Focuses on the consequences that the structural configuration of lexical knowledge has for the timecourse of parsing. Discusses reduced relative clauses and proposes a new lexical-structural analysis for manner of motion verbs. The article examines consequences for frequency-based models and all models whose difficulty derives from the ambiguity…

Explores the relevance and usefulness of a new paradigm, variously named connectionism or parallel distributed processing, involving the application of the computer sciences, to the teaching of foreign languages. (53 references) (CB)

The main difference between the information-processing and Bialystok's Analysis/Control framework for first and second language learning is in their focus. The latter is equipped mainly to account for performance differences on metalinguistic tasks, while the former accounts for construction and reconstruction of implicit and explicit mental…

By presenting two theories of first and second language learning dichotomously, their fundamental similarity as information-processing theories is obscured and details of both positions are misrepresented. (Author/MSE)

A distinction is drawn between representational and processing models of second-language acquisition. The first approach is derived primarily from linguistics, the second from psychology. Both fields, it is argued, need to collaborate more fully, overcoming disciplinary narrowness in order to achieve more fruitful research. (GLR)

Reviews research that supports the view that readers strip prefixed words of their prefix and lexically assess the words on the basis of their stem. An experiment using real and nonword stems found that nonwords that are considered to be stem morphemes are treated as being more wordlike than those that are not. (36 references) (MDM)

A lexicalist, or direct-mapping, view of the relationship between syntactic functions and surface syntactic relations and a link between semantic features and the assignment of arguments to syntactic functions are advocated. An experiment with 192 undergraduate students examines the issues as problems of language production. (SLD)

Notes that memory-based text processing (MBP) is a label that has been used to refer to a theoretical perspective shared by contributors to this special issue. Defines the domain addressed by MBP; identifies the major shared assumptions of researchers representing the MBP perspective; and raises some challenges for MBP researchers. (SR)

Suggests that foreign language learners will achieve a higher level of language if they are made aware of--and given the opportunity to manipulate--extralinguistic variables with regard to the texts they study. Teaching materials (e.g., textbook dialogues, audiotaped or videotaped texts) should include the context-based information necessary for…

A fundamental problem for those interested in human communication is to determine how ideas and the various units of language structure are communicated through speaking. The physiological concepts involved in the control of muscle contraction and movement are theoretically distant from the processing levels and units postulated to exist in…

The present chapter bridges two lines of neurocognitive research, which are, despite being related, usually discussed separately from each other. The two fields, second language (L2) sentence comprehension and artificial grammar processing, both depend on the successful learning of complex sequential structures. The comparison of the two research…

Although researchers studying human speech recognition (HSR) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) share a common interest in how information processing systems (human or machine) recognize spoken language, there is little communication between the two disciplines. We suggest that this lack of communication follows largely from the fact that…

This study explored asymmetries for movement, expression and perception of visual speech. Sixteen dextral models were videoed as they articulated: "bat," "cat," "fat," and "sat." Measurements revealed that the right side of the mouth was opened wider and for a longer period than the left. The asymmetry was accentuated at the beginning and ends of…

For the purposes of this article, the authors define "multilingualism" as a state of general communicative proficiency in more than two languages; that is, a person is multilingual when he or she can fulfill his or her communicative goals in at least three languages. Bilingualism and trilingualism are thus seen as specific subtypes of a…

This paper presents three studies which examine the susceptibility of sentence comprehension to intrusion by extra-sentential probe words in two on-line dual-task techniques commonly used to study sentence processing: the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm and the unimodal all-visual lexical priming paradigm. It provides both a general review…