Investigated the interrelationship between meaning construction and testing tasks in English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) tests written in both Hebrew and English taken by 28 Israeli 10th graders. Results found that the testing task functioned as an additional information source that was used by the students to develop mental models of English…

The objective of this response article is to think through some of what I see as the far-reaching implications of a recent paper by Eric Hauser (2005) entitled "Coding 'corrective recasts': the maintenance of meaning and more fundamental problems". Hauser makes a compelling, empirically-backed case for his contention that, contrary to widespread…

Dimensions of word meaning are examined, and a framework for describing and teaching Chinese words in the context of Chinese second language instruction is offered. It is argued that every word has limitations of usage that must be understood before it can be used appropriately. The limitations, or dimensions, include these: connotative (emotional…

This essay provides teachers and others with an awareness of the social and political implications of words used to designate indigenous peoples of North America. How a group is seen by others and how it sees itself in many ways define the conditions under which the group will live, and the options it can exercise to affect these conditions. The…

Defining general semantics as the study of words or symbols and their effects on human behavior, this paper proposes a general semantics approach to the teaching of style in college introductory speech courses. The paper cites results of a 1980 survey of basic speech course content and emphases, showing that while most courses devote a great deal…

Intended as a text to help teachers introduce college freshmen and sophomores to language through writing or to writing through introduction to language, this book emphasizes the relationship of linguistics to composition, literature, and the human condition. The nine chapters discuss the following topics: (1) three approaches to language, (2)…

Child acquisition of Mandarin was studied with four middle class families from Taipei, Taiwan. The 2-year-olds were taped at home playing with their families. Two of the children were taped for short periods (7 hours and 9 hours), while the other two children were studied biweekly for 14 months, which resulted in 71 hours of transcribed child…

This paper describes part of a larger study dealing with syntax and semantics of the child's early speech about motion and location. It suggests that goal, defined as the point at which a motion ends and a resulting locative state begins, is the organizing principle for the semantics of motion and location. The data presented here are from two…

A study of the influence of English on modern Finnish was designed to determine how Anglicisms are used, how they are understood, and how they are adapted to the Finnish language system. Features of present-day Finnish were analyzed to discover to what extent the Finnish language and the Finns' sense of language are changing. Anglicisms were…

The reduction of existing lexical items to shorter forms has generally been discussed under the headings of "acronyms,""back-formations," and "clippings." Two kinds of acronym are found, the letter-naming type (e.g. FBI, YMCA) and the letter-sounding type (e.g. UNESCO, CARE). The latter type must be pronounceable within the phonotactic norms of…

This paper describes a study of the relationship between terminology in psychological studies and prevailing social conditions at the time of the studies. It is proposed that researchers reflect societal concerns by their choice of semantic markers (terminology). Over 3,000 psychological studies from 1900-72 were analyzed in terms of their…

Because of the built-in stereotyping and derogation of women that exists in the English language, the classroom teacher must face the task of finding practical answers to three popular attacks against research on sexism in English: language is a rather minor and irrelevant issue; there is no need to change language from the way it has always been;…

Concepts advanced by grammarians, linguistic historians, dialectologists, psycholinguists, lexicographers, semanticists, and phonologists, together with new approaches to reading, spelling, and literature, can help the teacher make the English program more stimulating for children. For instance, discoveries made by psycholinguists have attested to…

This study proposes that avoidance of a structure by a second language learner can only be claimed for instances where it can be demonstrated that the learner "knows" the avoided language form and that native speakers are expected to use a particular form in that context. Research is reviewed, particularly a study by J. Schachter (1974) in which…

Speech errors have been used in the construction of production models of the phonological and semantic components of language, and for a model of interactional processes. Errors also provide insight into how speakers plan discourse and syntactic structure,. Different types of discourse exhibit different types of error. The present data are taken…