Analyzes the nature of punctuation, its functions (syntactic, suprasegmental, and semantic), its role in written language, and punctuation as grapheme. (AM)

Presents results of a survey carried out in 1977 to determine the attitude of contemporary French writers toward the importance of punctuation. Questionnaire responses, obtained from over half the 80 authors polled, are discussed. (AM)

Presents a syntax of metophor, discussing a typology of metaphor, the relationship between literal sense and figurative sense, and the importance of a precise definition of metaphor. (AM)

Describes the inroads made into Canadian French by English phonology, vocabulary, and syntax, and argues for a "refrancisation" which will preserve the unique flavor of Canadian French. (AM)

Fourth-grade poor comprehenders were not affected by the disruptive effect of syntactic and semantic violations, while good comprehenders exhibited an increasing number of errors across semantic and syntactic/semantic violations. (RC)

Studies the influence of both a syntactic cue (i.e. agent-deletion) and a semantic cue (i.e. non-reversibility) on the evolving comprehension of passive sentences by young children. (Author/RK)

In modern Russian, the particle-connective "Ze" has two general and distinct functions: (1) intensification-emphasis and (2) conjunction-opposition. As these functions are actually performed by two different particles, this article accounts for their development and etymology. (CHK)

Examines tense, aspect, and voice choices in the reporting verbs in a corpus of research articles from the "Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine." Investigates how such choices correlate with other syntactic elements in the citations, as well as with the discourse functions of the citations in their contexts. (TB)

Discusses utterances that are evoked in particular events and demonstrates that they require a frame semantics account, and in particular, an analysis in terms of scripts. The article also reveals some word-like properties of these constructions and argues that boundedness is a matter of degree. (15 references) (Author/CK)

Proposes a model for explaining constraints imposed by predicates on selecting arguments appropriate for the predicates. The model has two components, a taxonomic representation of concepts and probabilistic formalization of selectional constraints defined in terms of that taxonomy. Describes four computational experiments testing the model's…

Presents a chart that explains the search syntax, features, and commands used by the 12 most widely used general Web search engines. Discusses Web standardization, expanded types of content searched, size of databases, and search engines that include both simple and advanced versions. (LRW)

Examines the theory of "natural semantic metalanguage," which argues that all languages share an irreducible core of universal semantic primitives with certain universal syntactic properties. Hypotheses on the universal syntax of semantic primitives are outlined. Topics include valency options and complementation possibilities of…

Examines linguistic, psychometric, and clinical aspects of the Test for Sentence Development, a subtest of a new Dutch language production battery, the Schlichting Test voor Taalproductie. The advantage of the new test is that very young children can be assessed systematically, which was not possible previously. (Author/VWL)

Investigated the acquisition of Japanese unaccusative verbs by English-speaking learners, specifically whether second language learners are sensitive to syntactic and semantic properties associated with the "takusan" construction as a syntactic test and the "-teiru" construction as a semantic test. Results show learners generally know the…

Introduces the concept of lexical unit as proposed by Cruse (1986) in the context of second language vocabulary learning to replace the notion of "word." Defines the concept in terms of lexical semantics and applies it to the task of learning a second language. Describes studies in which the learning of different types of lexical units is…