congregations who sponsored their own services, often musically elaborate, at private chapels and altars. Within this popular phenomenon of lay devotion in the Low Countries, several northern confraternities can be cited for their very early regular use of polyphony. A polyphonic Salve service was established in 1362 by the Marian confraternity at St Goedele in Brussels, and Reinhard Strohm has shown that, by 1396, the Marian Guild of the Dry Tree (Ghilde vanden droghen Boome) in Bruges sponsored weekly masses sung in polyphony by its guild members. That polyphony was central to some fourteenth-century confraternity services is confirmed by the records of the Illustrious Confraternity of Our Lady in 's-Hertogenbosch, founded in 1318 in St John's Church.
Cosimo Bartoli on music
Authors: Haar James
Published: December 2008

To students of sixteenth-century music the Florentine man of letters Cosimo Bartoli (1503–72) is known chiefly for two statements made in the third dialogue of his Ragionamenti Accademici. One is a comparison of sculptors and musicians, with Donatello and Ockeghem seen as precursors of Michelangelo and Josquin. The other is an encomium of Verdelot, called the greatest composer after Josquin, to which is added the name of Arcadelt who ‘faithfully trod in the footsteps of Verdelot’. A number of musicologists have noticed that Bartoli had quite a lot more than this to say about music, and have cited other remarks from his work; but no one has to my knowledge dealt with the whole of the musical section of the Ragionamenti, and only Bartoli's recent and very excellent biographer Judith Bryce has spoken of the subject in the context of its author's career and personality.
Sixteenth-century patronage at St Mark's, Venice
Authors: Ongaro Giulio
Published: December 2008

The chapel of St Mark's in Venice occupied a prominent place in the musical life of most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so that a Venetian writer could justly remark: ‘The chapel of these Lords is thought to be among the best in the world, and [singers] have come to serve from France and Spain.’ Yet, in spite of its importance in the history of Western music, our knowledge of its development and organisation is far from complete and contains large gaps. It will suffice to point out that we know a lot more about the Gabrielis – organists – than we do about Zarlino in his capacity as maestro and composer, that the first modern study of the chapel, barely eight years old, is the recent Vespers at St Mark's by James Moore, and that the venerable Storia della musica sacra nella già cappella ducale di S. Marco in Venezia by Francesco Caffi, the only comprehensive study of the subject, has, in default of more modern work, been reprinted several times in recent years. The situation is gradually improving, with several new studies on music in Venice and at St Mark's already available or in preparation, but one of the issues not yet treated adequately is the question of patronage at St Mark's and of the social and economic status of its singers.
Tinctoris's Italian translation of the Golden Fleece statutes: a text and a (possible) context
Authors: Woodley Ronald
Published: December 2008

Any assessment of a fifteenth-century court musician failing to take account of those extra-musical activities – be they juridical, administrative, liturgical or whatever – which almost invariably constituted an intrinsic part of that musician's overall function must be deemed at best flawed, at worst a chronic perpetuation of that romanticising instinct to dislocate music from its integral rôle as a morally and spiritually heightening force in the court's social structure. This is not, of course, to deny the acceleration in the emergence both of the ‘professional’ musician and of a more autonomous musical language, together with the potential for a similar though less tangible degree of autonomy in the public and private response to that music, all of which undoubtedly seems to have taken place in the fifteenth century. But, to take the practical case of Tinctoris, it is clear that, aside from his musical skills and the political attractions to Naples of forging cultural links with the Burgundian—Netherlandish circles of influence, a high-level training in canon and civil law would have contributed in no small measure to the securing of his post at the Neapolitan court of King Ferrante, and, more specifically, was probably a major factor in his being commissioned by royal mandate, soon after his arrival in Italy, to translate into Italian the statutes of the Order of the Golden Fleece for his new employer, on the occasion of Ferrante's election to knighthood of the order.
Franco of Cologne on the rhythm of organum purum
Authors: Atkinson Charles M.
Published: December 2008

Thanks in part to a fine translation by Oliver Strunk, theArs cantus mensurabilisof Franco of Cologne is a treatise we all think we know. It is perhaps for this reason that Franco's treatise has been all but ignored in most of the recent discussions of the rhythm of Notre Dame organum. The one noteworthy exception to this is Fritz Reckow's discussion of organum purum in his dissertation on Anonymousivand in his various articles on organum and related topics in theHandwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie, in the SchradeGedenkschrift, and elsewhere. But for Reckow, and presumably for most other scholars as well, Franco's description of organum is strongly coloured by his theories of mensuration, appearing to place even organum purum under the heading of ‘mensurable music’. This in turn seems to distance Franco from the earliest layer of organum composition at Notre Dame, rendering his ideas of little value in arriving at an interpretation of the rhythmic character of this music.