Poverty of the stimulus has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what poverty of the stimulus is and how it's been interpreted, which is…

Besides explicit inference of word meanings, associating words with diverse contexts may be a key mechanism underlying vocabulary learning through reading. Drawing from distributional semantic theory, we developed a text modification method called reflash to facilitate both word-context association and explicit inference. Using a set of left and…

This study seeks to uncover the theoretical bases for the production of the classical Arabic phonetic terms and their elements in the means of generating terms for both lexical semantics and conceptual semantics. The research problem is concerned with examining the roots of generating these phonetic terms and determining the categories of their…

This systematic review explores the evolution and impact of corpus-based methodologies in textbook analysis within the field of language education between 2010 and 2024. Utilizing the PRISMA framework, 29 studies were identified and analyzed, highlighting the transition from basic frequency analyses to sophisticated examinations of lexical,…

The current study aims at exploring some syntactic and semantic underlying problems in three English translations of the meanings of Surat Quraish; that is in English translations of AbdelHaleem, Khan and Mohammed Taj Al-Din Al-Hilai and Pickthall. Also, the study aims at probing how the three translators deal with some syntactic and semantic…

Research on reported speech is old, but scholars working in this field are inclined to see its roots in Davidson's (1968) paratactic account of indirect reports. Although Davidson aimed at a "truth-conditional" theory of indirect reports which could challenge ideational, use, and psychological theories, his paratactic view--of which the…

Drawing on the findings of longitudinal studies in uninstructed contexts over the last two decades, this synthesis explores variations in developmental patterns across second language (L2) pragmatic features. Two synthesis questions were addressed: (a) What are the variations in developmental patterns across pragmatic features?, and (b) What are…

The public's concern with the fate of the standard language has been well documented in the history of the complaint tradition. The print media have for centuries featured letters to the editor on questions of language use. This study examines a corpus of 258 language-related letters to the editor published in the English-speaking print media. By…

The fact that English non-count abstract nouns such as knowledge are compatible with the indefinite article a/an is not only perplexing for second language (L2) learners of English but also troublesome for both native and non-native English teachers. This paper does research on this curious phenomenon of English grammar to clarify its mechanism…

Explores the fit between syntax and semantics by addressing the following questions: (1) To what extent is the distribution of bare infinitive complements semantically motivated? and (2) What is the function of infinitival to? (46 references) (GLR)

Reflecting on the important works of Alma Sabatini in the area of sexism, her work and those of other Italians is compared with researchers in other countries, particularly the United States, France, and Germany. The Italian language is analyzed, pointing out instances of sexism. (CFM)

English, and presumably any natural language, contains a small group of expressions referring to species of things found in nature. These species are defined by their internal structure, determined by genetics in the case of living things and by chemical or physical properties in the case of others. The reference of these terms is determined by…

Describes the work by Silvio Ceccato regarding machine translation systems and procedures, exploring such aspects of his work as functional philosophical approaches to machine translation, notional spheres, correlational analysis, and type classifications. Ceccato envisioned many of the methods that are now being applied in machine translation…

Presents a study of young children's understanding that pronouns and proper names cannot be modified by pronominal adjectives. Some nonsyntactic theories are discussed that support the claim that children understand knowledge of word order through the rules that order abstract linguistic categories. (31 references) (GLR)

Using framework of prototype semantics, TE-constructions (type of verbal construct in Japanese), are categorized according to underlying metaphors and related to central TE-construction in which K- 1K- indicate both motion and direction in physical space. Through descriptions, discussions, and examples, it is demonstrated that no adequate…