This article reports the longitudinal follow-up of 41 preschool children as they moved into reading. When the children were 3 years old, they participated in a detailed assessment of their language, print, and metalinguistic skills. At the end of first grade, the children received two tests of phonological awareness and three reading measures: sound–symbol knowledge, word identification, and passage comprehension. Overall language development at age 3 just as strongly, or even more strongly, correlated with reading scores at age 7 as it had with metalinguistic and print awareness scores at age 3. In addition, the overall metalinguistic skills and print awareness of 3 year olds made significant contributions to reading achievement beyond what was provided by tacit language development. Specific metalinguistic domains were also good predictors of reading, with phonological and structural awareness offering more than word awareness.

It is hypothesized that strategies and techniques employed by “expert” language learners differ from those of “novice” learners. In this study, the performance of multilingual subjects was contrasted to that of bilingual and monolingual subjects on two tasks that involved learning a miniature linguistic system. Under “implicit” learning conditions, multilingual subjects showed superior performance to that of the other two groups, but under “explicit” conditions, there were no differences. The results were interpreted in information processing terms as indicating that multilingual subjects have strategies that help them allocate processing resources more efficiently than our other subjects in formulating informal rules of limited scope under implicit conditions.

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 tested the hypothesis that factors that shape children’s production of their native language (L1) will also influence adults’ pronunciation of sounds in a foreign language (L2). The final stops in CVC English words produced by 12 adult native speakers each of English, Polish, Spanish, and Chinese were phonetically transcribed. The frequency with which these stops were devoiced, deleted, or fricativized was tabulated. The Spanish subjects (unlike the Chinese or Poles) showed the effect of a transfer process, producing word-final /b, d, g/as fricatives. Subjects in all three non-native groups (but not the native English subjects) resembled English-learning children in devoicing word-final /b, d, g/. Subjects whose L1 does not have word-final stops (i.e., the native speakers of Chinese and Spanish) showed another process commonly observed in English L1 acquisition: final stop deletion. A number of language background variables (e.g., age of arrival in the United States) were found not to be significantly correlated with the accuracy of final stop production. These findings suggest that, in addition to transfer processes arising from L1/L2 phonetic and phonological differences, developmental processes similar to those affecting child L1 speech production also influence adult L2 speech production.

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.

The goal of the present investigation was to identify the reading processes that are impaired in children whose digit naming speeds are slow. Continuous digit naming speed was assumed to measure the automaticity with which character codes may be accessed in memory, and the automaticity of this process was assumed to be a prerequisite for the accurate performance of higher level reading processes. In Study I it was found, for children in grades 1 through 3, that digit naming speed was reliably correlated with reading of both irregularly spelled words and pronounceable nonsense words, and that most of the variance shared by irregular-word and nonsense-word reading was accounted for by digit naming speed. These results were interpreted as evidence that character-identification automaticity is equally important to the direct-access and speech-recoding routes of word recognition. Models of how character-identification automaticity might affect each of these routes are discussed. In Study 2 it was found, for children in grades 4 through 10, that the correlation of digit naming speed with reading comprehension was significantly smaller than its correlation with word recognition, and that the former correlation was completely accounted for when either WISC-R verbal IQ or word-recognition accuracy was controlled. These results are contrasted with comparable results reported by other investigators, and methodological differences are noted.

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.

Emotional content of verbal material affects the speed of visual word recognition in various cognitive tasks, independently of lexicosemantic variables. However, little is known about how the dimensions of emotional arousal and valence interact with the lexicosemantic properties of words such as age of acquisition, familiarity, and imageability, that determine word recognition performance. This study aimed to examine these relationships using English ratings for affective and lexicosemantic features. Eighty-two native English speakers rated 300 words for emotional valence, arousal, familiarity, age of acquisition, and imageability. Although both dimensions of emotion were correlated with lexicosemantic variables, a unique emotion cluster produced the strongest quadratic relationship. This finding suggests that emotion should be included in models of word recognition as it is likely to make an independent contribution.

