Ambridge's proposal cannot account for the most basic observations about phonological patterns in human languages. Outside of the earliest stages of phonological production by toddlers, the phonological systems of speakers/learners exhibit internal behaviours that point to the representation and processing of inter-related units ranging in size…

The article by Amaral and Roeper (this issue; henceforth A&R) presents many interesting ideas about first and second language acquisition as well as some experimental data convincingly illustrating the difference between production and comprehension. The article extends the concept of Universal Bilingualism proposed in Roeper (1999) to second…

Allen [Allen, M. D. (2005). The preservation of verb subcategory knowledge in a spoken language comprehension deficit. "Brain and Language, "95, 255-264] presents evidence from a single patient, WBN, to motivate a theory of lexical processing and representation in which syntactic information may be encoded and retrieved independently of semantic…

Previous research suggests that children's behavior with respect to the interpretation of indefinite objects in negative sentences may differ depending on the target language: whereas young English-speaking children tend to select a surface scope interpretation (e.g., Musolino (1998)), young Dutch-speaking children consistently prefer an inverse…

Discusses the relationship between the brain, language, and communication in the following sections: (1) combining words, (2) language as a system, (3) language as a function of the brain, (4) the science of communication, and (5) language as a social institution. (NCR)

Western philosophy has not had much to say about listening or receptive communication until fairly recently, and listening research has tended either to follow the trends of the speech communication field or to be directed by speech science or the pragmatics of the working world. A study examines the process of understanding and interpretation…

An explanatory linguistic theory attempts to capture and explain the universal nature of human language, to choose among possible grammars of each human language, and to account for the linguistic constraints involved in language acquisition. Discourse theory, like linguistic theory, must be mentalistic in that it seeks to account for mental…

The complex of factors governing mood choice in Spanish is reexamined. Mood choice is determined by the basic semantic values expressing the content of an utterance. The influence of comment, reaction, emotions, doubt, and uncertainty on mood choice are explored. (PMJ)

The bare fact is that the speaker's words are nothing until the listener gives them meaning. The denotation of a word is developed through association with other words. The connotation is the more difficult concept to establish for the critical/comprehensive listener studying word meaning. The common explanation is that "connotation refers to…

Outlines concerns regarding needed adjustments in the teaching of reading to cope with a changing, complex world. (JB)

This study defines the notion of communication methodology, situates the context in which it operates, and concentrates on the problem of the acquisition of knowledge in general, and of language acquisition, in particular. From the notion of methodology, the study moves to the method of global communication, that is, a method comprising four…

In this paper, we reconsider some of the processes that distinguish production and comprehension. In particular, we discuss the specific forms of thinking involved in each: "thinking for speaking" and "thinking for listening" (Black and Chiat, 2000; Slobin, 1996). We argue that thinking for speaking (or for any form of language output) crucially…

Since the concept of "communication competence" is a relatively recent development in the field of speech communication, there is as yet no universal agreement as to its definition and constitution. However, it seems that the purpose of the study of communication competence is to inform classroom instruction. The efforts to define and understand…

Discusses the sources of information in oral language. Uses converging evidence from prosody, pausing, structural and semantic parallelism, and stylistic analysis to argue for a series of hypotheses about the units that organize the construction of narrative discourse. Provides examples and appendixes. (JD)

Calls for greater attention to the perceptual processes involved in second language listening, and particularly to the part they play in breakdowns of understanding. Suggests employing basic auditory phonetics as a means of classifying, diagnosing, and predicting problems of lexical segmentation. (Author/VWL)