Examines use of modal auxiliary "should" when used to express probability as a weaker equivalent of "must." Study shows that in order to account for restrictions on use of "must" and "should," a theory must go beyond the syntactic and semantic characteristics and take into account semantic relations between…

Briefly explains definition and use of "excepting" in English and concludes the reputation of "excepting" should be rehabilitated to be used as a preposition when it is interchangeable with "except" or as a quasi-preposition preceded by "not,""without," or "always" and not replaceable by…

Presents study of use of English 'except' and 'except for.' Concludes 'except' and 'except for' can be used to mean 'with the exception of,' but when it is used to mean 'if it were not for' only 'except for' can be used. Also, it is not advisable to begin a sentence with 'except' unless it is followed by 'for.' (Author/BK)

The training procedure entailed presenting exemplars which expressed arbitrarily or logically sequenced events in alternating order so that discrepancies in interpretations might be detected and corrected by the preschool child. The procedure was effective. Results gave evidence of the use of interpretational strategies during acquisition. (RH)

Proposes a new view of count nouns and mass nouns in which the use of count-mass syntax is often systematically related to a conceptual distinction in the minds of speakers. Provides preliminary evidence suggesting other reasons for count-mass syntax use that are not predicted by the cognitive individuation hypothesis. (Author/VWL)

Reconsiders development and licensing of agreement as a syntactic projection and argues for a productive developmental relation between agreement and the category of focus. Suggests that focus projections are initially selected by a variety of functional heads with real semantic content, then, over time decays into a simple concord shell. Upon…

Investigates syntactic and prosodic features of speakers' speech at points where turn-taking and backchannels occur, focusing on an analysis of Japanese spontaneous dialogs. The study shows that in both turn-taking and backchannels, some instances of syntactic features make extremely strong contributions, and syntax has a stronger contribution…

Explores the theme of topicality, focusing on two books that contribute to the understanding of possessive construction and grammar.(Author/VWL)

Shows that in advanced information-retrieval applications capabilities for data aggregation, transitive computation and non-first normal-form relational computation are often necessary at the same time. Topics include complex objects; advanced data models; query languages; query formulation; knowledge representation; and query-language syntax.…

Studied the extent to which optional word mention was influenced by mechanisms that lead to more efficient word production or to utterances that are more easily understood. Results of 6 experiments involving 320 college students suggest that speakers choose syntactic structures to permit early mention of available material and not to circumvent…

Highlights the costly losses that scholars may incur in discussing questions of language evolution outside the framework of a shared, well-articulated linguistic ontology. (Author/VWL)

Little is known about language development in school-age children in Asian countries. This research reports on 3 measures of language development in 100 Cantonese-speaking children age 5 to 9 years. Word scores, structure scores, and the mean length of communication units (MLCU) were derived from a story-retelling task. The structure score was…

The spontaneous language sample forms an important part of the language evaluation protocol (M. Dunn, J. Flax, M. Sliwinski, & D. Aram, 1996; J. L. Evans & H. K. Craig, 1992; L. E. Evans & J. Miller, 1999) because of the limitations of standardized language tests and their unavailability in certain languages, such as Afrikaans. This study examined…

Background: Spontaneous speech of aphasic persons is often scored on rating scales assessing aphasic symptoms. Rating scales have the advantage of an easy and fast scoring system, but might lack sensitivity. Quantitative analysis of either aphasic symptoms or basic parameters provides a useful alternative. Basic parameters are essential units of…

It has been a matter of debate whether the specifically human capacity to process syntactic information draws on attentional resources or is automatic. To address this issue, we recorded neurophysiological indicators of syntactic processing to spoken sentences while subjects were distracted to different degrees from language processing. Subjects…