This article discusses the relationship in languages between passive forms and active forms from a psycholinguistic point of view. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Two experiments examined the tendency for people to endorse personality descriptions allegedly derived from personality tests. Subjects were 93 male and female college students. Personal validation appeared to be unaffected by test source and personal versus generalized personality descriptions. The favorability-unfavorabilitty of the descriptions…

To explore adjective language development and examine its relationship to seriation, several tasks were given to 40 children aged 4-8. Comprehension and production of adjective forms were measured--vocabulary, coordination, comparison. Ability to order objects by size was used to assess intuitive-level seriation. (CHK)

Children aged 2 1/2-4 were asked questions containing comparative and superlative forms of adjectives in pairs designated as unmarked/marked or positive/negative. Differences in frequency of correct responses were greater between unmarked/marked pairs than between positive/negative pairs. No evidence appeared for a marking explanation of adjective…

Presents a corpus-based analysis of two lexical items: Modern English "hand" and "fist" and their Middle Cornish equivalents, resulting in discovering semantic and collocational differences between the corresponding lexemes in these two languages. The article argues that grammatical meaning may form part of the lexical meaning…

Examines "Head Movement" in internally headed relative clauses (IHRCs). The article shows that in some cases, head movement to an external position need not take place and demonstrates that this movement of the head to a sentence-internal position results from the quantificational nature of IHRCs and Diesing's mapping hypothesis (1990,…

Examines the modifier "quite" to determine how it is used and understood. The article examines published pedagogic materials, investigates reader interpretations of authentic samples, and analyzes the practices of experienced writers. The analysis shows that "quite" is highly context-sensitive and has an essentially indeterminate epistemic…

Introduces alternative approach to a controversial issue in Czech linguistics--the semantics of verbs of the type "rikavat,""delavat," and so on. The article demonstrates that these verbs can be called habitual verbs in the Peircean sense of the term "habit," and the key to the semantics of these verbs is recognizing…

Semantic primitives for time and space, as proposed in Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, are examined for lexical equivalents in Hong Kong Cantonese. Temporal primitives are all found to have clear Cantonese exponents that can be combined as predicted with other metalanguage elements, with two exceptions. Spatial primitives all appear to have…

Proposes a set of copula forms that should be set aside from variable analysis as instances of "don't count" (DC) forms to allow for systematic comparisons among studies of the English language. Reviews the major alternative descriptions of DC copula cases in the literature and analyzes the behavior of the traditional DC categories. (29…

Considers the relevance of the points raised in the preceding articles in this issue to the sociolinguistic development of children with speech and language impairments. Notes that such children often have low self-esteem and that their inability to negotiate an identity for themselves through discussion with their peers may contribute to this…

Presents six areas in applied linguistics that might be reformed: (1) the hegemonic nature of theories; (2) dictionary-making; (3) language planning; (4) linguistic nomenclatures; (5) the treatment of standard and non-standard varieties; and (6) the delivery of second language programs. Argues that if critical realism guided applied linguistics,…

Compared teaching and learning measures of 16 mother-child and sibling dyads playing a picture categorization game. Found that although siblings' teaching styles directed target children to make the correct choices, mothers provided information to help them make choices on their own, suggesting differences in how mothers and siblings interpreted…