Acquisition of linguistic and perceptual abilities takes place at a very early age, and later learning involves knowledge and information processing strategies. Aging has greater impact on retention of the latter. Lifelong learning must accommodate the constraints of aging on cognitive abilities. (SK)

Discusses the issue of the use of signed language dictionaries in the standardization of signed languages with reference to the Australian Sign language (Auslan) dictionaries. Details the structure of the Auslan dictionaries and argues that bilingual, bidirectional dictionaries of this type must be produced if communities are to encourage language…

Two experiments investigated whether the phonological properties of visually presented words influence the process of word identification. Masked phonological priming effects were examined when naming was the response measure. Results suggest that the effect was generated in serial fashion. A companion lexical decision version showed no onset…

Asserts that passive constructions are not the mark of flawed writing as many textbooks claim them to be but are instead frequent and effective stylistic variants. (RAE)

Western civilization rests upon the Greeks, and Homer is the first, and perhaps best, source of the Greek foundation. This article discusses Homer's influence on shaping the modern mind, his contributions to literacy among the Greeks, and his impact on Greek education. (IAH)

Discusses literacy in Norway, including Norway's focus on special needs, its first major literacy study conducted in 1991 and its results, and Norway's two writing systems. (SR)

The purpose of this study was to analyze how children in the early grades of elementary school divide words while writing. The subjects were 450 Italian children belonging either to upper-middle-class or lower-middle-class families who were asked to write the familiar story of "Little Red Riding Hood." (CFM)

Provides a retrospective of the research of Walter Loban. Discusses the primacy of oral language, language development, and the interrelationships between oral and written language in his research. (RS)

This investigation explored recognition memory for sign language vocabulary in sign language students. Ten beginning and 10 advanced students were asked to judge their familiarity with 50 old and new vocabulary items presented in both written (sign gloss) and signed stimulus modes. (JL)

Presents theoretical discussion of the emergence of linguistic features of documents that indicate society is moving toward a view of writing as a form of constitutive social action and of written documents as autonomous material objects having a life of their own. Linguistic features of Anglo-Saxon wills are shown to differ from those of modern…

Examines the way communication researchers write about the unconscious and its relationships with communication behavior. Shows that they use ordinary words to describe unconscious processes and are burdened by those words' implications of conscious agency. (SR)

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…

Examines societies in which varieties and degrees of literacy are possible or ordinary, such as Japan and Korea. Finds that these societies have separate but functionally interrelated writing systems, used for communicatively disparate purposes, differential mastery of which, consequently, has social and economic repercussions. Finds that…

Discusses the traps which catch speakers of nonstandard dialect when it comes to learning to read. Lists core understandings that teachers of pre- and inservice teachers can promote to make learning a second dialect--written language--an easy and natural cognitive task. (SR)

Studied the symbolic knowledge of children, between three and five years of age who knew the alphabet but could not read, in associating letters of the alphabet with the letter's symbolic sounds. (21 references) (GLR)