Children are in control.

We argue on the basis of recent experimental results that modular principles of universal grammar (UG) play a continuous role in the first language acquisition of control. Our results involve both comprehension and production data from 108 3- to 8-year old children who are acquiring English. The results provide evidence against the hypothesis that there is a "stage" at which children do not know fundamental grammatical principles of control, or fail to apply the basic structural analysis relevant to control. We suggest that previous proposals for this hypothesis have been misled by (1) attention to only one aspect of the knowledge of control, namely choice of antecedent in comprehension of the embedded null subject in these structures and (2) misinterpretation of the nature of the principle by which children overgeneralize the choice of object as antecedent in control structures. Although the new results do replicate delay in acquisition with the unique subject-control verb "promise", they suggest that this delay is caused by a need to integrate modular principles of UG with language-specific principles by which the lexicon and syntax (constituent structure and case) are related. The overgeneralization of choice of object as antecedent is shown to reflect a continuous principle of syntactic minimality.

Presupposition and implication of truth: linguistic deficits following early brain lesions.

Twenty-four children (4-17 years) with unilateral left (N = 14) or right (N = 10) hemisphere damage and 24 age-matched controls were tested on their ability to presuppose the truth of factive sentences e.g., "Max knew that he locked the door," and to infer the truth or falsity of implicative sentences "Max remembered to lock the door." Experimental sentence types varied according to the type of inference, the semantic features of the verb (factive vs. implicative), the presence and type of negation (lexical or syntactic), and the syntax of the complement (tensed or infinitive). Relative to age-matched controls, left lesion subjects were deficient in both their presupposition and implication performance, particularly when such inferences required the computation of negation scope. Right lesion subjects exhibited a somewhat more selective deficit; one limited to implication, but not presupposition, and one limited to lexical but not syntactic forms of negation.

On the acquisition of syntax in Tamil: a comment on Garman (1974).

Garman (1974), reporting on twenty Tamil children aged three to five, postulated a linguistic strategy and two prelinguistic strategies to explain the results of a question-picture choice task involving sentences with embedded and subordinate clauses. In a reanalysis of his data, we identify four processing strategies and show that some of Garman's findings are better explained not as the outcome of prelinguistic strategies but as an artefact of the experimental design. In fact the data provide evidence of a grammatical sensitivity which is consonant with a sensitivity--demonstrated in recent language--acquisition studies-to the branching direction of the language being acquired.

Cross-linguistic studies of directionality in first language acquisition: the Japanese data--a response to O'Grady, Suzuki-Wei & Cho 1986.

Elsewhere we have argued on the basis of cross linguistic studies of directionality effects on anaphora in child language, that there is no universal 'forward directionality preference (FDP)'; rather such a preference is linked to languages with specific grammatical properties. Although such a preference has been attested in English acquisition, matched experimental designs in Japanese, Chinese and Sinhalese, for example, do not show this effect. In this paper we argue that current attempts to show that forward directionality effects can also be induced in Japanese acquisition do not succeed in supporting the FDP. Specifics of the design of stimulus sentences in these experiments vary previous cross-linguistic designs so as to favour forward directionality on independent grounds, and confound cross linguistic comparisons. They in fact support a universal structure dependence in children's hypotheses about directionality of anaphora.

Undergraduate computer literacy. Evaluation and intervention.

Undergraduate nursing students (juniors) entering an upper division nursing program were asked to rate their overall computer skill, ability to use word processing, spreadsheet, presentation/graphics programs, and their ability to use the Internet and e-mail. Because of the number of students who rated themselves as not computer literate an intervention was planned. A graduate student, using a tutorial manual, worked with students for six 1.5-hour skill-enhancing sessions during their first semester. After the sessions students again rated their skill levels. An analysis of the before and after data showed a mean gain score of 5.5 points, with each skill showing a significant increase from the before to the after assessment.