We investigate whether second language (L2) learners of English rely on first language (L1) transfer and atomicity in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction by examining L1-French and L1-Chinese learners of English. Atomicity encodes whether a noun contains 'atoms' or minimal elements that retain the property of the noun. As a semantic…

This dissertation explores the effects of frequency on the learning and use of linguistic constructions. The work examines the influence of frequency on form choice in production and meaning inference in comprehension and discusses the effect of each modality on diachronic patterns of change in language. In production, high frequency of a form…

Examining post-election statements made by UC System, UT-Austin, and UW-Madison executive leadership, this study employs word frequency, collocation, and a three-pronged latent semantic analysis to explicate the associative diction, major concepts, and institutional priorities expressed by said leadership to answer the research question,…

The study of homophones--words with different meanings that sound the same--has great potential to inform models of language production. Of particular relevance is a phenomenon termed "frequency" inheritance, where a low-frequency word (e.g., "deer") is produced more fluently than would be expected based on its frequency…

Research findings concerning verb-level influences on past-tense morphology carry implications for the careful selection of treatment targets. Using 6 of the broad criteria for "good verbs to choose" proposed by D. Crystal (1985) more than 25 years ago as a framework, this article summarizes some of the more recent research with a nod…

This study examines frequency, contextual diversity, and contextual distinctiveness effects in predicting produced versus not-produced frequent nouns and verbs by early second language (L2) learners of English. The study analyzes whether word frequency is the strongest predictor of early L2 word production independent of contextual diversity and…

Extracting and representing semantic information from large scale corpora is at the crux of computer-assisted knowledge generation. Semantic information depends on collocation extraction methods, mathematical models used to represent distributional information, and weighting functions which transform the space. This dissertation provides a…

Sarcasm, or sarcastic irony, involves expressing a message that is often opposite of the literal meaning of what is being said, in a way that may sound bitter, or caustic (Gibbs, 1986). In the past, sarcasm has been viewed as a method of introducing the possibility of alternative interpretations of a discourse, by creating ambiguity as to the…

Much recent work argues that lexical frequency plays a central explanatory role in linguistic theory, but the status, predicted effects, and methodological treatment of frequency are controversial, especially so in the less-investigated area of syntactic variation. This article addresses these issues in a case study of lexical frequency effects on…

We compare translations of single words, made by bilingual speakers in a laboratory setting, with contextualized translation choices of the same items, made by professional translators and extracted from parallel language corpora. The translation choices in both cases show moderate convergence, demonstrating that decontextualized translation…

Three cued-recall experiments examined the effect of category typicality on the ordering of words in sentence production. Past research has found that typical items tend to be mentioned before atypical items in a phrase--a pattern usually associated with lexical variables (like word frequency), and yet typicality is a conceptual variable.…

D. C. Plaut and J. R. Booth presented a parallel distributed processing model that purports to simulate human lexical decision performance. This model (and D. C. Plaut, 1995) offers a single mechanism account of the pattern of factor effects on reaction time (RT) between semantic priming, word frequency, and stimulus quality without requiring a…

The study analyzes, for readability and difficulty, the language of 50 commonly used application forms. The forms were compared with respect to length, readability, t-unit density, and word-length variables. Forms were also compared against two word-frequency lists. Results show that many of the words appearing often on forms do not appear on the…

Experiment I studied type of processing (semantic or nonsemantic) and dimension of rating (pleasantness or frequency of occurrence). Recall was higher under semantic conditions and after ratings of pleasantness. Experiment 2 showed that the difference between incidental and intentional learners increases as more stress is placed on the learning…

An experiment was conducted to investigate the nature of synonyms by using multidimensional scaling. The selected concept was "pig" and three of its synonyms--"hog,""boar," and "swine." These terms vary in their frequency of use in English, which makes it possible to explore a behaviorally based theory of…