Second-language “Immersion” school programs that have been developed in Canada and the United States during the last two decades are described and the results of evaluative research pertaining to them are reviewed. Major Immersion program alternatives (i.e., Early, Delayed, and Late variants) along with their theoretical bases and pedagogical characteristics are described first. Research findings are then discussed with respect to the impact of participation in an Immersion program on the students' native-language development, academic achievement, second-language proficiency, and on their attitudes and second-language use. Also, the suitability of Immersion in different geographical/social settings and for students with distinctive, potentially handicapping characteristics is considered. It is concluded that second-language Immersion programs are feasible and effective forms of education for majority-language children with diverse characteristics.

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.

We analyzed the three main types of English dative constructions – the double-object dative, the to dative, and the for dative – in the spontaneous speech of seven children from the age of 1;6 to 5;0. The main findings were as follows. First, the double-object dative was acquired by most of the children before either of the prepositional datives; this was attributed to the greater frequency with which children heard this construction with individual verbs. Second, the verbs children used with these constructions were not only the adult prototypical ones, but also a number of the less prototypical ones; again, this was very likely due to their frequency and saliency in the language children heard. Third, no support was found for Ninio's (1999) analysis of the emergence of constructions in terms of a single “pathbreaking” verb; rather, children began using the double-object dative with many different verbs and did not follow the trajectory proposed by Ninio (i.e., a single verb is used for some months before an “explosion” of new verbs is introduced in the construction). Finally, most of the verbs initially used in the three dative constructions were first used in other constructions (e.g., a simple transitive); this was even true for some obligatory datives, such as give and show. The current results provide a starting point for determining the underlying representations for the different kinds of dative constructions and for explicating how children understand the interrelations among these and other constructions.

Despite the multifactorial space of language experience in which people continuously vary, bilinguals are often dichotomized into ostensibly homogeneous groups. The timing of language exposure (age of acquisition) to a second language (L2) is one well-studied construct that is known to impact language processing, cognitive processing, and brain organization, but recent work shows that current language exposure is also a crucial determinant in these domains. Critically, many indices of bilingual experience are inherently subjective and based on self-report questionnaires. Such measures have been criticized in favor of objective measures of language ability (e.g., naming ability or verbal fluency). Here, we estimate the bilingual experience jointly as a function of multiple continuous aspects of experience, including the timing of language exposure, the amount of L2 exposure across communicative contexts, and language entropy (a flexible measure of language balance) across communicative contexts. The results suggest that current language exposure exhibits distinct but interrelated patterns depending on the socio-experiential context of language usage. They also suggest that, counterintuitively, our sample more accurately self-assesses L2 proficiency than native language proficiency. A precise quantification of the multidimensional nature of bilingualism will enhance the ability of future research to assess language processing, acquisition, and control.

American Sign Language (ASL) provides a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of late exposure to a primary language on adult linguistic processing. In Experiment 1, a video sign-monitoring task was used to investigate the grammatical sensitivity of 11 native signers (exposed to ASL from birth) and 10 late signers (exposed to ASL at a mean age of 12 years) to errors in ASL verb agreement. The results indicated that native signers, but not late signers, were sensitive to errors in verb agreement. Experiment 2 utilized both sign monitoring and off-line grammaticality judgments. Sentences which contained errors in either verb agreement or temporal aspect were presented to 10 native signers, 10 early signers (exposed to ASL between the ages of 2 and 7), and 10 late signers (exposed to ASL between the ages of 10 and 20). The results indicated that native signers were sensitive to errors in both verb agreement and aspect, and that early and late signers were only sensitive to errors in aspect morphology. In the off-line grammaticality test, all three groups were equally able consciously to detect the grammatical errors. These findings suggest that late exposure to a primary language affects the on-line integration of verb agreement information within a sentence, but does not affect sensitivity to semantic distinctions encoded by aspect morphology.

