Refers to an article by H. Sopher entitled "Discourse Analysis as an Aid to Literary Interpretation." Argues that such interpretations are more clearly supported by a surface structure analysis. Proposes a different approach based on the use of grammatical and syntactic features. (Author/MES)

In three experiments, the meaning of the textual materials was held constant while structural (surface) variables, such as vocabulary, syntax, and signals about idea importance, were manipulated. Findings in all cases indicated that aspects of the surface structure of text made demands on the reader's cognitive processing capacity. (Author/GK)

Describes an experiment where subjects were exposed to a sample of sentences from an artificial linguistic system and tested on their knowledge of the linear and hierarchical structures of the language. Suggests that learners succeed in inducing coherent grammatical systems only when input provides enough correlated cues to constituent…

A source of regularity in sentence construction is the recurrent use of certain fixed syntactic formats in explaining, describing, etc. Subjects exploit these regularities in sentence perception. An experiment on the perception of "perverse" sentences shows that listeners assimilate some of the features of sentences to "formulation frames."…

Considers whether linguistic models can be used to examine how information is structured in the screen media. Highlights differences between language and screen media that make the transference difficult. Raises interesting questions about media literacy and whether screen media may have important perceptual and cognitive effects. (JMF)

A shortened form of the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test (NSST)--used to identify language impaired children--was developed and cross-validated with the original test. The shortened version, taking approximately 10 minutes to administer, was normed in six-month intervals, as opposed to the one-year intervals of the original NSST. (Author/DLS)

Revealed a statistically significant difference between alcoholic and nonalcoholic oral syntactic performance, with alcoholic subjects committing greater numbers of syntactic and semantic errors than nonalcoholics. Indicated a deficiency in the integrative and descriptive aspects of alcoholics' oral language performance. (RL)

Exercises are presented as supplementary material for beginning classes. Many examples illustrate ways to consolidate the learned material, with particular reference to the textbook "Ich lerne Deutsch" and its pictures. Other exercises are designed to compare German and Farsi sentence structure. (IFS/WGA)

The findings support previous observations of linguistic deficis among learning disabled children and adolescents and suggest that significant limitations may exist in the acquisition of linguistic competence by some children in this diagnostic group. (Author/SBH)

Discusses two basic areas of difference between British and American English, namely the complementation of certain participles and the complementation of certain verbs. Complementation after "concerned" and "interested" is illustrated by several examples taken from speech and from newspaper advertisements. (AMH)

Presents a study that originated from a sociolinguistic research project in Mexico City during interviews with six to seven year old children from sub-proletarian groups. The study focuses on the inability of the children to distinguish between "preguntar" and "decir" ("to ask" and "to tell"). (MES)

Discusses the difficulty in recognizing and expressing the formation of concession and counter-assertion. Words like "although" and "if," while familiar in other contexts, present problems when used for these functions. While the markers for concession are interchangeable, those for counter-assertion are not. Two different types of…

"Bu" can negate noun phrases. This article attempts to determine what the parent structures are from which noun-bu-noun is derived, to describe the general property of N-bu-N, to examine the conditions under which N-bu-N is used, and to contrast it with other structures of similar usage. (Author/PJM)

Two claims essential to Kean's interpretation (EJ 165 107) that Broca's aphasia results in a phonological disorder rather than a syntactic or morphological disorder are disputed. The claim that the plural morpheme is derivational, and the postulation of the notion of the phonological word are shown to have no linguistic motivation. (Author/RD)

A variable time delay naming latency paradigm was used to investigate the processing of noun-verb lexical ambiguities (e.g., "watch") in syntactic contexts that biased either the noun or the verb reading. Results support a two-stage model in which all reading of ambiguous words are initially accessed, followed by suppression of…