Showing papers in "Applied Psycholinguistics in 1996"
TL;DR: This article examined the English vowel productions of 240 native speakers of Italian who had arrived in Canada at ages ranging from 2 to 23 years and 24 native English speakers from the same community, and found that an increase in perceived accentedness as a function of increasing age of arrival was observed on every vowel.
Abstract: This study examined the English vowel productions of 240 native speakers of Italian who had arrived in Canada at ages ranging from 2 to 23 years and 24 native English speakers from the same community. The productions of 11 vowels were rated for degree of foreign accent by 10 listeners. An increase in perceived accentedness as a function of increasing age of arrival was observed on every vowel. Not one of the vowels was observed to be produced in a consistently native-like manner by the latest-arriving learners, even though they had been living in Canada for an average of 32 years. However, high intelligibility (percent correct identification) scores were obtained for the same set of productions. This was true even for English vowels that have no counterpart in Italian.
184 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the communicative competence of four young children (average age of 2;2, average MLU of 1·56) who were acquiring English and French simultaneously in the home and observed the ways these children used their languages with monolingual strangers and with their bilingual parents.
Abstract: An important component of the communicative competence of proficient bilinguals is the ability to use each of their languages differentially and appropriately according to relevant characteristics of the interlocutors and communicative situations. The research reported here examined the communicative competence of four young children (average age of 2;2, average MLU of 1·56) who were acquiring English and French simultaneously in the home. We observed the ways these children used their languages with monolingual strangers and with their bilingual parents. Specifically, the children's use of English-only, French-only, and mixed (English and French) utterances with the strangers during naturalistic play situations was compared with patterns of use with their parents, also during play sessions. We found that all of the children made some accommodations that could be linked to the monolingualism of the stranger; some of the children were more accommodating than others. The results are discussed in terms of young bilingual children's ability to modify their language on-line in response to the particular language characteristics of their interlocutors.
180 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the effects of text practice and prosodic modeling on the reading rate, accuracy, expressiveness, and comprehension of 40 grade 5 disabled readers, who read the first half of a set of stories under one of the four experimental conditions.
Abstract: Repeated reading of meaningful text has been shown to produce improvements in reading rate, fluency, and comprehension in readers of varying ability. The assisted repeated reading (ARR) method, which provides a fluent and expressive (i.e., prosodic) model, has been proposed as being particularly helpful in this regard. However, it is unclear which component of the ARR method (prosodic modeling or reading practice with intact text) is the most influential factor. The present study examined the effects of text practice and prosodic modeling on the reading rate, accuracy, expressiveness, and comprehension of 40 grade 5 disabled readers. Text practice and prosodic modeling were systematically varied to create four training conditions. Each subject read the first half of a set of stories three times under one of the four experimental conditions. Pretest and posttest measures of the dependent variables were analyzed for both the training passages and the second half of each story, on which no training occurred (transfer passages). While reading performance improved across all conditions, substantial additional gains were produced by the conditions that included the practice of intact text. Modeling of prosody did not produce significant additional gains. Transfer effects were limited, with only the ARR condition producing improved accuracy on the second half of the stories.
107 citations
TL;DR: This article found that presenting items in L1-L2 order was the more versatile form of presentation if both production and comprehension of L2 items were required on the part of the learner.
Abstract: The learning of second language vocabulary in lists of word pairs is a widespread practice. A basic practical question in this respect is whether it is more effective for nonfluent bilinguals to learn word pairs in first language–second language order (Ll–L2), or vice versa. To date, experimental psychology has not given a clear answer to this question, partly because it has not addressed the relevant issues directly. This article reviews some aspects of psychology that are relevant to L2 vocabulary list learning and reports on an experiment conducted with comprehensive (high) school students, aged 11–13, who were learning French. The experiment examined the presentation of vocabulary items to be learned. It was found that presenting items in L1–L2 order was the more versatile form of presentation if both production and comprehension of L2 items were required on the part of the learner. The theoretical implications of the findings, relating to the structure of the bilingual lexicon, are also discussed.
