This study presents an overall review of the paradigms that contribute to the making and development of functional human linguistics and communication skills and the teaching of language.

The domain of inquiry by literacy researchers has expanded greatly over the past generation. Literacy researchers now address out-of-school literacies, multimodal texts, literacy across the curriculum and other important issues. Research on literacy development has become even more important in the high stakes assessment environments in today's…

Supports the theory of level ordering by demonstrating, on the basis of productive morphology and phonology, that Turkish has four lexical levels. The first is the principle of Level Economy, which accounts for systematic exceptionality. The second is Level Prespecification, which exempts a root entirely from early lexical levels. Both of these…

Previous psycholinguistic research has shown that a variety of contextual factors can influence the interpretation of syntactically ambiguous structures, but psycholinguistic experimentation inherently does not allow for the investigation of the role that these factors play in natural (uncontrolled) language use. We use regression modeling in…

Describes a school-based qualitative research project conducted at a suburban Virginia high school. Studies the behavior and language of disciplined students and posits seven different "predicaments" where obscene language occurs. Considers moral and epistemological issues as well as the students' perspectives. Concludes with…

Discusses the various functions of the Spanish gerund/participle: (1) as a constituent in the progressive construction, (2) as an adverb, (3) as an adverbial, and (4) as the head of clause. (EKN)

Describes the International Corpus of English Corpus Utility Program (ICECUP), a computer-based text retrieval program designed to search a tagged corpus for words, word elements, and their grammatical roles. Explains the search, display options, concordance, and subcorpus selection features of the ICECUP program. (MDM)

Describes rules for the use and interpretation of "verbally determinate ellipsis" involving the English verb group. Discussion covers: verbal determinacy and indeterminacy; verb group vs. verb phrase; the verb group as a five-part system; verb group echoing vs. auxiliary contrasting ellipsis; passive auxiliary; interpretation rules;…

Describes the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), a project at the University of Louvain in Belgium that collects written work from, and analyzes the usage of, advanced adult English as a Foreign Language learners. Recurring combinations and concordances in ICLE are examined. (Contains five references.) (MDM)

This paper examines the different ways of forming negative sentences in the Chaamling language, an indigenous language spoken in the eastern, hilly districts of Nepal. It explains that negation, or negativization, in the Chaamling language is done with the help of affixation. In imperative sentences, the prefix mi- is added to the verb, which is…

College freshmen, when confronted with an essay question using broad concepts such as "society,""freedom," and "progress," seldom clarify or define the concepts in their essays before expressing their opinions or solutions. Students who read without interpreting the concepts implied by certain words shortchange the…

Discusses the implications of the tendency of adult second-language learners to develop a well-structured, simple form of language outside the classroom, i.e. the Basic Variety (BV). Focuses on the structural properties of the BV, the status of these properties and the reasons why some structural properties of "fully fledged" languages are more…

Uses three approaches revolving around language issues as a basis for exploring emotions: universal semantics, emotionology, and the theory of "goal-action-outcome knowledge." Uses an approach that attempts to turn around the traditional, realistic picture of the relationship between emotions, cognition, and language. (73 references) (Author/CK)

Fifty-five structures of the Chinese language are described and their particular usage patterns are discussed for the use of teachers, linguists, and advanced students of Chinese. Each structure is listed by its major structural element(s), its grammatical element(s), or a combination of the two. The examination of each structure consists of an…

Many influential style guides endorse the stylistic prescription that writers, particularly technical writers, should revise noun compounds into phrasal or clausal paraphrases. While the prescription is well-intentioned, it fails to take into account that a reader's comprehension of compounds, whether long or short, is a complex process dependent…