The nature of the system of linguistic entities of a natural language is examined. The purpose is to define the relation between "le lexique" and an overall linguistic theory, the relation between form and meaning. (Text is in French.) (TL)

Considers two aspects of contemporary Russian language usage: (1) synonymity of prepositions, and (2) semantic and stylistic differences arising when certain verbs govern nouns in different cases. Material is excerpted from "Stilistik der russischen Sprache" (Russian Language Style) by Rosental and M. Telenkowa. (Text is in German.) (FB)

Discusses problems in contemporary translation theory, particularly in terms of the number of semantic distinctions a given language may draw. (CLK)

Discusses the fact that the conditional mood has wider distribution in Czech than in Russian as far as its meaning and use are concerned. An analysis of this phenomenon is proposed that makes use of many aspects and dimensions such as the relation between two propositions in an "if...then" construction, the "alternative…

Investigates the acquisition of the unaccusative-unergative distinction in second language Japanese by English learners. Aims to establish whether learners of Japanese are sensitive to the lexical-semantic characteristics of verbs in similar ways as learners of Romance languages who were found to follow the split intransitivity hierarchy.…

The study examined whether college students (35 normally achieving writers, 35 writers with learning disabilities, and 35 underprepared writers) differed in their ability to utilize the semantic roles and syntactic rules needed to apply cohesive referencing in written text. Among findings were that all groups made effective use of pronoun…

Object deletion in Classical Arabic is semantically marked on two levels: ( 1) dropping the object deliberately but functionally; and (2) emptying the object slot and focusing on the verbal action. The second level of object deletion stresses the verbal action. (20 references) (GLR)

Presents a model for the a priori analysis of natural language queries which uses an algorithm to transform the query into a logical pattern that is used to determine the answerability of the query. The results of testing by a prototype system implemented in PROLOG are discussed. (20 references) (CLB)

The first of two papers discusses natural language searching as a user performance enhancement tool, focusing on artificial intelligence applications for information retrieval and problems with natural language processing. The second presents a conceptual framework for further development and future design of front ends to online bibliographic…

Analyzes the "easy to be V" structure in terms of the semantic features of sentences with this structure. These sentences can be classified into types, ranging from the "prototype" with the most features contributing to its transparency, to the "peripheral" with the fewest of such features. (Author/CB)

The article offers teachers suggestions on ways to instruct elementary students in the vocabulary of mathematics. It gives examples of math difficulties at the elementary school level, math difficulties related to vocabulary, and math difficulties related to problem solving. (DB)

Describes a model that displays structures necessary to map between the conceptual and external levels in database management systems, using an algorithm that maps the syntactic representations of tuples onto semantic representations. A technique for translating tuples into natural language sentences is introduced, and a system implemented in…

Transcribed the speech of 3 African-American mothers and their 19- to 27-month-old children over a 9-month period. Compared to the language of Euro-American children described in earlier studies, the language of these African-American children developed similarly in length and semantic-syntactic relations but included more talk about needs, wants,…

For the past 30 years, much has been written about the works of Noam Chomsky. A comparison is presented of the latest writings about Chomsky (in particular P.M.S. Hacker's 1990 work) with those written in the early 1960s. (CFM)

The study, with 15 language-learning-disabled and 15 normally achieving children (ages 6-8), found a significant positive correlation between the severity of the language disability and accuracy on 2 of 3 imagery tasks. Performance on one imagery task was significantly related to reading achievement, and imagery ability was related more strongly…