The various descriptions of schizophrenic language have concentrated on a structural treatment of the schizophrenic's spoken or written language or an elucidation of the relationship between linguistic and cognitive disturbances. The structural treatments in fact often focus on the content of schizophrenic discourse, e.g. circumstantiality, flight of ideas, etc., rather than on grammatical structure. In this paper, the linguistic performance of a chronic schizophrenic, paranoid type (DSM-II:295.3) is examined via a large corpus of continuous spoken and written narrative texts collected over a three-year period. A striking agreement was noted in the oral and written language of this subject in features such as the types of agrammatic errors which occur and extreme perseveration. The data reveal important differences with the six characteristics of schizophrenic language noted by Chaika (1974). A brief comparison is made with aphasic and similar neurolinguistic disturbances suggesting organicity in the present case.

A 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.

The Communicative Intention Inventory, an observational system for describing children's early gestural, vocal, and verbal communicative behaviors, is presented in this paper. The Inventory is comprised of eight intentional categories which are included because of their content and construct validity, their likelihood of occurrence in a clinical setting, and their high observerscorer reliability. The rank order of frequency of occurrence of the eight intentional categories is compared across 16 subjects resulting in a reliability coefficient of .66. The value of using the Inventory as a criterion-referenced measure of communicative intentions is explored.

This study examined whether high-variability auditory training on natural speech can benefit experienced second-language English speakers who already are exposed to natural variability in their daily use of English. The subjects were native French speakers who had learned English in school; experienced listeners were tested in England and the less experienced listeners were tested in France. Both groups were given eight sessions of high-variability phonetic training for English vowels, and were given a battery of perception and production tests to evaluate their improvement. The results demonstrated that both groups learned to similar degrees, suggesting that training provides a type of learning that is distinct from that obtained in more naturalistic situations.

This study examines a salient intrasyllabic phonological unit in Korean, the body-coda unit, its role in literacy skills in Korean, and a possible source of the salience of body-coda units in the spoken language. Data were collected from Korean-speaking, monolingual beginning readers (41 kindergarteners, 40 first graders). The results indicate that body-coda boundary (e.g., ca-t) is more salient than onset–rime boundary (e.g., c-at) for Korean children and show that children's body-coda awareness is an important predictor of word decoding and spelling in Korean. Furthermore, the analysis of phonological neighbors and frequency of syllable types suggests that a phonotactic feature in Korean, the frequency of consonant–verb syllable type, may be a possible source of the saliency of the body-coda intrasyllabic division for Korean children.

This study examined relationships between oral language and literacy in a two-year, multivariate design. Through empirical cluster analysis of a sample of 88 kindergarten children, four oral language subtypes were identified based on measures of semantics, syntax, metalinguistics, and oral narration. Validation efforts included (a) concurrent and predictive analyses of subtype differences on reading, spelling, and listening comprehension measures based on a priori hypotheses and (b) a comparison of the teacher classification of the children with the empirical classification. The subtypes represented high average, low average, high narrative, and low overall patterns of oral language skill. The high average subtype received the most consistent evidence for validation. The pattern of validation results indicates that the relationship between oral language and literacy is not uniform and suggests a modification of the assumption that oral language skills have a direct role in reading acquisition.

The purpose of this article is to examine the language of girls and boys between 8 and 30 months of age, using the Quebec French version of The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. The findings from this parental report measure confirm those of earlier research, which showed the linguistic superiority of girls over boys at a young age. More specifically, the results show that girls produce significantly more words than boys; their utterances contain a greater number of grammatical forms, and are more complex syntactically. On the qualitative level, the data illustrate distinctive characteristics associated with gender in the acquisition of the first 100 words. These findings suggest that caution is necessary when assessing young children to interpret performance in light of factors that may contribute to it, including gender. These results are discussed in light of whether separate normative data are warranted for young boys and girls learning Canadian French.