An experimental context designed to directly affect discourse processing by inducing subjects to generate inferences involving text content was compared to a context in which subjects simply listened to and recalled the content of a text. Context did effect the amount of inferred and overgeneralized semantic information in subjects' text recalls.…

Dimensions of Japanese person perception are assessed through an instrument standardized to tap basic dimensions of person perception and whose scales are defined behaviorally. Dimensions are then compared statistically with results from similar cross-cultural studies. (AM)

This article examines child acquisition of syntax through a chronological distributional analysis. The main point is that the development of syntactic relations is neither behaviorist nor pre-programmed but dynamic, and that therefore child linguistic development cannot be described in terms of an innate adult language ideal. (Text is in French.)…

The first half of a survey of inflectional elements required for modally unmarked verb forms (non-TA verbs) of Parry Island Ojibwa. Besides markers (the participants) and theme signs (rolls), meanings of the inflected forms are described and represented as a specific semological structure made up of grammatical and semological units. (SC)

A recent study of neologisms has restated the prominent position of the lexicon from a linguistic point of view. From the perspective of language teachers, it is evident that an adequate vocabulary plays a crucial role in the ability to communicate in a foreign language. The fact that the lexicon is a major component of a language has caused the…

A number of studies on the order of adjectives in the English noun phrase are reviewed. Analysis of the studies and examples used in them indicates that almost any order of adjective seems to be possible depending on the intended meaning of the speaker or the situation in which the speaker frames an utterance. To see if in fact the ordering of…

The aim of this study was to explore the effects of the following memory encoding variables on human learning: depth (implying progression through levels of encoding); spread (elaboration of information at a given level) and; congruence (integration of the form of encoding and the material to be learned). Encoding refers to the way in which…

A study was done on teachers, professors of education, and preservice teachers in order to investigate the process of measuring attitudes and to denote the level of attitudes held by these educators about the free enterprise system. The study used a semantic differential to determine the attitudes of 28 subjects toward selected economic concepts…

Hitherto, theories of similarity have restricted themselves to judgments of what might be called literal similarity. A central thesis of this paper is that a complete account of similarity needs also to be sensitive to nonliteralness, or metaphoricity, an aspect of similarity statements that is most evident in similes, but that actually underlies…

Students learn, understand, and retain knowledge best when they discover it themselves. In the area of semantics, the study of how meaning is conveyed through language, explicit knowledge may appear to be obvious once it becomes conscious, but unless people are explicitly aware of their implicit knowledge and assumptions, they may be at their…

Readers are "dumb" because they are not privy to the mind and intentions of the writer; and the failure of the unsuccessful writer is a failure to forecast what it is going to be like to be a dumb reader of the document. Sample sentences from students' writing illustrate the following types of writing problems, which force the reader to examine…

Racist language is more pervasive than sexist language. Not only are there obvious racial slurs, but also most English black and black-oriented words have negative meanings. One study found over 134 synonyms for whiteness, 44 of which were favorable, and only 10 had any semblance of negative connotations. In the same study, 120 synonyms for…

A familiarization procedure was used in two experiments investigating word encoding in second and sixth graders. Previous studies using release from proactive inhibition had indicated that developmental changes on some encoding dimensions occur during this period. It is argued that the dependence of release from proactive inhibition on deliberate…