Explores "fast mapping," one of several processes that have been proposed to be involved in the rapid vocabulary expansion observed in the preschool years. An adaptation of a receptive word matching task examined how well children retained just-mapped relation between word and referent when some information was later missing. (Author/VWL)

Tested progressive assimilation violation in non-novel sequences using the palatal fricative [c]. Stimuli either violated fricative assimilation or did not. Violation also did not significantly inhibit spoken language processing. Results confirm that facilitation depends on the combination of progressive assimilation with novelty of the sequence.…

Describes the work by Silvio Ceccato regarding machine translation systems and procedures, exploring such aspects of his work as functional philosophical approaches to machine translation, notional spheres, correlational analysis, and type classifications. Ceccato envisioned many of the methods that are now being applied in machine translation…

Shares the literacy development of the author's son. Shows how the child used language for the following functions: instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative, and representational. (MG)

Four word-learning studies exposed 2-year olds to novel verbs and nouns. Found that knowledge of what action or object was impending was not necessary for learning the words; children learned a novel verb for an intentional but not an accidental action; and children learned a novel noun for an object being sought, but not ones rejected while…

Two groups of children were tested at ages five, six, and seven to determine metalinguistic knowledge of the syntactic subject of a sentence. Found that five-year olds had difficulty repeating the pronomial and longest subjects; ability to isolate pronouns improved with age; and ability to identify longest subjects improved with increased…

The importance of phonology in assigning words to the correct grammatical category in language processing is discussed. Correlations between phonology and grammatical class are discussed. Experiments demonstrating that adults and children have learned these correlations are proposed and evaluated. (SLD)

Investigates the degree to which listeners are sensitive to the social relations expressed in choice of a name when referring to a third person during a conversation. Concludes that the social information inherent in names is picked up by readers and encoded into memory. (HB)

A cognitive systems approach of linguistic knowledge is outlined. According to this view, linguistic knowledge or cognitive grammar is part of the coherent structure and function of a cognitive system that is able to process language. (97 references) (JL)

Investigates an aspect of child phonology and consonant harmony, and inquires whether representational or processing deficits are responsible for its occurrence. (36 references) (GLR)

Investigates developmental association between nonword repetition performance and vocabulary knowledge by evaluating the role of phonological memory and linguistic factors in nonword repetition. (29 references) (GLR)

Responds to criticism on research of the factors influencing nonword repetition performance in a large-scale longitudinal study of children aged between four and six years. (10 references) (GLR)

Outlines a theoretical perspective to account for how the writing that adults produce and use appears to get done, what it seems to be, and how it apparently functions in contemporary culture. Argues for a conceptualization of writing that is predicated on broader and more realistic understandings of text and writing than have generally informed…

Investigates whether individual differences in working-memory (WM) capacity are related to the ways readers use inferences to facilitate text comprehension. Finds several differences between low-memory-span and high-memory-span readers. Notes that readers with adequate WM capacity can keep interpretations open ended and await more information from…

Tome Associates developed techniques to process natural language queries into search statements suitable for use in online text database systems. Problems discussed include word identification, handling of unknown words, system dictionaries, semantic categories and classification, truncation, stemming, disambiguation of multimeaning words, noun…