Background: Studies on rewording word problems can be grouped into two main groups: situational rewording, in which the situation denoted by the text is described more richly, and conceptual rewording, in which the underlying semantic relations are highlighted. Aims: Our aims are to define and distinguish these two kinds of rewording and to test…

Mathematics is like a language, although technically it is not a natural or informal human language, but a formal, that is, artificially constructed language. Importantly, educators use their natural everyday language to teach the formal language of mathematics. At times, however, instructors encounter problems when the technical words they use,…

A computational framework is presented for the generation of elementary speech acts to establish conceptual alignment between a computer system and its user. This article clearly distinguishes between 2 phases of the alignment process: message interpretation and message generation. In the interpretation phase, presuppositions are extracted from…

The nature of the memory processes that support language comprehension and the manner in which information packaging influences online sentence processing were investigated in three experiments that used eye-tracking during reading to measure the ease of understanding complex sentences in Korean. All three experiments examined reading of embedded…

The focus of this paper is on immigrant minority languages in urban Western Europe. Both multidisciplinary and cross-national perspectives will be offered on two major domains in which language transmission occurs, i.e., the domestic domain and the public domain. Prototypical of these two domains are the home and the school, respectively. At home,…

Background: Language impairment is often associated with behaviour problems. However, detailed relations between different types of language impairment and specific behaviour problems in children have yet to be demonstrated. The present study attempted to do just this with an eye to the implications to identify foci for early intervention.…

Purpose: The authors aimed to establish whether 2 theoretically motivated interventions could improve use of verb argument structure in pupils with persistent specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Twenty-seven pupils with SLI (ages 11;0-16;1) participated in this randomized controlled trial with "blind" assessment. Participants were randomly…

Students (N = 124) viewed 14 timed Web pages that distinguished 14 confusing word pairs. In a 2 x 2 factorial design, the authors gave all of the students matrices containing representational pictures for each pair of words, as well as examples of each word in use. One factor in the design was the absence or presence of rules of usage for each…

Based on empirical research and qualitative analysis, this paper aims to explore the effects of L1 use on L2 vocabulary teaching. The results show that, during L2 vocabulary teaching process, the proper application of L1 can effectively facilitate the memorization of new words, and the bilingual method (both English explanation and Chinese…

This study explores the potential for using a computer-based scoring procedure for the formulating-hypotheses (F-H) item. This item type presents a situation and asks the examinee to generate explanations for it. Each explanation is judged right or wrong, and the number of creditable explanations is summed to produce an item score. Scores were…

Four studies examined the validity of the "Living Word Vocabulary" (LWV), a corpus of approximately 44,000 alphabetized words with multiple meanings tested at different grade levels. Regressions were performed between the grade level p-values (percentages of students responding correctly to a vocabulary test item) reported by LWV and…

This paper presents an in-depth look at semantics and how it has been and continues to be studied in mass communication. The paper notes that modern communication scholars have largely ignored the importance of semantics to mass media research. The paper examines the historical roots of semantics, noting that the 1930s saw the intellectual…

An analysis of lexical innovation in Ghanaian English uses ten linguistic categories identified in earlier research on Nigerian English, offering an explanation of each category and a number of examples. The categories include: loanshifts (English words manipulated to produce and transmit meanings beyond purely denotative reference and conveying a…

Many English handbooks and "grammars" fail to offer sound advice to writers about matters of exactness in diction and precision in sentence structure. A gap between linguists and English teachers, the literary bias of most graduate departments of English, and a national obsession with the all-powerful capabilities of common sense, have…

A theory of semantics focusing on relationships between meaning and sound patterns in language evolution is proposed. Using cognate sets from traditional comparative studies of closely-related languages in well-defined language families, the theory addresses the use and shifting of language components. The theory begins with the ego attempting to…