102 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that children with normal reading development sometimes give responses that are based on orthographic rather than phonological information and that the number of occurrences of such orthographic intrusions was significantly lower in dyslexic children.
Abstract: In three typical phonological awareness tasks it was found that children with normal reading development sometimes give responses that are based on orthographic rather than phonological information. In dyslexic children, the number of occurrences of such orthographic intrusions was significantly lower. This effect cannot be explained by positing a lower degree of orthographic knowledge in dyslexic children since a group of younger children who had the same spelling level as the dyslexics also showed more orthographic intrusions. A plausible explanation for this difference between normal and dyslexic readers is that, in normal readers, phonological and orthographic representations of words are so closely connected that they are usually coactivated, even if such a coactivation is misleading. In dyslexics this connection is less strong, so that orthographic representations interfere less with phonemic segmentation. The relevance of this finding with respect to recent assumptions about the importance of phonology in establishing orthographic representations is discussed.
79 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the hypotheses about how print represents the speech that pre-literate children select when they receive input compatible with several such hypotheses, and found that most pre literate children fail to select phonologically based hypotheses, even when these are available in the input.
Abstract: This research examines the hypotheses about how print represents the speech that preliterate children select when they receive input compatible with several such hypotheses. In Experiment 1, preschoolers were taught to read hat and hats and book and books. Then, in generalization tests, they were probed for what they had learned about the letter s. All of the children were able to transfer to other plurals (e.g., to decide that bikes said “bikes” rather than “bike,” and that dog said “dog” and not “dogs”), but only those who knew the sound of the letter s prior to the experiment were able to decide, for example, that bus said “bus” and not “bug.” The failure to detect the phonemic value of s on the part of alphabetically naive children was replicated in Experiments 2, 3, and 4, which instituted a variety of controls. In Experiment 5, it was found that, although preschoolers who had been taught to read pairs of words distinguished by the comparative affix er (such as small/smaller) were able to generalize to other comparatives (e.g., mean/meaner), they could not generalize to pairs where er had no morphemic value (e.g., corn/corner). A similar failure by alphabetically naive children to detect the syllabic, as compared with the morphemic, status of the superlative affix est was found in Experiment 6. Overall, the results indicate that most preliterate children fail to select phonologically based hypotheses, even when these are available in the input. Instead, they focus on morphophonology and/or semantic aspects of words' referents. The research is couched in terms of the Learnability Theory (LT) (Gold, 1967), which provides a convenient framework for considering a series of interrelated questions about the acquisition of literacy. In particular, it is argued that if the data available to the child includes the pronunciation of written words, the alphabetic principle may be unlearnable, given the hypothesis selection procedures identified in these experiments.
74 citations
TL;DR: The speech of 9 middle-class black, 9 middleclass white, 9 workingclass black and 9 working-class white parents to their preschool children was examined during picture identification, free play, and a meal.
Abstract: The speech of 9 middle-class black, 9 middle-class white, 9 working-class black, and 9 workingclass white parents to their preschool children was examined during picture identification, free play, and a meal. The groups were found to be similar in the level and form of parental labeling. The groups differed in the information the parents supplied about objects in the various settings, in the parent's direction of the child's behavior, and in parental sensitivity to the child's age. Within the working-class groups, the frequency of vernacular features in the parents' speech correlated with the quality of information they provided.
57 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the role of weak syllable use in explaining some of the differences in grammatical morphology between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and younger children matched according to mean length of utterance (MLU).
Abstract: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often show more limited use of grammatical morphology than younger, normally developing children matched according to mean length of utterance (MLU). However, within groups of children with SLI, individual differences are seen in grammatical morpheme use. In this study, we examined the role of weak syllable use in explaining some of these differences. Employing two different languages – English and Italian - children with SLI were placed into pairs. The children in each pair showed similar MLUs; however, one member of the pair showed a greater use of particular function words. In each of the pairs examined in both languages, the children with the greater use of function words also showed a greater use of weak syllables that did not immediately follow strong syllables. The weak syllable productions of children showing a more limited use of function words in each pair seemed to be dependent on a strong syllable-weak syllable production sequence. This sequence appeared to be operative across several prosodic levels, as defined within the framework of prosodic phonology. Because weak syllables that follow strong syllables usually have longer durations than those that precede strong syllables, the findings might have a perceptual basis. However, the results raise the possibility that limitations in prosody can restrict the degree of grammatical morpheme use by children with SLI.
