Tests earlier claims about the universality of patterns of polysemy and semantic extension in the domain of perception verbs. Utilizing data from a broad range of Australian languages, two hypothesized universals are addressed: Viberg's (1994) proposed unidirectional pattern of extension from higher to lower sensory modalities and Sweeter's (1990)…

Carried out simulations in which a set of morphologically-related words varying in semantic transparency were embedded in either a morphologically rich language (Hebrew) or an impoverished artificial language. Found that morphological priming increased with degree of semantic transparency in both languages. (Author/VWL)

One of the analyses carried out within the University of Uppsala (Sweden) study, "LSP Texts in the 20th Century," classified the cognitive text content into five different cognitive worlds: the scientific, the practical, the object, the private, and the external. This paper investigated patterns of distribution in the texts of these…

Examines the phenomenon of semantic change with regard to color categories in closely related Mayan languages (Tzetal and Tzotzil) associated with radically different social milieux. It is argued that, although a model of individual cognition explains how color categories change at the basic level, a social model accounts for differences between…

Dutch-English bilinguals performed a generalized lexical decision task on triplets of items, responding with "yes" if all items wee correct Dutch and/or English words, and with "no" if one or ore of the items was not a word in wither language. Semantic priming effects were found in on-line response times. Event-related…

Summarizes 10 presentations made at the workshop on a variety of topics including: classification of Chinese dialects; the importance of semantic units in tone sandhi; insights on Chinese character recognition among brain-damaged patients; and a cognitive approach to the study of Chinese grammar. (TR)

Every sentence conveys a temporal point of view through its aspectual meaning. This viewpoint arises through presenting a situation from a certain temporal perspective and indirectly classifying the situation as an exemplar of an idealized situation type. The information is conveyed by the aspectual categories of a language. This paper presents a…

Suggests that cognitive semantics is governed by principles similar to prosodies in phonology. Illustrates this claim by words referring to negative states, events, and properties in English and in Polish, arguing that they carry 'negative prosodies' that spread over other lexical items. It is suggested that the semantic prosodies of some triggers…

Presents an analysis of non-native English verbs of saying constructions, such as "discuss about" and "explain about," as they are realized in Nepali English. It is suggested that the analysis of Nepali English constructions offer important insights into second language acquisition and language change. (30 references)…

A study tested hypotheses concerning thinking in a foreign language. Specifically, it looked at whether (1) inferencing in a foreign language relies on mental models and propositional thinking; (2) the three stages of the theory of comprehension apply to understanding foreign-language discourse; and (3) propositional thinking manifests native…

Students in freshmen English classes (N=273) at a Japanese university were given translation and acceptability judgment tests involving the verb "give" (in text). The selective use of two predicate structures for "give" in appropriate contexts of usage were examined: (1) GIVE (noun phrase NP and participial phrase PP) and (2)…

The collection of papers on linguistic experiments includes: "Discourse Functions of Pitch Range in Spontaneous and Read Speech" (Gayle M. Ayers); "When Is a Syllable Not a Syllable?" (Mary E. Beckman); "The Relationship between Syntactic and Semantic Processes in Sentence Comprehension" (Julie E. Boland); "The Influence of Orthography and…

This collection of conference papers and abstracts includes: "Integrating Two Languages, Theories of Minds, and Executive Functions" (Agnes Melinda Kovacs and Erno Teglas); "Unconventional Thinking for Speaking: The Blends of George W. Bush" (Alan Cienki); "Blends of Alternations in the Grammar of Brazilian Vernacular…

This book brings together the contributions of individual language scholars, linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and neurophysicians. Each chapter focuses on the human cognitive processes involved in language activity and the impact of language diversity on them. The basic issue is how to correlate language diversity with the universality…