Presents a model of high-dimensional context space, the Hyperspace Analogue to Language (HAL), with a series of simulations modelling human empirical results. Proposes that HAL's context space can be used to provide a basic categorization of semantic and grammatical concepts; model certain aspects of morphological ambiguity in verbs; and provide…

In three experiments, readers were presented with garden-path sentences containing reciprocal verbs, and their eye movements were monitored. Results demonstrate that information from the reciprocal verb influenced the earliest stages of syntactic processing. (29 references) (Author/CK)

This introductory article discusses following articles that consider how phonology interacts with other aspects of language and language learning and the role of this interaction in language acquisition. It addresses the interaction between phonology and the lexicon, phonological representations and morphophonemic alternations, and the interaction…

Cross-linguistic investigation of the importance of syntactic cues and cue processing cost in French and Spanish four through six-year-olds' sentence comprehension revealed that topological cues helped French subjects most, while local cues helped Spanish subjects most. (Author/CB)

Identifies issues specific to syntactic parsing for intelligent computer-assisted language instruction (ICALI), including applications, types of input errors, characteristics of natural language, and output. Presents a general overview and assessment of grammar formalisms and parsing strategies in relation to ICALI. (Author/LS)

Unlike conventional information retrieval systems, natural language processing (NLP) systems translate queries automatically into the language of the system. This paper discusses the potential impact of NLP on both the indexing and retrieval of text and examines some current NLP projects and systems that have established knowledge bases in narrow…

Investigated whether syntactic computation takes place in an ambiguous sentence fragment in Japanese and if and how information from constituents other than the verb is utilized. Experiments were conducted using automated, word-by-word visual presentations with a lexical decision task on an extrasentential target. (Author/VWL)

Demonstrates that an understanding of children's language-acquisition difficulties with a wide range of syntactic constructions should be derived from limitations on the child's ability to deal with processing load and formal representational complexity. Maintains this can be done only in the context of a view of syntactic representation…

A central issue in bilingual research concerns the extent to which linguistic representations in the two languages are processed independently of each other. This paper reports the results of an empirical study and a model stimulation, which provide evidence for the interactive view, which holds that processing is not independent. Specifically, a…

This article addresses the debate on the causes of variability in production of second language functional morphology. It reports a study on article production by first language (L1) Serbian/second language (L2) English learners and compares their behaviour to that of a Turkish learner of English, reported in Goad and White (2004). In particular,…

Event-related potentials were measured as subjects read sentences presented word by word. A small N400 and a robust P600 effect were elicited by verbs that assigned the thematic role of Agent to their preceding noun-phrase argument when this argument was inanimate in nature. The amplitude of the P600, but not the N400, was modulated by the…

The ability to process the linguistic input in real time is crucial for successfully acquiring a language, and yet little is known about how language learners comprehend or produce language in real time. Against this background, we have conducted a detailed study of grammatical processing in language learners using experimental psycholinguistic…

Microelectrode recordings of human sensori-motor subthalamic neuronal activity during spoken sentence and syllable-repetition tasks provided an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between changes in neuronal activities and specific aspects of these vocal behaviors. Observed patterns of neuronal activity included a build up of activity in…

In Study 1, English-speaking 3- and 4-year-olds heard a novel adjective used to label one of two objects and were asked for the referent of a different novel adjective. Children were more likely to select the unlabeled object if the two adjectives appeared prenominally (e.g., "a very DAXY dog") than as predicates (e.g., "a dog that is very DAXY").…

This study focuses on the morphosyntactic aspects of Cantonese-English code-mixing as commonly spoken by bilinguals, most of whom are Cantonese. A corpus of Cantonese-English code-switching collected from informal conversations is analyzed in terms of structural properties, followed by a critique of the major constraints or principles that have…