Describes general changes in sentence length, typical clause and modifier patterns, connectedness and structural explicitness over the last 400 years. Finds that the printed sentence has become shorter, the flow of information more direct, and the connections between nominalizations more implicit. Suggests that the printed sentence will continue…

Examines societies in which varieties and degrees of literacy are possible or ordinary, such as Japan and Korea. Finds that these societies have separate but functionally interrelated writing systems, used for communicatively disparate purposes, differential mastery of which, consequently, has social and economic repercussions. Finds that…

Lexical bundles--recurrent sequences of words--are important building blocks of discourse in spoken and written registers. Previous research has shown that lexical bundles are especially prevalent in university classroom teaching, where they serve three major discourse functions: stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential…

Describes an alphabetic process for cuing readers to speak the three dimensions of sound: fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity. (RB)

Cites over 75 examples of errors in usage which were made by newswriters for the "Washington Post," suggesting that they indicate the social dimensions of language decay. (DD)

Examines the syntactic and stylistic features of an emergent phenomenon called Interactive Written Discourse (IWD), the written language occurring in simultaneous terminal-to-terminal typed dialogues. Finds that IWD is a naturally occurring register and a hybrid language variety, displaying characteristics of both oral and written language. Notes…

Part of a research project is presented that aims at identifying the difficulties tertiary level students encounter in reading scientific texts in a foreign language and the strategies they apply to overcome them. Strategy markers are identified and listed, and are then analyzed to interpret the linguistic difficulty and the strategy used.…

Tests widely-held associations among script types, genres, writers, and target readers via statistical analysis in popular Japanese fiction. Subjects texts to lexical analysis to see whether choice of vocabulary can account for variability in script selection. Finds that Japanese writers fashion their script type choices to specific contexts, as…

Examines recent studies of linguistic corpora in Italian, and presents the results of an analysis of "piace" and "piacciono" conducted on a corpus of 3.5 million words of written Italian, accessible at the University of Birmingham in England. Focuses on pedagogical applications of the data and on the inductive methodologies…

Argues that multiple language use in learner output is not always and exclusively indicative of the deficient nature of the language learner with respect to an idealized monolingual second language linguistic norm. Multilingual written learner texts and learners' explications of these texts are examined in detail. (Author/VWL)

Examines two versions of the alphabet to show how psychological evidence indicates that grammar is best which best approximates the system people have in their heads. (RB)

This workbook for students provides an accessible introduction to a range of ways of analyzing language in context. The workbook can be used in a number of ways, for example, as a student reference text to briefly review a particular kind of language analysis or as a course textbook to introduce students to a variety of approaches to language data…

Significant correlations, especially between the black and white groups, and black and Hispanic groups, indicate that all groups show similar types of non-standard English usage and generally with the same frequency. (Author)

Reviews what recent research into speaking-writing relationships has to say about a particular problem of unskilled writers--those who tend to write as if they were talking. Examines the differences and interdependence of oral dialogue and written monologue. (RL)

The Spanish psychological verb construction seems to be especially difficult for native English-speaking learners to acquire. Since some of the most common Spanish psych verbs, such as "gustar" (to please) and "encantar" (to delight), require a grammatical structure that is different from that of the English verbs frequently…