bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Grammatical errors in specific language impairment: Competence or performance limitations?
Authors: Bishop D. V. M. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTSpeech samples from twelve 8- to 12-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) were analyzed. The feature deficit hypothesis maintains that SLI children may produce morphological markers (e.g., plural -s) correctly, but they do not appreciate their role in marking grammatical features. Rather, they treat them as meaningless phonological variants. Findings from the present study were incompatible with this hypothesis: (a) production of morphological markers was not random; errors were unidirectional, in almost all cases involving omission of an inflection in an obligatory context; (b) overregularization errors were sometimes observed; (c) grammatical features differed in difficulty; (d) substitution of stems for inflected forms occurred with irregular as well as regular verbs; and (e) errors of pronoun case marking were common and always involved producing an accusative form in a context demanding the nominative. Children who used a specific inflectional form correctly in some utterances omitted it in others, suggesting a limitation of performance rather than competence. There were few obvious differences between utterances that did and did not include correctly inflected forms, though there was a trend for grammatical errors to occur on words that occurred later in an utterance. It is suggested that slowed processing in a limited capacity system that is handling several operations in parallel may lead to the omission of grammatical morphemes.
Effects of a high information-processing load on the writing process and the story written
Authors: Penningroth Suzanna L. , Rosenberg Sheldon 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to test how information-processing load affects the writing process (through thinking-aloud reports) and the story written. Information-processing load was increased by having subjects write to an ending sentence with more content constraints. Secondary reaction times were synchronized with thinking-aloud statements to yield a measure of cognitive effort for the components of the writing process and for the overall task. A high information-processing load led to lower rated story coherence, but not to lower rated quality. A high load did not increase overall cognitive effort, but changed the distribution of processing time, with more reviewing earlier. Results suggest that a high information-processing load altered the distribution of writing processes, which resulted in lower story coherence.
Phonological development from babbling to speech: Common tendencies and individual differences
Authors: Vihman Marilyn May , Ferguson Charles A. , Elbert Mary 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTTaking as a point of departure Locke's biological model for the origins of phonological development, this study encompasses analyses of phonetic tendencies, consonant use in babbling and early words, and phonological word-selection patterns. Data from 10 children aged 9 to 16 months are drawn from four lexically defined points covering the period from no word use to a cumulative vocabulary of 50 words. Individual differences are found to prevail from the start in all three domains analyzed, with some increase in uniformity across subjects with increasing knowledge of language. Furthermore, the phonological processes typical of development from age 1 to 3 or 4 years are found to be rooted in the phonetic tendencies of the prelinguistic period.
Text cohesion in children's narrative writing
Authors: Cameron Catherine Ann , Lee Kang , Webster Suzanne , Munro Kim , Hunt Anne Kathryn , Linton Murray J. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study employed multiple regression analysis to examine the relationship between global writing quality (holistic scores) and lower level analytic measures of writing, with a focus on cohesive indices. The subjects were 9-year-old English-speaking children who participated in either a story free-writing condition or a story rewriting condition. The results showed that both cohesive indices and lower level writing measures (type-token ratios, mean length of utterances in morphemes, composition length, etc.) each accounted for a significant amount of the variance in holistic scores. The story rewriting procedure proved to facilitate the children's writing processes and, hence, resulted in higher quality writing (in terms of both global writing quality and text cohesion) than the story free-writing condition.
Making do with less: Some surprises along the language death proficiency continuum
Authors: Dorian Nancy C. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTRelative proficiency in Gaelic varies by age in a Highland Scottish region where Gaelic is spoken by a decreasing number of bilinguals in a steadily aging population segment. Although there is a Gaelic proficiency continuum ranging from full fluency (and Gaelic dominance) to minimal generative skills (and English dominance), there are also deviations at both extremes of skill: Fully fluent speakers show self-conscious difficulty with one morphological and four syntactic structures, while minimally proficient speakers show less difficulty than might be expected in the use of conjunctions. An exceptionally keen though low-proficiency speaker can devise unusual means of compensation in using the language. Neither full fluency nor marked deficiency produces altogether predictable levels of structural conservatism or communicative success.
