An experiment investigated the retrieval processes involving a noun with an adjective. Results suggest that a noun's meaning is retrieved in conjunction with an adjective when the phrase describes a familiar concept. (Author/AM)

Explores the operational and conceptual meanings of the iconicity of manual signs and sign languages. Empirical studies related to the operational definition of iconicity in American Sign Language are described, and implications of parallels between iconicity and "stimulus meaningfulness" are discussed in relation to the scientific…

The process by which 55 preschool children acquire the meanings of dimensional and expressive terms was investigated in relation to Eve Clark's semantic feature hypothesis. (Author/MP)

Research addressing development of mechanistic models capable of acquiring languages on the basis of exposure to linguistic data is reviewed. Research focuses on major issues in developmental psycholinguistics--in particular, nativism and empiricism, the role of semantics and pragmatics, cognitive development, and the importance of simplified…

A cost-benefit and speed-accuracy analysis of semantic priming in a lexical decision task provided information relevant to the automatic-conscious distinction as well as to the operation of discriminability, criterion bias, and response bias in the facilitation. (Author/MH)

Proposes a top-down procedural model for the dynamic extraction and use of context structure to resolve references. (FL)

Reports three experiments to investigate differences in the semantic classification of pictures and words. The data suggest that visual short-term memory and semantic memory operate in semantic-decision tasks though these sources of information differ in characteristics, potential for activation, and level of abstraction. (PMJ)

Elaborates on and updates the article "Derived Noun Phrases in Spanish Containing Locatives" by John P. Wonder and Alberto Eraso Guerrero (1976). Gives a detailed description of the uses of "ser" and "haber" in the locative expression. (NCR)

The attribution of function of various kinds to elements of child speech is discussed, and the question of the validity of the interpretations on which such attribution rests is explored with reference to Halliday's work on the development of meaning. (Author)

The purpose of this study was to determine what effect exposure to linguistic input pertinent to kinship terms and kinship relations has on the acquisition of the meaning of such terms. The subjects were 84 German children living in families, and 84 orphans. (Author/CFM)

Memory representations of statements from a story were predicted to cluster into separate episode chunks in memory. It was shown that the recall of episode depends on the length of that episode, but not on the lengths of other episodes. The chunking idea was confirmed. (SW)

A sample of 80 first- and second-grade children selected to represent four levels of reading competence were tested in their recognition of semantic, syntactic, and lexical change in sentences previously decoded during prose reading. (JMB)

The clearest writing style is one in which the grammatical structures of a sentence most redundantly support the perceived semantic structure; a textured style is one in which the syntactic complexity invests a sentence with distinctive force. (DD)

Examines the characteristics of Languages for Special Purposes and some of the problems involved in the teaching of these languages. (AM)

This article discusses some of the recurrent syntactic problems that the foreign learner of English faces when using the English verb-particle construction and attempts to show how a pedagogic dictionary could help the learner to cope with these problems. (Author/CFM)