Reading researchers and theorists are sharply divided as to how meaning is obtained from the printed word. Three current explanations are that (1) meaning is accessed directly, without any intermediate processes; (2) meaning is accessed only through an intermediate phonemic stage; and (3) both direct access and phonemic mediation can occur. To…

SEVERAL EXPLORATIONS WERE MADE INTO THE STRUCTURE OF MEANING IN BURMESE AND RUSSIAN. VARIOUS KINDS OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION WERE ISOLATED BY TEXTUAL STUDY AND INTERVIEWS WITH NATIVE SPEAKERS. DISCUSSION COVERED SUCH THEORETICAL QUESTIONS AS (1) SYNCHRONY AND DIACHRONY, (2) SEMANTICS AND GRAMMAR, (3) SEMANTICS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE, (4) SEMANTICS…

Native English speakers performed a phoneme-monitoring task to assess whether ambiguous words (homographs) require extra processing capacity under two conditions: no prior context and prior context provided by disambiguating subject-noun and verb combinations. Phoneme detection latencies were reliably longer for homographs than for control words…

The present study investigated why it is that the more concrete the subject noun phrase of a sentence, the more likely the predicate is to be recalled when the subject noun phrase is the cue. The findings were that concretization dramatically influences both the probability of recognition of the subject noun phrase and the probability of recall of…

Two experiments are reported in which subjects performed simple mental arithmetic problems which were presented visually in a sequential fashion. At some point in the presentation of each problem, the sequential display was interrupted and a memory task introduced. The purpose was to validate a measure of transient memory load. (Author/RM)

This study examines two views of lexical storage and word production, a derivational hypothesis and an independent unit hypothesis. Reaction times and errors were related to derivational complexity. A model of lexical retrieval process incorporating derivational processes is proposed. (Author/SW)

A comparison of the linguistic analysis of Mounin and the psychoanalytic work of Freud on forgetting of words. Martinet's thesis regarding pertinence is confirmed. In the study Devereux's theories are used to study relationships among diverse disciplines and the epistomology of multidisciplinary research. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

An experiment was carried out to study the processes of linguistic memory. Subjects were asked to read aloud brief prose passages and repeat what they had read. The "deviations" from the original passages were analyzed to determine the time of the deviation, during decoding or recall. (Text is in Italian.) (CFM)

Suggests that even the youngest children use systematic strategies in ordering the elements of a story based on causal and temporal relationships. (FL)

Four views of the article by Wike and Church in this issue. (RM)

Clark's arguments for treating language materials as random rather than fixed effects are examined, and the problems with random effects designs and approximate statistical tests (quasi F-ratios) are reviewed. It is suggested that researchers use fixed factors. (Author/RM)

Refers to the theory which distinguishes two poles in the organization of speech: the selection of units which can be interchanged in the sentence (paradigmatic pole) and the combination of units simultaneously present in the sentence (syntagmatic pole). (DD)

Experimentally manipulated differences in mental state can systematically alter the linguistic intuitions which speakers render about acceptability of sentences. The processes underlying intuitions must be taken into consideration when they are used as empirical data to test grammatical theories. A theory of introspection must be part of the…

Demonstrates that (1) in a theory of comprehension, global coherence must refer not just to the availability of a macrostructure, but also to its ease of construction; and (2) the topic-comment assignment at the sentence level can be an important influence on the reader's perception of the passage topic. (FL)

Examines, through an investigation of the effect of word frequency on lexical decision, alternative views of how the internal lexicon is structured and searched. A model is developed based on two internal lists: one a ready-access list, the other a complete list. (Author/AM)