Presents a rebuttal to Hidi and Hildyard's (1976) criticism of Macnamara et al.'s (1976) assertion regarding the ability of four-year-old children to grasp implicatives and presuppositions. (AM)

The effects of semantic (S), orthographic (O), and unrelated (U) verbal stimuli on word retrieval were examined. S stimuli inhibited locating items within categories, whereas U stimuli inhibited locating the appropriate category. The discrepancy between the present outcome and the previous finding of S prime retrieval facilitation is discussed.…

Argues that general semantics research into prejudice has made only minor contributions to an understanding of prejudice because of weak experimental designs. Suggests improvements in research methodology and urges that knowledge of the semantic world of minority groups be sought as a prerequisite to eliminating cultural bias in standardized…

In three experiments, memory for intentionally encoded words was compared with memory for encodings, induced by asking semantic, phonemic, or surface questions. Subjects were second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade students, and junior and senior high school students. (Author/MP)

The amount of conceptual convergence for concepts of nine objects in elementary school children was investigated. Findings revealed substantial convergence on core meanings within and among age groups, and a steady expansion of meaning with age and experience, especially between grades one and three. (Author/MH)

Schuberth and Eimas (EJ 159 939) reported that context and frequency effects added to determine reaction times in a lexical decision (word v nonword) task. The present reexamination shows that context and frequency do interact, with semantic context facilitating the processing of low-frequency words more than high-frequency words. (Author/CP)

Phenomena are examined to support the conception that cognitive structures continue to reflect the numerous ways of apprehending the world that blend to some degree into each other. (AMH)

The article presents a rationale for the application of a stage process model to provide speech clinicians with guidelines, based on complexity, for the content and sequencing of communicative behaviors to be used in planning remedial programs for children with language disorders. (Author/DLS)

Describes a research project in which the acquisition of French by two six-year-old boys, native speakers of English, was observed longitudinally. (CFM)

Presents a way to model a large class of reference information based on a semantic network technique with embedded argumentation of the information provider. Shows by discussion of several alternatives that the approach is flexible enough to be adapted to different user and system requirements. (Author/AEF)

Tests the understanding of French pronominal-verbal constructions on native and English speakers of French and assesses their sensitivity to the possible multiple readings such as: reflexive, reciprocal, intrinsic, and passive. The article attributes the superior performance of English speakers to the corresponding morphosyntactic and lexical…

Analyzes the major linguistic and sociopolitical factors responsible for the underdevelopment of written languages based on non-Mandarin dialects. Explores language planning efforts in Taiwan to standardize a written language based upon the local dominant dialect. Argues that the social and political costs of the success of dialect writings may be…

Three studies investigated the comprehension of sentences containing the focus particle "only" by children and adults. Contrary to previous findings, two of the studies found that young children made errors predominantly by failing to process contrast information rather than errors in which they failed to use syntactic information to…

Discusses the difficulties inherent in creating an authentic Chinese text of the legislation of Hong Kong. The article argues that the real difficulty lies in the need for a change in perspective, and once this change occurs, what remains is the technicality of linguistic manipulation. "Law" Chinese will best develop out of the English…

Explores the effects upon the academic progress of English-as-a-Second-Language students' learning of vocabulary of semantic and thematic clustering. Results present a wide range of evidence suggesting that semantic clustering does serve as a hindrance while thematic clustering facilitates L2 vocabulary development. (21 references) (Author/CK)