Understanding the mechanisms learners use to process target language input is crucial to developing a complete model of both first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. If adult L2 learners are found to process the target language with mechanisms that differ from those used by child L1 learners and adult native speakers, what…

A study investigated how two text-based factors, word relationships and surface syntactic structure, interact with readers' ability to analyze the semantic relationships and make inferences based on those analyses. In each passage, the influence of word relationships was assessed by manipulating the degree of semantic entailment between two words…

The testing of a number of hypotheses about the effect of hearing a prior context sentence on immediate processing of a subsequent target sentence is described. According to the standard deep structure model, higher level processing (e.g. semantic interpretation, integration of context-tarqet information) does not occur immediately as speech is…

Discusses the relative merits of feature versus model based semantics for the interpretation of verb phrases in English, French, and German. The article concludes that the simplicity afforded by features is offset by the depth of analysis achieved with event models that are additionally able to support a sophisticated approach to machine…

The functional architecture of the verbal processing resource system was studied by testing aphasic patients in Canada and Boston for their abilities to use syntactic structure in sentence comprehension in isolation and under dual-task conditions. Results indicate that the processing resource system underlying syntactic processing is separate from…

Cognitive mechanisms that may account for the phenomena of whole-word phonology and phonological templates in children are described and strategies for identifying whole-word phonological patterns in normal and disordered phonologies are proposed. Intervention strategies that draw on these same mechanisms as a way to overcome their inappropriate…

Examines the source of poor readers' comprehension failures in spoken sentences containing complex syntactic structures. Although research literature indicates that the difficulties poor readers display are usually associated with some aspect of phonological processing, other components of language processing may be involved. (58 references)…

Metalinguistic abilities of 20 hearing-impaired children, aged 4-10, were assessed by asking them to judge synonymy of sentence pairs presented in Signed English, Pidgin Sign English, and American Sign Language. None of the children had developed metalinguistic abilities in any of the sign language systems. (Author/JDD)

Two studies examined the performance of English-speaking learners of French as a Second Language in three areas of French morphosyntax. In both cases, learners were found to increase gradually the structural domain in which they were able to operate as their level of competence improved. (Contains 62 references.) (MDM)

We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the contributions of explicit and implicit processes during second language (L2) sentence comprehension. We used a L2 grammaticality judgment task (GJT) to test 20 native English speakers enrolled in the first four semesters of Spanish while recording both accuracy and ERP data. Because…

A study investigated whether children and adolescents use commas and the principle of Late Closure to guide sentence parsing decisions as adults do in processing syntactically ambiguous sentences. The study consisted of three experiments, conducted similarly but with different subject groups: 24 university students; 24 fourth-graders; and 19…

Spoken narratives as a genre usually show literary stylistic features. Written/literary registers are characterized by lexical density whereas spoken/colloquial genres are characterized by the complex combination of simple clauses into clause complexes. It has been observed that when aiming at informationally dense speech, people often hesitate…

A study examined the effect of five types of sentence faults on the method of information processing, recall ability, confidence rating, and comprehensibility rating of college freshman English students. The control text consisted of five passages and the accompanying comprehension questions exactly as they appear on the multiple choice Georgia…

Using a system based on standard augmented transition network (ATN) parsing approach, this report describes a technique for the rapid development of natural language parsing, called High-Level Grammar Specification Language (HGSL). The first part of the report describes the syntax and semantics of HGSL and the network implementation of each of its…

Edward Sapir's 1921 publication, "Language, An Introduction to the Study of Speech" is interpreted for beginning students of historical and descriptive linguistics. In his book, Sapir attempts to show (1) what he thinks language is, (2) what variables occur in language due to time and place, and (3) the relationship of language and…