The subset principle in second language acquisition
Authors: Ayoun Dalila 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the applicability of the Subset Principle in the second language (L2) acquisi:ion of the Oblique-Case Parameter by 45 learners of French. First, the Subset Principle is defined and discussed, along with its learnability predictions in first language (L1) acquisition. Then, a brief overview of the relevant literature in L2 acquisition shows that the applicability of the Subset Principle is very much debated. In the present study, the results of a grammaticality judgment task and a correction task provide partial support for the Subset Principle. It seems that the learners have acquired the lack of Exceptional-Case marking and preposition stranding, two of the syntactic properties tested, based on the positive evidence available to them. However, they failed to reject a number of ungrammatical instances of dative alternation and dative passive, leading them to an overgeneralized grammar. It is suggested that L2 learners may need direct or indirect negative evidence to constrain their grammar. Further research is needed to conclude whether the Oblique-Case Parameter really is a parameter of Universal Grammar, and if so, whether adult L2 learners are able to reset their parameters to the proper target language values.
Sonority as a constraint on word identification processes
Authors: Christman Sarah S. , Depaolis Rory A. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study was undertaken as a sequel to DePaolis (1991) to explore the role of sonority in constraining the word identification errors of normal listeners. The data from 9 subjects from DePaolis's study were used to examine the phonological relationships, defined by the Sonority Sequencing Principle (Jespersen, 1904), between response errors and stimulus targets - a methodology previously employed in the analysis of target-related neologisms (Christman, 1992b, 1994). The present study found that, although sonority may constrain onset-driven word-search processes, sonority and lexical phonostatistics may constrain coda-driven word-search processes. These findings are consistent with those obtained from the productive errors of aphasic subjects (Christman, 1994). Taken together, the results of these studies support a role for sonority in phonologically based aspects of word identification and word production.
Promoting idea production by novice writers through the use of discourse-related prompts
Authors: Bakunas Boris 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study asked whether exposure to discourse elements affects idea production in novice writers. Different types of prompts were given to 127 high school subjects following the cessation of production. One prompt, termed contentless, was purely motivational; the other, a discourse prompt, conveyed a motivational message as well as information about the discourse structure of the problem/solution text. Subjects given discourse prompts generated significantly more idea units than those given the purely motivational variety. Also, subjects in the discourse-prompting condition spent more time generating ideas. The results held across topic interest and achievement levels, suggesting that instruction in discourse elements may prove beneficial.
Papiamento/Dutch code-switching in bilingual parent–child reading
Authors: Muysken Pieter , Kook Hetty , Vedder Paul 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTCode-switching between Papiamento and Dutch was studied in bilingual parent–child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families (who were to some extent bilingual in Papiamento and Dutch) in the Netherlands. Mothers were asked to read three picture books to their child: one in Dutch, one in Papiamento, and one without text. The code-switching in the data is studied from three perspectives: its relation to bilingual competence, its structural properties, and the implications for language change through lexical borrowing. Our data confirmed the results of earlier studies, which found that intimate code-switching within the clause is characteristic of fluent bilinguals. In our study, this held in particular for knowledge of Papiamento. Structurally, the type of code-switching encountered was predominantly insertional (with Papiamento as the dominant language), thus conforming to the constraints proposed for this type of switching. The single Dutch words that were frequently inserted into Papiamento utterances by the mothers could easily be interpreted by the child as Papiarnento and are likely to become borrowings in the next generation. We conclude with some remarks about the functions of code-switching in our data.
Environmental contamination of normal speech
Authors: Harley Trevor A. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTEnvironmentally contaminated speech errors occur when material derived from the speaker's environment but irrelevant to the speaker's intended utterance is erroneously incorporated into speech. Such material may include the names of objects at which speakers are looking, words that speakers are concurrently reading, segments of speech that speakers overhear, or properties of objects in the environment. It was found that although environmental contaminations display less phonological facilitation than other speech error types, they display some semantic facilitation. If the target item and interfering item are from the same syntactic category, a word substitution is more likely to result than a word blend, whereas if the items are from different categories, a blend is more likely. It is hypothesized that environmental contamination occurs at a high level of processing, but with a relatively late insertion point.
Narrative skills and genre knowledge: Ways of telling in the primary school grades
Authors: Hicks Deborah 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTChildren in the preschool years develop a linguisticrepertoireof narrative skills as they adapt their ways of representing events to different occasions of language use. The present study examines the abilities of primary school children to draw upon their repertoire of narrative skills in the service of language tasks. Children in grades K-2 were shown a shortened version of the silent film,The Red Balloon, and were asked to perform three narrative tasks: (a) produce an on-line narration of a 3-minute segment from the film, (b) recount the film's events as a news report, and (c) recount the film's events as an embellished story. The narrative texts produced for each task were subjected to analyses of linguistic markers of genre differences. The findings revealed very subtle distinctions between the narrative texts produced for the three genre tasks, leading to the conclusion that primary grade children have only nascent ability to apply their genre knowledge to school language tasks.