46 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined a task that can be applied in a uniform fashion across different languages to compare levels of vocabulary development in foreign language learning and found that learners of Russian had achieved a lower level of vocabulary control than learners of German at comparable language exposure levels.
Abstract: ABSTRACT This study examines a task that can be applied in a uniform fashion across different languages to compare levels of vocabulary development in foreign language learning. Experiment I tested native speakers of Russian and German and demonstrated the basic comparability of the subjects' judgments for both words and nonwords. The results for Russian showed an influence of word length, which can be understood in terms of the Orthographical Depth Hypothesis. Experiment 2 applied the same task to learners of Russian and German and found that learners of Russian had achieved a lower level of vocabulary control than learners of German at comparable language exposure levels. This disadvantage for Russian can be attributed to the novelty of the Cyrillic graphemic system, which restricts the accessibility of written language input at early stages. There was a nonlinear increase over time in word sensitivity, which can be attributed to the increasing contribution of lexical plausibility factors at later stages of learning. Moreover, the lexical decision task appeared to be sensitive to inhibitory effects of concurrently studied languages, as well as to decay due to the lack of regular exposure. Together, these results indicate that the lexical decision task can be a useful tool for the assessment and crosslinguistic comparison of lexical development in foreign language learning.
27 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a study was conducted to determine whether there was a relationship between the ease with which children make use of orthographic analogies and their progress in learning to read, and the results of an experiment using a reading age match design showed that poor readers performed as well as normal readers on orally presented measures of onset/rime sensitivity, but less well on visually orally presented rhyme tasks.
Abstract: ABSTRACT This study was designed to determine whether there was a relationship between the ease with which children make use of orthographic analogies and their progress in learning to read. The results of an experiment using a reading age match design showed that poor readers performed as well as normal readers on orally presented measures of onset/rime sensitivity, but less well on visually/orally presented rhyme tasks. The poor readers also performed less well than the normal readers on a task that measured the children's ability to take advantage of analogical units when reading lists of words: these reading lists contained groups of words that differed according to (1) whether the words containing the common unit were presented contiguously or noncontiguously, and (2) whether the unit constituted the rime portion of the words or was embedded within the rime portion of the words. A follow-up intervention study demonstrated that poor readers who received instruction in the use of orthographic analogies achieved higher reading accuracy scores on subsequent readings than did a matched group of poor readers who received standard remedial instruction in context cue usage.
26 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that learning the same set of feminine French nouns could be made more or less difficult when the nouns in the masculine category created more competition, and they extended their exemplar-based measure to a connectionist network in order to account for competition and the time course of learning.
Abstract: Competition is a property of cognitive processing which results from learning that is characterized by the indeterminate encoding of instances and from processing that is characterized by the mutual influence of all activated representations on one another. In the present study, non-French participants learned gender-appropriate adjectives (petit or petite) for a set of 24 French nouns. We found that learning the same set of feminine French nouns could be made more or less difficult when the nouns in the masculine category created more or less competition. One measure from the Competition Model of MacWhinney and Bates (Bates & MacWhinney, 1987, 1989; MacWhinney, 1985, 1987) – cue reliability – predicted these competition effects. We tested an alternative measure based on the encoding of the nouns in memory (termed exemplars) and found that it predicted participants' mean learning performance somewhat more accurately. In the final section of this article, we extend our exemplar-based measure to a connectionist network in order to account for competition and the time course of learning. The network provided a superior fit to the data, with an average R2 = .91.
TL;DR: For instance, the authors studied language choice and functional differentiation between Papiamento and Dutch in bilingual parent-child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families; the subjects, who were living in the Netherlands, were to some extent bilingual in Papiameto and Dutch.
