The present study attempts to identify difficulties that Japanese students encounter with metadiscursive nouns in writing second language (L2) argumentation essays. Metadiscursive nouns are abstract and unspecific nouns which can serve as cohesive markers by retrieving their meanings in the text where they occur. Using a selected number of nouns…

Research attempting to understand the intermediate stages of first-language acquisition and disordered speech has led to the discovery of covert contrast. A covert contrast is a statistically reliable difference between phonemes that is produced by a language learner, but in a way that cannot be heard readily by a listener of the target language.…

This study uses the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus as data and Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan's (1999) and Gardner and Davies' (2007) informative studies as a starting point and reference. The study offers a cross-English variety and cross-register examination of the use of English phrasal…

Purpose: The purpose of this investigation was to compare the rates of using African American English (AAE) grammatical features in spoken and written language at different points in literacy development. Based on Kroll's model (1981), a high degree of similarity in use between the modalities was expected at Grade 3, and lower similarity was…

Differential performance results occur when a specific population subgroup achieves a passing rate which is significantly lower than that of the normative reference group. African Americans do less well, in general, on all types of assessments, including constructed-response tests. The present study examined the writing styles of African American…

An essay compares Japanese and American language, reflecting on the fundamental culture-based differences between methods of communication in Japan and the United States. Japanese and Americans have different systems of logic and thought, attitudes, and ways of expressing themselves, all of which are affected by their respective background…

Purpose: This study examined whether child speakers of Southern African American English (SAAE) and Southern White English (SWE) who were also perceived by some listeners to present a Cajun/Creole English (CE) influence within their dialects produced elevated rates of 6 phonological and 5 morphological patterns of vernacular relative to other…

This "insider's guide" to American and Japanese communication and misunderstanding is based on the premise that Americans and Japanese have different goals in communication; the American goal is to make messages negotiated between individuals explicit, while the Japanese goal is to keep messages implicit and assumed within the group. In…

Comparison of maternal speech to three-month-olds between American (N=20) and Japanese (N=20) mother-infant dyads revealed that infant gaze affected the intended functions of maternal speech differently for the two groups. Cultural differences were also seen in the nature of function-form and function-referent relationships. (Author/CB)

This study, consisting of two experiments, investigated the role of verb information in resolving ambiguous noun phrases (NPs) in reading comprehension. Both experiments extended earlier studies. The first measured and compared reading time for sentences containing temporarily ambiguous subject complements and unambiguous complements, which were…

A study compared the abilities of non-native speakers of English who have been in the United States for varying amounts of time with the ability of native speakers to perceive and produce primary stress at the phrase level. Subjects, all having at least 1 year of college education, were 10 native speakers of North American English, 6 native…

This is a comparative analysis of the Japanese and American languages and cultures. The following are discussed: verbs, kinship terms, category terms, apologies and thanks, honorifics and postpositional particles, and levels of usage. A final section relates conclusions about linguistic patterns to culture patterns. (AM)

Although spelling instruction has traditionally treated almost every spelling word as requiring a separate learning act, recent research indicates that over 90% of American-English orthography actually is determined by a set of rules for unit phoneme-grapheme relationships, based with decreasing productivity upon three levels of…

Argues that comparing standard English usage to systems of standardization students are familiar with from their technical training forces technical writing students to understand the need for consistent signaling in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and other language conventions. Includes an example from early American literature written in…

This study investigated similarities and differences in Egyptian Arabic and American English refusals, using a modified discourse completion test (DCT) consisting of three requests, three invitations, three offers, and three suggestions. Each situation included one refusal to a person of higher status, one to a person of equal status, and one to a…