Does learning to read in a second language always put the child at a disadvantage? Some counterevidence from Morocco
Authors: Wagner Daniel A. , Spratt Jennifer E. , Ezzaki Abdelkader 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTResearchers have gathered a variety of evidence to support the theory that learning to read in one's “mother tongue” or first language enhances a child's achievement relative to that of children obliged to learn to read in a second language. Evidence collected primarily in Europe and America has been applied by international organizations to support early mother-tongue education programs in many Third World countries. The data reported in this article suggest that a general application of this conclusion is not justified. The present article reports on a longitudinal study of literacy acquisition among 166 grade 1 children from a rural town in Morocco. Children in the sample came from two distinct linguistic communities (Moroccan Arabic and Berber), but lived in the same village, attended the same schools, and received literacy instruction in Arabic and subsequently French. The study also considered a number of background variables that might influence learning to read, such as Quranic preschooling experience, parental literacy, gender, and SES. Analyses showed that while there were significant differences in Arabic (first literacy) reading achievement between Berber- and Arabic-speaking groups in the first year of the study, such differences virtually disappeared by year 5. Quranic preschooling, also conducted in Arabic, was found to be a mediating influence on achievement in grade 1. Learning to read in French (second literacy) was unrelated to Berber or Arabic linguistic background, but highly related to reading achievement in Arabic, thus providing support for Cummins's (1979) “interdependence” hypothesis. Overall, the findings support the proposition that children in certain social and linguistic contexts need not be taught in their mother tongue in order to achieve literacy norms of the majority language group. These findings are discussed in terms of the context of language use and language prestige in the Moroccan setting, and in terms of their potential generalizability to other linguistic and cultural contexts.
Life-span changes to adults' language: Effects of memory and genre
Authors: Kemper Susan , Kynette Donna , Rash Shannon , O'Brien Kevin , Sprott Richard 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThree different language samples were collected from a group of young adults, 18 to 28 years of age, and a group of elderly adults, 60 to 92 years of age: an oral questionnaire eliciting information about the adults' background, education, and current health and activities; an oral statement describing the person they most admired; and a written statement recounting the most significant event in their lives. In addition, the WAIS vocabulary and digit-span tests were administered to the adults. Age-related changes in the length, clause structure, and fluency of the adults' oral answers and oral and written statements were investigated. There was an overall decrement in the complexity of adults' oral and written statements attributable to an age-related loss of left-branching clauses which occurred in all three language samples. Correlations between the length, clause, and fluency measures from the language samples and the education, health, and WAIS vocabulary and digit-span tests revealed that better-educated adults scored higher on the WAIS vocabulary test, produced longer utterances, and used more right-branching clauses, and that adults with greater memory capacity, as measured by the WAIS Digits Backward test, produced more complex utterances and used more right- and left-branching clauses. Judges found the statements from the elderly adults to be more interesting and clearer than those from the young adults. This finding suggests that there is a trade-off between producing complex syntactic structures and producing clear and interesting prose.
Hearing impaired adolescents' signed and written expression of locative state relations
Authors: Kempt Donna , Maxwell Madeline M. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTHearing impaired adolescents from three schools were asked to produce sentences expressing simple locative state relations. Subjects varied on three hearing levels, two ages, and the use or nonuse of sign language. All subjects wrote English sentences to describe pictures; signers also described pictures in sign. Data were analyzed using chi-square procedures. Errors of noun reversal and pragmatic focus were apparent in 7% of the signed responses and 15% of the written responses. Errors were produced by subjects at each age and hearing level, and by signers and nonsigners as well. Most errors were produced by profoundly hearing impaired signers attending public day school (as compared to residential school). Implications for instruction and for further research are discussed.
Pseudoword repetition ability in learning-disabled children
Authors: Taylor H. Gerry , Lean Debra , Schwartz Sybil 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTA test of pseudoword repetition was developed and administered to a group of 24 learning-disabled children. Twenty nondisabled children were also assessed. The major objective was to investigate associations between learning-disabled children's ability to repeat pseudowords and their performances on other measures of phonological processing, as well as on measures of academic achievement. Results revealed that the repetition procedure had good psychometric characteristics, including the ability to distinguish disabled and nondisabled groups independent of IQ. Within the learning-disabled sample, repetition ability was more closely related to reading and spelling skills than to math achievement. Measures of phonological skill were moderately associated with one another. Findings suggest that the repetition task may be useful in identifying one important correlate of childhood learning disabilities. Results justify further research on the mechanisms responsible for repetition difficulties and on the significance of these difficulties for reading and spelling acquisition.