Abstract: Language choice and functional differentiation between Papiamento and Dutch were studied in bilingual parent-child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families; the subjects, who were living in the Netherlands, were to some extent bilingual in Papiamento and Dutch. Mothers were asked to read three picture books to their child: one in Dutch, one in Papiamento, and one without text. Code choice was related to the text and contents of the book, as well as to restrictions imposed by the language proficiency in both languages of the mothers and children. It was expected that Dutch would be used more for more demanding cognitive functions because of its association with school. However, these parents did not categorize rnetalinguistic activity and reasoning as school-related, although they did categorize counting as such and tended to use Dutch to count.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied code-switching between Papiamento and Dutch in bilingual parent-child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families (who were to some extent bilingual in Papiameto and Dutch) in the Netherlands.
Abstract: Code-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. Structur ally, the type of code-switchin g 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 Papiamento and are likely to become borrowings in the next generation. We conclude with some remarks about the functions of code-switching in our data. In an earlier study (Vedder, Kook, & Muysken, 1996) code choice and functional differentiation between Papiamento and Dutch were 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. We found that, overall, code choice of mothers and children in the reading sessions was predictable, based on general patterns of code choice in the mothers’ and children’s language contacts with a variety of people. Information about the mothers’ and children’s language contacts showed us a fragment of the ongoing process of intergenerati onal language shift in this group of first-generat ion Antillian migrants. Code choice in the book reading sessions was related to the text and contents of the book, as well as to restrictions imposed by the
TL;DR: This article examined the role that voiced stop spirantization plays in the acquisition of English/b d g/ and /dgr;/ by native Spanish speakers, and found that accuracy in English pronunciation is hindered by native language transfer, including the transfer of spirantisation and LI syllable structure constraints.
Abstract: 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.
TL;DR: This article examined the pseudoword reading strategies of dyslexic readers (i.e., children whose reading was significantly lower than predicted by their IQ score) and poor readers (e.g., children who were consistent with their lower IQ scores).
Abstract: This study examined the pseudoword reading strategies of dyslexic readers (i.e., children whose reading was significantly lower than predicted by their IQ score) and poor readers (i.e., children whose reading scores were consistent with their lower IQ scores). The disabled readers were grouped according to their reading grade level and were compared with reading level matched, normally achieving readers. The reading performance on a test of pseudoword reading (Woodcock Word Attack Subtest) for the three groups (dyslexic, poor, and normal readers) was analyzed according to the type of error committed. The performance of dyslexic and poor readers was virtually indistinguishable at both reading grade levels 2–3 and 4–5. There was very little difference among dyslexic, poor, and normally achieving readers in the types of errors made. Nearly 50010 of all the oral reading errors of all three groups were vowel substitutions, followed by consonant substitution and deletion and insertion errors. Sequential, reversal, and word substitution errors were committed infrequently for all three reader groups. The findings failed to support the existence of a critical phonological processing difference between IQ reading- discrepant and IQ reading-nondiscrepant disabled readers and suggest that disabled readers lag behind normally achieving readers in phonological decoding skills.
TL;DR: This article investigated the relative influences of medium and context variables by comparing 7- and 8-year-old children's spoken and written explanations in varying contexts: a story task, a question task, sentence completion task, and a whole sentence production task.
Abstract: The relative influences of medium and context variables were investigated by comparing 7- and 8-year-old children's spoken and written explanations in varying contexts: a story task, a question task, a sentence completion task, and a whole sentence production task. In the story task, performance in a “purpose” condition (which provided a specific communicative purpose for the production of an explanation) was compared with performance in a “neutral” condition. The frequency of explanations containing correct causal expressions was significantly higher in the purpose condition than in the neutral condition and significantly lower in the story task than in the three more structured tasks. In contrast to these contextual influences, performance in the written medium was very similar to performance in the spoken medium.
TL;DR: This paper examined the ability of young adults and older adults with mild to moderate mental retardation to produce complex sentences in naturalistic conversation and found no significant differences between the young and older groups.
