Linguistic personality, in the domain of applied linguistics and discourse analysis, has risen to the form, content and style of a genre in the contemporary linguistic paradigm. It is determined by an individual's language behaviors, inter-cultural interactions, and self-expression, and is shaped by the educational environment. The current study…

Teachers of communication are aware that communication contains both content and relationship dimensions, or style and substance, which deliver attitudes and ideas to an audience. The key in transmission of meaning is how the sender selects each word or delivery device to trigger the desired response in the receiver. How style influences substance…

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…

Two studies investigated how components of speaking rate, articulation rate and pause rate, combine to influence processing of the silence-duration cue for the voicing distinction in medial stop consonants. Listeners adjust for both articulation rate and pause rate changes in articulation rate had more effect on phonetic judgments. (Author/RD)

A study employed computational and experimental methods to address a number of issues related to the representation and structural organization of spoken words in the mental lexicon. Using a computerized lexicon consisting of phonetic transcriptions of 20,000 words, "similarity neighborhoods" for each of the transcriptions were computed.…

This 21st annual progress report summarizes research activities on speech perception and spoken language processing carried out in the Speech Research Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Indiana University in Bloomington. As with previous reports, the goal is to summarize accomplishments during 1996 and 1997 and make them readily available. Some…

Focuses on the structure/function relationship of the brain and language. Reviews the basic theories concerning cortical structures and language representation. Presents a call that highlights the need to examine the areas of listening, memory, and information retrieval for a more sophisticated analysis of the complex relationship between cortical…

Form-oriented errors of verbal inflection in speech are examined as indicators of cognitive processing in six experiments with college undergraduates. Appendices list words used as stimuli in the six experiments. (LMO)

A study explored whether cues given in advance of messages presented through noise were effective for increasing comprehension. Specifically, the study examined whether (1) relevant cues increased overall listening accuracy and (2) irrelevant cues impaired listening by introducing distortions into the processing of messages or simply decreased the…

One of a series of semiannual reports, this publication contains 18 articles which report the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications. Articles and their authors are as follows: "Phonology and Beginning Reading Revisited (Isabelle Y. Liberman); "The Role of…

Research suggests that interaction between native speakers (NSs) and second language learners (non-native speakers) (NNSs) is characteristically different from speech between NSs, and that it is the modified nature of NS-NNS interaction which provides learners with optimal input. A study was undertaken to determine whether input and interactional…

Two experiments employed story telling to investigate whether production is adapted to comprehension. Subjects were more likely to specify instruments from stories if the instruments were atypical or important to the story. A mathematical model proposed that instrument concepts may be selected at three stages in the production process. (Author/LMO)

A study examined repair in native-nonnative (Mandarin) speaker English conversation, focusing primarily on the previously unobserved lexical element "yeah" which occurs in a speaker's ongoing or same turn at talk. Conversational analysis was used to examine the data collected and transcribed. The data was composed of roughly 120 pages of…

Although teacher education programs spend very little time on the development of listening skills, the importance of listening to communicative effectiveness can hardly be exaggerated. As good listeners, teachers: (1) establish a classroom environment conducive to learning; (2) make better pedagogical decisions based on good listening skills; and…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 34 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) object conservation and receptive language in day care center infants; (2) the syntactic incorporation of linguistic units; (3) implicit theories of meaning in…