This study investigates the use of structural and discourse contextual cues in the interpretation of third-person pronouns by children and adolescents with autism and their neurotypical peers. Results show that referent-biasing contextual information influences pronominal interpretation and modulates looking patterns in both groups compared to a…

This paper aims to present the pragmatic functions and the interpretations of 'taha' ([characters omitted]) (a very commonly used particle in oral Cypriot-Greek interactions) as it is used in classroom discourse. The present study collected and analysed data from a three hour recording of the participants' speech, and isolated 32 critical episodes…

After reading, "few of the juniors were accepted," focus is on the students not accepted, the complement set. According to the Presupposition Denial Account, negative quantifiers, such as "few," convey a denial of expectation, or shortfall, which leads to complement set focus. In six experiments, we explored the role of the…

Purpose: Children's ability to adjust one's language according to discourse context is important for success in academic settings. This study examined whether second graders vary in linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse contexts, that is, when describing pictures in contextualized (describing the picture to an examiner while…

Purpose: Children's ability to adjust one's language according to discourse context is important for success in academic settings. This study examined whether second graders vary in linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse contexts, that is, when describing pictures in contextualized (describing the picture to an examiner while…

The dominant topic in investigating pragmatics which used to understand the meaning of certain words and phrases requires contextual information is the phenomenon of deixis. The researcher limited this study on person deixis which aimed to identify and classify kind of person deixis in English translation of Summarized "Shahih Al-Bukhari…

Language is a magical key that human beings hold in their hands to open the door of communication. To succeed in communication, formal links are one of the aspects of language that need to be known and used in discourse in addition to the contextual factors (Cook, 1992). Hence, systematic exposure to them is essential for satisfactory language…

Previous research indicates that features of speech during mother-toddler interactions are dependent on the situational context. In this study, we explored language samples of 69 mother-toddler dyads collected during standardized toy play and book-reading situations across two countries, Germany and the United States (US). The results showed that…

This paper explored a less-studied preposition, "after," and its uses in a corpus. The analysis included an inspection of dictionary senses, followed by the distributional patterns of parts-of-speech, the co-appearing verbs of "after," the contextual uses of [-"ly after"] and [-"ly after"+NOUN], and finally…

Reflective practice is at the core of teacher education programmes and is highly regarded as an essential component in the education of new and experienced teachers. Given the recent interest in language use and the role of discourse in articulating knowledge of one's practice, this paper focuses on how two groups of early career teachers from…

Anaphoric expressions are among the most frequent language forms which depend on context for their resolution. Among efforts made in theorizing referential choice, distance approaches take into account how accessibility/continuity is reflected by choice of referring expressions. The thing is that individual's choices are made under major and minor…

The goal of language comprehension for humans is not just to decode the semantic content of sentences, but rather to grasp what speakers intend to communicate. To infer speaker meaning, listeners must at minimum assess whether and how the literal meaning of an utterance addresses a question under discussion in the conversation. In cases of…

An eye tracking study investigated the effects of local and global discourse context on the processing of subject and object relative clauses, whereby the contexts favored either a subject relative clause interpretation or an object relative clause interpretation. The fixation data replicated previous studies showing that object relative clause…

This dissertation explores how participants express and interpret verbal cues of interaction involvement in dyadic conversations via text-based Instant Messaging (IM). Moreover, it seeks to discover differences in the way American participants and Chinese participants use verbal cues when they are highly, or lowly involved. Based on previous…

Examines syntactic choices available to journal article writers for making reporting statements and the conditions governing such choices. The article investigates the way in which the choice of theme affects the syntactic form of the reports. The resulting syntactic forms are shown to be associated with the function of reports in their contexts.…