Abstract: ABSTRACT This study examined the ability of young (mean CA = 29 years; SD = 3.67 years) and older adults (CA = 63 years; SD = 5.54 years) with mild to moderate mental retardation to produce complex sentences in naturalistic conversation. All of the complex sentences produced were coded into subcategories of complementation, relativization, or coordination. First, the overall proportion of complex utterances produced by each subject (based on the total number of utterances) was examined. Following this analysis, the well-formed production and productivity of the three general categories of complex sentences were considered. Individual complex sentences were then categorized by developmental level using Rosenberg and Abbeduto's (1987) acquisition scale. No significant differences were observed between the young and older groups.
TL;DR: This paper investigated the applicability of the Subset Principle in the second language (L2) acquisi:ion of the Oblique-Case Parameter by 45 learners of French and found that learners acquired the lack of Exceptional-Case marking and preposition stranding, two of the syntactic properties tested, based on the positive evidence available to them.
Abstract: This 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.
TL;DR: This paper found that subjects given discourse prompts generated significantly more idea units than those given the purely motivational variety, and subjects in the discourse-prompting condition spent more time generating ideas.
Abstract: ABSTRACT This 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.
TL;DR: This article examined the use and understanding of concordant and discordant adverbial conjuncts in the later part of the life span and found a significant decline in processing in the elderly.
Abstract: This study examines the use and understanding of concordant (eg, consequently, moreover ) and discordant (eg, rather, contrastively ) adverbial conjuncts in the later part of the life span The participants, 75 neurologically healthy young (mean age 218), middle-aged (mean age 517), and elderly (mean age 731) adults, were examined using procedures by Nippold, Schwarz, and Undlin (1992) Groups were matched for education level The results indicate a significant decline in processing adverbial conjuncts in the elderly Discordant adverbial conjuncts especially challenged the linguistic processing abilities of the elderly subjects The age- related decline in processing adverbial conjunctsappears to be a specific deficit in linguistic processing that is independent of problems in memory or the effects of exposure to sophisticated language forms
TL;DR: In this paper, an acochlear child with complete bilateral absence of cochleas was found to have a hierarchy of syllables embedded within utterances and utterances embedded within prelinguistic phrases.
Abstract: 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.
TL;DR: For instance, Coady et al. as discussed by the authors investigated how readers actually carry out the process of guessing the meaning of words in context and thereby acquire not only the word-forms, but their meanings.
Abstract: The central question addressed in this volume, according to James Coady, is \"how readers actually carry out the process of guessing the meaning of words in context and thereby acquire not only the word-forms, but their meanings.\" This question, in many forms, has intrigued researchers and practitioners for more than a decade, as evidenced by the reprinted 1983 article by Margot Haynes, which constitutes Chapter 3. The remaining chapters in this volume revolve around two overarching issues in vocabulary learning: how vocabulary acquisition occurs, and whether there is a role for direct vocabulary instruction. As Coady points out in the opening chapter, the process of vocabulary learning is still not well understood in either first or second language acquisition. Nagy and Anderson (1984) and others have maintained that it is highly unlikely that LI learners acquire most of the tens of thousands of words they learn during the school years through direct instruction. Moreover, certain kinds of vocabulary occur infrequently in casual conversation, again suggesting that much vocabulary must be learned through reading. The mechanism by which this learning might occur, however, remains something of a mystery. If readers rely on context, which features of context are important? What types of context are enlightening, and what types obfuscating? Are only good LI or L2 readers able to benefit from contextual cues to word meaning, as Perfetti's verbal efficiency model would predict? Or is the use of contextual cues particularly important for beginning readers, whose sight vocabularies may be limited (Stanovich, 1986)? If rich semantic knowledge improves reading, and if reading skill drives the learning of vocabulary from context, how can instructors move poor readers into this upward spiral? These questions, dealt with in one or more chapters of this volume, have important pedagogical implications not only for EFL/ESL, but also for LI reading. Several chapters in the book address the question of which features of context are important to hypothesis generation and/or vocabulary learning from context. In Chapter 8, Thomas Huckin and Joel Bloch report a study in which they examined the strategies used by nonnative English speakers to guess the meanings of unfamiliar words. Based on think-aloud protocols produced by the L2 readers, Huckin and Bloch identify the use of local context clues especially a clue-word that occurs in the same sentence as the strategy most consistently and effectively used in successful guessing. Chiou-lan Chern (Chapter 4) also reports that local clues are frequently used by both lowand high-proficiency L2 readers, although forward cues appear to be used more frequently by stronger than by weaker readers.