Referential communication and response adequacy in autism and Down's syndrome
Authors: Loveland Katherine A. , Tunalia Belgin , Mcevoy Robin E. , Kelley Michelle L. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the ability of high-functioning verbal adolescents with autism or Down's syndrome to perform a referential communication task. It was predicted that autistic subjects would require more specific prompting to convey needed information to a listener than would subjects with Down's syndrome of the same verbal level. Subjects, 13 with autism and 14 with Down's syndrome, matched on verbal mental age, learned a simple board game, and were asked to teach it to a listener who used varying levels of prompting to elicit target information. Most subjects in the autistic group required specific prompting to produce the target information, whereas most subjects with Down's syndrome did not. Response adequacy was significantly higher in the Down's syndrome group than in the autistic group at the most general prompt level. Subjects with Down's syndrome used more gesture at the most general prompt level and when producing high adequacy responses, whereas subjects with autism used more gesture when producing low adequacy responses.
Development of speech-like vocalizations in a child with congenital absence of cochleas: The case of total deafness
Authors: Lynch Michael P. , Oller D. Kimbrough , Steffens Michele 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTIn order to assess the effect of total deafness on vocalization development, tape recorded utterances of a 3-year-old child who was born without cochleas were examined. In the beginning of the study, the subject's speech consisted almost exclusively of small numbers of sounds characteristic of early infancy. Across the study, the subject participated in extensive vocal stimulation activities. He also initially received intermittent exposure to tactile speech information via a 16-channel vocoder and, subsequently, a 2-channel tactile aid. Following introduction of the 2-channel aid, the subject made rapid improvement in the quality of his vocalizations, which consisted increasingly of speech-like utterances, including well-formed or canonical syllables. These results suggest that, although hearing impairment slows the onset of canonical babbling, even total deafness does not preclude its eventual appearance.
The acquisition of sex-neutral uses of masculine forms in English and Spanish
Authors: Gathercole Virginia C. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study examines the acquisition of sex-neutral uses of masculine terms by English- and Spanish-speaking children. English and Spanish differ in that sex-neutral uses of masculine terms are much more common in the latter, and in that English is a natural-gender language, while Spanish is a grammatical-gender language. For these reasons, it was hypothesized that Spanish-speaking children might discover the neutral, unmarked interpretations of masculine terms earlier than their English-speaking counterparts, who might have difficulty in moving away from an early sex-based interpretation of such forms to their sex-neutral application. Data from 256 children failed to confirm the hypothesis. Subjects from both language groups appeared to pay little attention to gender marking outside the noun, and they both paid less attention to masculine gender markers than to feminine gender markers outside the noun.
Syntactic comprehension in young poor readers
Authors: Smith Suzanne T. , Macaruso Paul , Shankweiler Donald , Crain Stephen 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTChildren with specific reading disability fail to understand some complex spoken sentences as well as good readers. This investigation sought to identify the source of poor readers' comprehension difficulties. Second-grade good and poor readers were tested on spoken sentences with restrictive relative clauses in two experiments designed to minimize demands on working memory. The methodological innovations resulted in a high level of performance by both reader groups, demonstrating knowledge of relative clause structure. The poor readers' performance closely paralleled that of the good readers both in pattern of errors and in awareness of the pragmatic aspects of relative clauses. The findings suggest that limitations in processing account for comprehension difficulties displayed by some poor readers in previous investigations.
What do referential communication tasks measure? A study of children with specific language impairment
Authors: Bishop D. V. M. , Adams C. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTA group of 54 children with specific language impairment was compared with a control group on a referential communication task in which the child was asked to describe a picture from an array of eight similar items so that the listener could identify it. The language-impaired children performed more poorly than age-matched controls. However, there was no relationship between referential communication performance and conversational ability. Children who provided excessive and irrelevant information in conversation did not show the same characteristics in the experimental setting. Formal task requirements, such as the need to scan an array, appeared to be a major determinant of performance on structured referential communication tasks. These tasks are not sensitive to the types of pragmatic difficulty that some children have in open-ended conversation.