Six experiments (N=194 undergraduates) examined why some idioms can be syntactically changed and still retain their figurative meanings, while others cannot be syntactically altered without losing their figurative meanings. Idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall meanings were judged as more syntactically-flexible…

Six autistic children and seven children with relatively specific language impairment were asked to act out a series of sentences. Both groups made little use of a semantically based probable event strategy but were more likely to use a syntactically based word order strategy, similar to normals matched for receptive language age. (Author/DB)

Suggests that visual signs help to define form and structure and are significant in their semantic function. Discusses a series of typographic studies that examine the relationship of designer, text and interpreter in the dialectical process of communication in which meaning is rendered and made explicit. (RS)

This paper argues, utilizing Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT), that there are modern Greek deverbal nominal predicates that take syntactic arguments. A small set of simple unification-based operations is employed to model the relation between the argument structure of verb predicates and that of the corresponding deverbal nominals with an…

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their normally developing (ND) peers imitated proper nouns, the pronouns "he" and "you," and the article "the" in subject phrases. Both groups showed significantly more omissions of the function words than the proper nouns. A phonological explanation of subject article and pronoun omission is…

A model is described for the analysis of information management and cohesion in written discourse. Concepts of discourse analysis are defined, specifically information management, syntax, semantic reference, lexicon, cohesion, and intonation, with examples taken from scholarly publications in psychology, biology, and history. (48 references) (VWL)

Reviews a wide-ranging formal analysis of Chinese syntax that explores the role of case theory in the phrase structure of Chinese. (15 references) (CB)

Classifies explicit verbal comparisons in 53 popular children's books both syntactically and semantically. Comparison types found in these books were contrasted with comparisons used as comprehension stimuli in extant developmental research. Implications for the design of future stimulus sets are discussed. (17 references) (GLR)

Advocates a macroscopic view in examining the habitual linguistic differences between English and Chinese in their organization of thought in prosaic sentences and discourse. Awareness of these differences would be helpful in translating from English into Chinese and vice versa and Chinese language teaching. (Contains four references.) (JP)

A sentence parsing model is presented in which working-memory capacity influences the degree to which multiple syntactic representations are held during syntactic ambiguity processing. Four experiments with 130 college undergraduates suggest that working-memory capacity can influence the length of time in which multiple representations from the…

Using framework of prototype semantics, TE-constructions (type of verbal construct in Japanese), are categorized according to underlying metaphors and related to central TE-construction in which K- 1K- indicate both motion and direction in physical space. Through descriptions, discussions, and examples, it is demonstrated that no adequate…

Describes a category of riddles based on lexical ambiguity and uses category theory to illustrate the function of the accessibility hierarchy in riddling. A discussion of riddles and parallelism (the tendency to stay on the same syntactic, semantic, pragmatic track while processing language) shows how parallelism partially accounts for how the…

Responds to a previous article suggesting that the grammatical mode of communication arose via natural selection, focusing on the following: the impoverished view of language; the use of misleading metaphors; reliance on problematic metalanguage; the absence of developmental evidence; and the absence of qualitative judgments. (JL)

How syntax affects sentence prosody is explored. It is demonstrated that the lengthening of phase-final words and pausing afterward reflect a distinctly prosodic representation in which phonological constituents are arranged in a hierarchical nonrecursive structure. A model of prosodic pronunciation is also presented. (SLD)

Elucidates the syntactic properties of the dative-subject constructions that occur in Japanese and Korean. Gives a consistent account, with the aid of the Agr-less checking theory, of their syntactic properties. (Author/VWL)