TL;DR: Christman et al. as discussed by the authors explored the role of sonority in constraining the word identification errors of normal listeners and found that although sonority may constrain onset-driven word-search processes, sonority and lexical phonostatistics might constrain coda-driven search processes.
Abstract: ABSTRACT This 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.
TL;DR: The Southern California Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference (SCJCL) as discussed by the authors was the first attempt to provide a forum for presenting research in all areas of Japanese and Korean linguistics, thereby facilitating efforts to deepen our understanding of these two typologically very similar languages.
Abstract: Southern California has been a mecca for those who are interested in East Asian studies, including linguistics. This book contains 30 articles on Japanese and Korean, which were originally presented at the Southern California Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference, held at the University of California at Santa Barbara in September 1991. Since examining all 30 papers in a few pages is virtually impossible, I will attempt to describe in this review what has attracted my attention as a linguist who is particularly interested in cross-cultural comparisons of language acquisition and development. According to the foreword, the aim of the series, of which this book is the second installment, is to \"provide a forum for presenting research in all areas of Japanese and Korean linguistics, thereby facilitating efforts to deepen our understanding of these two typologically very similar languages\" (p. 1). Following the foreword, the volume is divided into five different, but interrelated, sections. The seven papers in Part 1 are concerned with discourse and pragmatics. The four papers in Part 2 are devoted to issues in phonology. The six papers in Part 3 are directed more toward those who are interested in psycholinguistics and language acquisition. (To me, Parts 1 and 3 are the most interesting sections, and my review will inevitably detail some of the papers included in these two sections.) Theoretical linguists interested in syntax will be drawn to Parts 4 (syntax and semantics) and 5 (syntax and morphology), which consist of 3 and 10 papers, respectively. Japanese and Korean are potentially rich areas for linguistic studies. Both are SOV languages (i.e., the basic word order of transitive sentence is that of subject-object-verb), belong to the Altaic language group, and are in marked contrast to English or other Indo-European languages. For example, whereas the use of determiners is generally obligatory with nominals (at least singular ones) in English, no such functional category exists in Japanese. (Note that I am a native speaker of Japanese, and that I simply assume that a linguistic phenomena observed in one language [i.e., Japanese] is often applicable to the other [i.e., Korean].) Moreover, in contrast to English, a right-branching language in which empty categories are restricted, Japanese is a left-branching language with a low frequency of pronouns and an extensive use of nominal ellipsis. As Hiroko Yamashita, Laurie Stowe, and Mineharu Nakayama attempt to characterize in \"Processing of Japanese Relative Clause Constructions\
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a collection of up-to-date and readable chapters written by important researchers, each writing about his or her respective area of interest, targeted specifically at early undergraduates, to meet a perceived demand from that segment of the university community.
