To analyze the process involved in maintaining conversational coherency, the study described in this paper used a construct called a "context space" that grouped utterances referring to a single issue or episode. The paper defines the types of context spaces, parses individual conversations to identify the underlying model or structure,…

The complexity of language of four, five, and six year old children was examined in a psycholinguistic study that attempted to differentiate the characteristics of sentences that were difficult for children to comprehend from those which were easy, and to discover whether children used a subject-verb-object (S-V-O) language strategy to interpret…

This short dictionary is designed to accompany the work of Melzian (1937) for the benefit of scholars concerned with the place and function of the Nigerian Bini language in the structure of West African languages. The conventional orthography has been used, except in three cases. The body of the general word list contains the English meaning, the…

Intended as an introduction to psycholinguistics from the linguist's point of view, this book addresses itself to three main topics: the innateness of language, the relationship of linguistic knowledge to language usage, and the comprehension and production of speech. In 12 chapters, the book discusses the nature of language development, the…

This study investigates why researchers have trouble determining when learners acquire inverted and statement forms of yes/no questions. Researchers have difficulty designing studies on this subject because this area of language is not fully rule-governed or systematic. The choice of the form may be based on two speakers' foreknowledge of each…

Sixty undergraduate students read and summarized eight short passages in a study of how semantic components were involved in text comprehension. After the first summary was completed (the naive or untutored summary), the students were assigned to one of three groups. The experimental group was introduced to the semantic components, including…

This report describes the work of the text analysis groups of the Center for the Study of Reading, whose goals are to investigate the problem of reading comprehension from the standpoint of comparing properties of texts to the difficulty or ease of reading and to construct appropriate theories to account for text properties. The text analysis…

The interview techniques developed by Carol Chomsky were used in a comparative study of the language acquisition of 32 bilingual and monolingual third grade students. After these students were matched for age, socioeconomic status, IQ, family environment (both parents in the home), and reading ability, they were placed in four…

One factor that contributes to the difficulty that a reader may encounter when reading a text is the syntactic complexity of the constructions used in the text. Examples of altered text constructions include the transformations of subjects of subordinate clauses, making them either the subjects or the objects of main clauses. When the conditions…

TWO TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE APPROACHES TO TEACHING SYNTAX IN JUNIOR AND SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS ARE PRESENTED. ONE IS FOR USE WITH AVERAGE AND TALENTED STUDENTS IN GRADES 7-9, AND THE OTHER IS FOR SLOW-LEARNING STUDENTS IN GRADES 7-11. A DISCUSSION OF THE FIRST APPROACH IS DIVIDED BY GRADE LEVEL AND INCLUDES AN EXAMINATION OF BASIC SENTENCE…

THIS MANUAL IS INTENDED TO SERVE AS A REFERENCE RATHER THAN A DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR FOR ANYONE WISHING TO LEARN TO READ MODERN KIRGHIZ. A TURKIC LANGUAGE, KIRGHIZ IS SPOKEN MAINLY IN THE KIRGHIZ SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC, AND TO A LESSER EXTENT IN THE SINKIANG-UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC, THE KAZAKH, UZBEK, AND THE…

AS COMPUTERS ARE USED FOR INCREASINGLY COMPLEX OPERATIONS SUCH AS RETRIEVING DOCUMENTS AND ANALYZING SENTENCES, IT BECOMES APPARENT THAT HUMAN DECISION-MAKING IS STILL AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF THE PROCESS. THE USE OF THE ON-LINE INTERACTIVE CAPABILITY OF TODAY'S THIRD-GENERATION COMPUTERS SUPPORTED BY TYPEWRITER AND DISPLAY SCOPE TERMINALS MAKES…

Second language students may develop writing skills gradually, or they may learn and practice these skills through the use of sentence combining techniques. A study is reported of the consistent use of sentence combining exercises with intermediate language classes at the university level. A total of 325 students enrolled in intermediate French,…

Two aspects of the problem of native language grammar instruction, in this case English, are addressed. First, it is argued that a combination of linguistic and pedagogical factors contribute to the explanation for the apparent decline in English grammar instruction in the schools. Secondly, it is argued that effective grammar teaching should…

In a verbal memory study of language development, third- through sixth-grade children read and orally recalled short, expository passages which were presented in three syntactic paraphrase forms: (1) complex sentences with preverbal elaboration such as complex subject nominalizations and relative clauses, (2) complex sentences with postverbal…