Examined thematic and grammatical role categories accessible to preschool children and how access to these categories changes with age. Results of three experiments with children and adults confirmed the psychological reality of certain semantic categories, and provided evidence suggesting a transition in the prominence of semantic relative to…

Discusses the use of logical imaging in information retrieval. Topics include the use of nonclassical logic in information retrieval; imaging and possible worlds semantics; retrieval by imaging; evaluation processes; worlds mass and worlds distance; and future work. (LRW)

Types of utterances (with locative action utterances specifically differentiated) were evaluated in a language-impaired child tracked between one year, six months and three years of age. Comparison with utterances in other children suggests the importance of such a fine-grained analysis in detecting semantic properties of child language…

Proposes the use of semantic phonology, a simple method of sign phonology. Semantic phonology invites one to look at a sign--a word of a primary sign language--as a marriage of noun and verb. (GLR)

A study was conducted in which Nominal Compounds (NCs) were examined and classified in the field of chemistry from introductory texts. Some pedagogical implications of this study could be to teach the high-frequency semantic relations in NCs at the beginning stages. (16 references) (JL)

Reports on an analysis of the forms, strategies, and functions of complimenting in one genre of written discourse. It is argued that writers use complimenting discourse strategies to establish and maintain rapport and to mitigate both global and genre-specific face-threatening acts and that these social purposes help account for both their…

It is argued that dictionary definitions of objects are enhanced by addition of usage information, sometimes idiomatic and sometimes indicating specific functions of the object. This lexical semantic approach is illustrated primarily with the example of the French word "boite." (MSE)

Papers in this journal issue attempt to identify alternative modes in thinking about language and to develop selected aspects of the proposed alternatives. The introduction describes some problems in Ilokano (Austronesian) and Taiwanese to illustrate the nature of the issues addressed in subsequent articles. (21 references) (Author/LB)

An auditory Stroop task was administered to 20 children with hearing impairment (ages 3-10) and 60 normal-hearing children. Results suggest that the voice-gender and semantic dimensions of speech were not processed independently by children with or without hearing loss. Speech processing by children with hearing impairment was carried out in a…

Examines the different meanings of the term discourse, comparing the common use of discourse analysis in applied linguistics with its use both in critical discourse analysis and in a Foucauldian use of the term. An attempt is made to show how these different approaches imply profoundly different understandings of the relationship between language,…

Examines the process through which modern Portuguese borrows from other languages, mainly French and English. Portuguese adapts these derivatives to conform to its own rules of phonology, morphology, and semantics. (four references) (Author/CK)

Two experiments are described that confirmed previous contentions that there is an imperfect correspondence between subjects' pause reports and actual pauses in oral reading and that auditory cues represent only part of the picture. Semantic and linguistic cues also appear to have substantial effect on the accuracy of pause reports. (13…

A contextual analysis approach was used to explore the semantic, syntactic, and discourse properties of the conjunction "and." Results are discussed in terms of phrasal coordination, and it is shown that "and" occurs with a high frequency in the spoken/written comparison narrative texts examined, with a density of 26.4 to 66.3 tokens per 1,000…

Four experiments demonstrated that the comprehension of novel compound nouns involves the recognition of a general relationship between two categories. They reinforce earlier findings that the process of creating meanings may be equally as efficient as the process of selecting meanings. (33 references) (Author/LB)

A case study on bilingual child language development used the systemic functional (SF) model to analyze data. Other studies have used the generative transformational or pragmatic models. The SF framework recognizes language as a tristratal system composed of semantics, lexicogrammar, and phonology. (49 references) (LET)