Abstract: This book is an example of what seems to be a new trend the edited textbook. Like Osherson and Lasnik (1990), Berko Gleason and Ratner have put together an interesting collection of up-to-date and readable chapters written by important researchers, each writing about his or her respective area of interest. The text is targeted specifically at early undergraduates, in an effort to meet a perceived demand from that segment of the university community There are 10 chapters, including an \"Introduction\" (Ratner and Berko Gleason) and chapters on \"Biological Bases of Human Communicative Behavior\" (W. Dingwall), \"Speech Perception\" (G. Yeni-Komshian), \"Words and Meaning\" (K. Hirsh-Pasek, L. Reeves, and R. Golinkoff), \"Sentence Processing\" (A. Wingfield), \"Conversational Discourse\" (S. Ervin-Tripp), \"Speech Production\" (V. Fromkin), \"Language Development\" (Berko Gleason and Ratner), \"Reading\" (M. Wolf and F. Vellutino), and \"Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition\" (C. Snow). Chapters vary in length from 20 (\"Speech Production,\" \"Bilingualism\") to 50 (\"Words and Meaning\") pages, and most provide some historical background as well as information on research methods and models developed to account for the relevant phenomena. As one would expect from such a team, the chapters are uniformly up-todate, well-documented (4-7 pages bibliography each), and clearly written. The text, then, provides a broad, authoritative overview: a readable summary of work to date in much of the field. As reviewers are wont to, however, I find that there are significant problems with the text, some of which derive from the nature of edited works of this sort. An introduction takes on special importance in an edited text because it can help to compensate for the fragmentation inherent in multiple authorship. Ratner and Berko Gleason's \"Introduction,\" however, did not fulfill this purpose. Rather than giving a detailed overview of how the chapters fit together and providing fundamental questions and concepts that might be used as broad themes linking the chapters, they merely presented some introductory concepts of linguistics. Unfortunately, these concepts were repeated elsewhere in the text (e.g., phonetic features on pp. 12-16, as well as in Chapter 3, pp. 96-99) or were not taken up again in subsequent chapters where they would be relevant (e.g., species specificity, pp. 9-10). This, taken together with the absence of explicit links between and among chapters, gives the text a low rating on coherence, particularly for the reader with no prior knowledge of the field.
TL;DR: The authors explored the nature of writing and its relation to drawing and painting, as well as to speech, performance, and orality, in both Europe and America, then and now.
Abstract: This densely packed volume inquires into the nature of the colonial encounter between Spanish and Amerindian ways of writing and knowing. In the process, it delves into the nature of writing and its relation to drawing and painting, as well as to speech, performance, and orality, in both Europe and America, then and now. As Walter Mignolo writes in his afterword, the question is not so much whether or to what degree Spanish and Amerindian writing systems coexisted (or merged or diverged), but rather, \"what the meaning and implications of such a coexistence were in relation to the needs and social situations in which . . . paintings or writings were produced\" (pp. 299-300). By exploring the alternative literacies of preconquest and colonial Mexico and the Andes, and the meanings and implications of those literacies, the essays in this volume afford us the opportunity to deepen our understanding of what literacy is. The volume grows out of a roundtable held at Dumbarton Oaks in 1991 but is an expansion on the papers and discussions there. Eight chapters analyze specific pre-Columbian documents (six focus on Mesoamerica and two on the Andes), two additional chapters take up general or comparative perspectives (Houston and Mignolo), and the editors provide overview introductory and concluding chapters. Adapting from Geoffrey Sampson's Writing Systems (1985), Elizabeth Boone's introduction offers a broad definition of writing and goes on to explain that pre-Columbian peoples used both glottographic and semasiographic writing systems, the former representing speech and the latter communicating meaning directly at a supralinguistic level via either conventional or iconic symbols. The definition of writing as \"the communication of relatively specific ideas in a conventional manner by means of permanent, visible marks\" is intentionally broad so as to encompass the pre-Columbian situation which, as Boone points out and the chapters in the book amply demonstrate, defies the usual meaning of words such as art and writing. Stephen Houston builds on Boone's introduction, arguing for expanded notions of what constitutes writing and literacy. He exploits literacy theory and the colonial evidence on Maya literacy to suggest that writing must often be seen as ancillary to acoustic and bodily messages, and that literacy varies across scribal traditions and within a person's lifetime along a biaxial continuum of production (writing) and response (reading) (cf. Hornberger 1989 on the continua of biliteracy). He refutes the hypothesis of technologi-
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an analytic-comparative approach to second language learning, grounded on both instructional interaction and an analytic comparison approach for young second language learners. But this approach is not suitable for all learners.
Abstract: An English edition of this monograph is being prepared for publication by the University of Toronto Press (forthcoming at the end of 1996), edited by R. Titone, M. Danesi, and M. A. Pinto. In the meantime, requests have been received from Argentina, Japan, and Singapore to apply the same research design and evaluation instruments to young second language students in order to ascertain the same advantages as a result of a specific teaching methodology. This methodology has been defined as grounded on both instructional interaction and an analytic-comparative approach to second language learning.