Twenty-three subjects drew deductions from ten different pairs of conversationally conveyed requests, of which the first conveyed a positive request, the second, a negative. Some evidence shows the listener constructs the literal meaning before the conveyed meaning. (CK)

This article examines the notion of sign on various levels, concluding that which pertains to the linguistic level is pertinent; that which pertains to the expressive level is redundant. The notions of connotation and denotation are discussed. (Text is in French.) (AM)

This article attacks the practice of using criteria based on adult language to describe language acquisition in children. Principally it is a matter of contradiction between criteria of form and criteria of meaning or function. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Implication, a crucial aspect of style, can be accurately considered only in reference to the whole context in which a verbal communication takes place. (JH)

Reviews the state of the art in automatic indexing, concentrating on the literature from 1968 to 1973. (Author/PF)

Analysis of examples of abstract and concrete nouns reveals that pluralization in Spanish is a complex phenomenon from the semantic point of view. The number of abstract negative nouns being pluralized far outweighs that of their positive counterparts. Syntactic pluralization of abstracts implies a semantic change, and sometimes the pluralization…

This report addresses the nature of the knowledge people possess about word meanings, and how this knowledge is acquired and used in reading comprehension. The report outlines a "standard model" of word meanings which equates word meanings with critical features, or necessary and sufficient conditions for serious, literal use of a word.…

This book contains 15 essays written between 1969 through 1983. The essays included are: (1) "Semantic Analysis of Verbs in Terms of Conceptual Situations"; (2) "'Because' and the Concepts of Causation"; (3) "The Development of Language as Purposive Behavior"; (4) "Adaptation and Viability"; (5) "On the…

A set of 150 experimental personality items was constructed for an alternate form of the word association personality worksample developed by the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation. The items were intended to possess several semantic properties hypothesized to facilitate discrimination between objective and subjective examinees. Specifically,…

In order to test hypotheses derived from the concept that grammatical, syntactic, semantic, and contextual cues affect the degree of reading comprehension in a visual display, the present investigation was undertaken using the French language. The subjects were approximately 30 college students in a second-semester elementary French course. Five…

Although the concept of coherence is elusive, explorations of the historical, theoretical, and empirical discussions of coherence can illuminate, though not eliminate, the concept's elusiveness. There are three inter-related and overlapping ways that readers make coherence. Intratextuality, the notion that readers perceive a text as coherent if it…

A study investigating the independence of linguistic abilities from each other, specifically the separability of syntax and semantics and the autonomy of syntactic abilities, is described. In the study, 30 individuals with Alzheimer's disease produced spontaneous conversations, completed sentences eliciting 16 grammatical forms, and when possible,…

Most freshman composition textbooks are inadequate in giving information to students on how to interpret dictionaries: instead of presenting them as aids in exploring word usage, textbooks foster a naive trust in dictionaries as arbiters of all usage questions. Rather than treating words as discrete items to be mastered without knowledge of…

This paper reviews work on the representation of knowledge from within psychology and artificial intelligence. The work covers the nature of representation, the distinction between the represented world and the representing world, and significant issues concerned with propositional, analogical, and superpositional representations. Specific topics…

A collection of three papers written at a workshop on discourse grammar in Philippine languages is presented. The aims of the workshop were to (1) focus on discourse level grammar in the languages studied; (2) identify contrastive discourse types (genre) in the surface grammar; (3) identify the semantic constructions encoded by the different…