Although both Chinese and Japanese allow resultative compounds of the form V/cause-V/result, Japanese resultative compounds do not show the semantic ambiguities seen in Chinese compounds. An argument that three factors explain this difference supports the claim that many differences among languages can be accounted for with universal principles…

Describes "need" as a semiauxiliary and marginal modal and as a full lexical verb in present-day British English from the syntactic, lexical, semantic, and pragmatic points of view. The descriptions given by grammars as well as examples in British-English texts are compared. (14 references) (Author/CFM)

Research in psychology and in linguistics has converged to suggest that the syntactic frames in which verbs appear carry meanings of their own, apart from the meaning of the verbs themselves. To date, however, a gap has existed between these two lines of research: Research in psychology has inferred the meanings of frames only indirectly; research…

Two experiments tested the activation of gender stereotypes for Italian role nouns (e.g., "teacher"). The experimental paradigm was modeled on the one proposed by a study by Banaji and Hardin: participants were shown a prime word followed by a target pronoun ("he" or "she") on which they performed a gender decision task. The prime words were…

Vietnamese has a group of semantically amorphous indefinite words and phrases whose meanings appear to be refined according to the particular syntactic or pragmatic context in which they are embedded. In appropriate environments, they are the functional equivalents of the English "who, someone, anyone, whoever, everyone." Analysis of the…

This study examined word meanings in the single word period of language learning. Ten children were seen for 5 hours each month from the time they started learning language until their median length of utterance was 2.5 words. All the children's utterances, and the extralinguistic contexts of the utterances, such as objects and movements, were…

A study investigated the validity of a linking rule of object affectedness; the rule states that an argument is expressed as the direct object of a verb if its referent is specified as affected in a specific way in the semantic representation of the verb. Specifically, the study examined whether the principle determines which argument will be…

Two instances of unaccusative verb mismatches in Japanese are examined. An unaccusative mismatch is the situation in which a different accusative diagnostic singles out different classes of intransitive verbs within and across languages. One type of unaccusative mismatch has to do with group C verbs, or verbs of manner with protagonist control.…

A study investigated one segment of toponymy, the study of place names, in Quebec. The first chapter discusses the nature, functions, and functioning of place names from a semiotic-logico-linguistic viewpoint. Chapter two describes the corpus and methodology of the study. Over 900 occurrences of "anse," the French word for…

Two experiments are reported investigating the effects of immediate recall upon subsequent recall and recognition of list items and examining the relation between positive and negative recency effects. (Author/RM)

Two experiments are reported in which subjects viewed films of automobile accidents and then answered questions about events occurring in the films. Wording of questions regarding speed influenced subjects' estimates of speed. (Author/RM)

A study is reported investigating the question whether inferences made from sentences occur immediately in comprehension or are in part a function of the way material from sentences is stored in memory. (Author/RM)

A greater understanding of psychological treatment can be achieved through an analysis of the language used by those participating in such treatment. Several conceptual aids are needed: (1) a theory about how language conveys meaning; (2) a model of language in psychological treatment; (3) reliable units of measure; and (4) since psychological…

Third part of a continued article. (SK)