The aims of the present study are: (1) to examine the methodological issues on the development of context-dependent and context-independent task development process in investigating the cognitive verb complementation patterns in English; and (2) to design and administer task items to analyze the learners' recognition and production levels in the…

Cross-linguistically, languages allow a wider variety of phonotactic patterns in onsets than in codas. However, the variability of phonotactic patterns in coda position in different languages suggests these patterns must, at least in part, be learned. Two experiments were conducted to explore whether there is an asymmetry in English-learning…

Measurement of the mutual intelligibility of dialects of a language is discussed. The focus is on several theoretical constructs in measurement, illustrated with data from an earlier study of the mutual intelligibility of 17 Chinese dialects. Measurement procedures are also explained. It is proposed that mutual intelligibility is based on the…

Readability estimates are usually based on measures of word difficulty and measures of sentence difficulty. Word difficulty is measured in two ways: by the structural size and complexity of words or by reference to phonomena of language use, such as word-list frequency or the regularity of spelling patterns. Sentence difficulty is measured only in…

This work represents an effort to develop empirical algorithms useful for measuring alliteration. The resulting rankings compare not unfavorable with an intuitive ranking. (Author)

A computer program for measuring the complexity of syntactic structures in different levels of graded reading materials and in children's oral and written language is presented. (RW)

Asserts that quantitative analysis facilitates the linguistic study of variability in language. The implications of such study for education are in the areas of individual diagnosis and placement. Quantitative analysis is less comfortable to linguists when it is used to generalize or obscure linguistic differences. The latter seems to be the more…

Emphasizes the importance of using children's language patterns to guarantee maximum comprehension for beginning readers and lists other implications of the research. Tables and bibliography. (RW)

A rating instrument for describing nine structural characteristics of written compositions is presented and explained. (JH)

To find out if a computer could be programmed to efficiently analyze the psychosocial factors in the speech of children, taped language samples were collected from structured interviews with 81 male and 63 female kindergarten children. Thirty psychological and social factors relevant to children's speech were drawn from the words in the samples. A…