The purpose of this research is to explore three English synonyms, namely critical, serious, and crucial, with a particular focus on meanings, degrees of formality, collocations, and semantic preferences. Two dictionaries, namely the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary online, as well as the Corpus…

The definitions of internationalisation have been contested and require contextualisation. Despite the long-standing practice of and research on higher education internationalisation in Mainland China, ambiguities regarding the concept persist. This study examines academic discourses on the internationalisation of Chinese higher education. It…

Experimental work has shown that spatial experiences influence spatiotemporal metaphor use. In these studies, participants are asked a question that yields different responses depending on the metaphor participants use. It has been claimed that English speakers are equally likely to respond with either variant in the absence of priming. Related…

Drawing on the findings of longitudinal studies in uninstructed contexts over the last two decades, this synthesis explores variations in developmental patterns across second language (L2) pragmatic features. Two synthesis questions were addressed: (a) What are the variations in developmental patterns across pragmatic features?, and (b) What are…

The public's concern with the fate of the standard language has been well documented in the history of the complaint tradition. The print media have for centuries featured letters to the editor on questions of language use. This study examines a corpus of 258 language-related letters to the editor published in the English-speaking print media. By…

This article explores the textual properties of arguably one of the most influential textual domains in contemporary society; that of mass-media discourse. Within this genre, it examines English-language hard news media reports from the United States, Great Britain and Australia focussing on the concepts of objectivity within this domain. Drawing…

Although vocabulary instruction is a pressing need for postsecondary reading instructors, a minimal amount of current postsecondary scholarship addresses this need, and almost no current scholarship addresses the textbook tradition of morphemic analysis (MA). The present article reviews the literature on MA instruction and argues for teaching MA…

The dominance of syntactic studies in linguistics has caused lexis and grammar to be perceived as two distinct categories. With introduction of the paradigm of cognitive linguistics, the studies in syntax have been replaced by those in lexis and concepts. Semantics has come to the fore through the studies in cognitive linguistics, and there has…

Briefly describes the results of six studies comparing English-language homonyms and heteronyms in earlier dictionaries and their survival rates in later dictionaries, concluding that, in each of the studies, as many or more, not fewer, of the homonyms survived. (14 references) (CB)

Applies concepts taken from the anthropological study of folk taxonomy to the semantic categorization of the senses in English, concluding that the 11 groups of contrast sets generally support hypotheses about folk taxonomies and present interesting data for cross-cultural comparisons. (five references) (CB)

Analysis of the differences in use and meaning of simple verb phrases ("to look") and nominalized phrases ("to have a look") points out that such constructions are not semantically empty, light, or weak, because these structures introduce meanings that are uniquely determined by the basic sense of the verb in question. (40 references) (CB)

Johnson-Laird's reply to Fodor's book, Language of Thought (LOT) and to Fodor's position on Tom Swift often missed the point or were out of context. Doctrines expressed in LOT were quite compatible with those cited in Tom Swift. (RD)

This study focuses on the English demonstratives "this (these)" and "that (those)." It is shown that the uses of these demonstratives are related to their semantics, and an explanation is provided for why the many functions assigned to demonstratives are a result of a failure to distinguish their meanings from the senses…

Presents clues for determining whether "short passives," passive sentences from which the "by"-phrase has been deleted, are actually passive or stative. The clues include intensifiers, the verb "seems," contrasts, present tense, past tense, progressive aspect, and confirmation by examples. (CB)

Analysis of the structural, semantic, and textual aspects of a corpus of 330 English examples of the postpositive conjunctions "though,""as," and "that" focuses on concessive clauses, clauses of reason, clauses of manner, and clauses with postpositive conjunctions and normal clauses. (CB)