A brief summary of this conference, focussing on foreign and second language testing, is given. Topics covered include: publishers' tests, semantic aspects of error analysis, factor analysis and language proficiency, learning style identification, the foreign language placement test of the U.S.A.F. Academy, assessment of language dominance, and…

Criticizes traditional methods of defining the syntactical complexity of utterances and proposes distinguishing the various types of subordination in the sentence as well as elements of continuity and discontinuity in discourse structure, with particular reference to child language. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

Reports on 5 experiments investigating the effect of blocking words according to semantic category on ordered recall in adults and young children. (Author/RM)

Tests given at the German Institute of the University of Stockholm to 32 Finnish students studying German revealed that both their native language and their Swedish interfered with their learning German, in about equal degree overall. The mother tongue, Finnish, caused more interference errors in pronunciation. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

The Japanese Keigo system is the whole of the grammatical rules related to expressions of respectful or pejorative feelings concerning all persons involved in speech acts. This article proposes a new approach to the problem of teaching this system at the elementary level. (CLK)

Although Japanese word order is considered flexible and can often be changed without causing semantic change, there is consistent regidity in the language, as explained here. (CHK)

This article explores the notion that the assumptions on which the process of linguistic analysis is based relate to linguistic universals. The kinds of universals that underlie the process and their role in it are examined. (CLK)

In Lithuania in the last decade of the 20th century, L. Jovaisa used the controversial term "educology" for the first time in the history of Lithuanian discourse about the educational process. Jovaisa introduced the term "Educology" in the books "Introduction to Educology" (1993) and "ABC's of Educology"…

This book examines how the underlying linguistic competence of second language (L2) learners is constrained by the same universal principals governing natural language. It is assumed that there is an innately given universal grammar (UG) which constrains L1 grammars, limiting the kinds of hypotheses that L1 acquirers entertain about the nature of…

This book examines children's acquisition of a first language, the stages they go through, and how they use language as they learn. There are 16 chapters in 4 parts. After chapter 1, "Acquiring Languages: Issues and Questions," Part 1, "Getting Started," offers (2) "In Conversation with Children," (3) "Starting…

Most representations of academic disciplines have been created when experts depict or report what they know; however, there are potential problems that can arise when practitioners rely on expert self-report. One way to avoid potential problems associated with expert self-report is to employ cognitive task analysis methods. The Pathfinder Scaling…

A study of the noun incorporation phenomenon in Korean suggests that noun incorporation occurs at D-structure and obeys the Head Movement Constraint syntactically, and the Theme-Only Constraint semantically. First, the structure of "sunrise"-type words is identified, showing that before derivation through nominalization of the affix "-i,"…

This manual for the Children's Views on Aging (CVOA) questionnaire describes the instrument and administration and scoring procedures, details the analyses used in a study of childhood attitudes toward aging, and discusses instrument development. The CVOA is comprised of six sections. Section 1 elicits information about the cognitive and emotional…

Differences of language often mirror differences in values and worldviews. An examination of the languages of business and education shows that if people really want to run an educational institution "like a business," there is a serious semantic problem. This book illustrates the problems that arise when familiar words have different connotations…

This paper explores the syntactic and semantic character of previously undescribed sentence complements (SCs) in Emai, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria's Edoid group. Data come from ongoing documentation incorporating oral narrative texts as well as dictionary and grammar descriptions. To delineate the grammatical properties of SCs, the paper…