Investigates the role of morphological structure in the representation and processing of Mandarin Chinese compounds. Results provide evidence against single-layer, morpheme-based models of the Chinese mental lexicon, pointing instead to a two-layer, whole-word and morphemic model (the Multi-Level Cluster Representation Model). (67 references)…

A potential problem for connectionist accounts of inflectional morphology is the need to learn a "default" inflection. This article demonstrates that given appropriate architectural assumptions, connectionist models are capable of learning a default category and generalizing as required, even in the absence of superior type frequency. (22…

Presents two probe recognition experiments investigating whether overt and null pronouns in American Sign Language (ASL) similarly reactivate their referents during online sentence comprehension. Both experiments indicated that an important link exists between spatial verb agreement and the ASL pronomial system and that nonreferent inhibition does…

Examines the language of the underworld, a language that includes slang spoken in prisons. This language functions not so much as a secret code whose primary purpose is to deceive but as a means by which members share an identity. Such speech fosters group solidarity, mutual recognition, prestige, and a sense of exclusiveness. (25 references) (CK)

Describes the phoneme repertoires and phonological error patterns used by Cantonese-speaking children, as well as a longitudinal study of tone acquisition by four children. The developmental error patterns used by more than 10% of children are reported as common in other languages. Specific rules associated with Cantonese phonology are identified.…

Investigates children's early lexical development in English and Korean and compares caregivers' linguistic input in the two languages. Results indicate that young Korean children use verbs productively with appropriate inflections and that, unlike in English, both verbs and nouns in Korean are dominant categories from the single-word stage. (39…

Presents an analysis of past tense and participle usages by children, focusing on overapplications of irregular vowel-change patterns, as in "brang"; blends, as in "branged"; productive suffixations of "-en," as in "walken"; gross distortions, as in "mail-membled"; and double-suffixation, as in "walkeded." Findings indicate that these errors are…

Explores spontaneous speech samples from children during the period from one word to multiword utterances in interaction with their French-speaking mothers in order to study the appearance and development of functional changes in their use of language. A longitudinal study of four children revealed the beginnings of references to the past and the…

Presents a study of the spontaneous pre-sentential negations of preschool English-speaking children that supports the hypothesis that child English nonanaphoric pre-sentential negation is a form of metalinguistic exclamatory sentence negation. A detailed discourse analysis reveals these child negations as echoic and expressive of objection and…

Examined language differentiation in bilingual toddlers prior to the emergence of functional categories. The children were observed with each parent separately and both together. Results indicate that while these children did code mix, they were able to differentiate between their two languages. There was some evidence that language dominance…

Examines how young children describe reversals of action that restore objects to a prior, less-constrained, state. In both English and German, children first rely on the verb "open"; they then use their knowledge of particle pairs. Reentry into a prior state is underlined by uses of "back" and "wieder" and the consistent use of semantically…

Using a narrative procedure, this study replicated Zaitchik's (1991) result that children are more likely to acknowledge another's belief when they are told about reality than when they see reality for themselves. The article argues that these children were acknowledging alternative rather than false belief. (20 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the development of children's understanding of the difference between "want" and "need" in two different experiments. The first experiment required the children to respond verbally in choosing between the two concepts; the second required them to give an object to one of two characters who had made a request using either "want" or "need."…

This study used three experiments to study whether infant-directed (ID) or adult-directed (AD) speech facilitated the learning of Chinese vocabulary by adults whose native language was English and who had had no prior knowledge of Chinese. Results indicate that ID speech may play a pivotal role in early lexical acquisition. (51 references)…

Examines issues relating to similarity neighborhoods of words in children's lexicons. Young children's receptive vocabularies were analyzed for three-phoneme, four-phoneme and five-phoneme words. The pattern of the original results from Charles-Luce & Luce (1990) was replicated. (18 references) (Author/CK)