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…

Studies intertextuality in teachers' peer dialog journal exchanges. Findings show that the meaning of intertextual links between entries has much to do with partners' shared stances toward gender roles (for the exchange between two women) and their roles as teachers within the school (for the exchange between two men). (Author)

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

Discusses an experiment in progress to prove that irony in written texts is discernible to the non-native speaker through logical or linguistic cues. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Evaluates various explanations for the fact that Chinese writing has remained at the ideographic stage for several thousand years. Reasons include dialect differences, social and political unrest, and attempts by the ruling class and men of letters to preserve complex character writing as an indication of class superiority. (Author/DB)

Study of the pragmatics of politeness conventionally draws on conversational data, but can be extended to some genres of written text. A framework is described that analyzes politeness strategies in terms of impositions (claims and denials of claims) and reveals some stylistic features in scientific papers and in popularizations. (Author/CB)

Provides a synthesis of findings about lexical and syntactico-semantic differences between spoken and written language. Outlines and critically examines the major theoretical and methodological approaches used in comparative studies of spoken and written language and reexamines the question of how speech and writing relate to prototypical forms of…

The purpose of this study was to analyze differences in children's written questions by means of the theoretical model of transformational-Generative grammar. Eight questions written by children in grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 comprised the nucleus of this study. The eight questions were chosen from a larger group of questions and separated into…

After discussing the nature and application of the word "semiology" (or semiotics) and briefly reviewing research in semiotics, this article examines the issue of whether or not semiotics can be considered an independent discipline. Available from Les Presses de l'Universite du Quebec, C.P. 250, Succursale N, Montreal, Canada H2X 3M4. (Text is in…

This article discusses the various styles of commercial correspondence in Spanish. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

Discusses the problem of discrepancies between the pedagogical model of the French language traditionally used in language instruction, and the model of so-called "common French." (Text is in French.) (CLK)

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)

Examines the pragmatic uses of narrative structures in the written stories of native-English speaking and native-Spanish speaking college students. It is shown that there are subtle differences in the way that the two groups use structures, suggesting that native-English and native-Spanish narrators have differing perceptions of themselves and…

In discourse analysis, connectives have been widely suggested as linguistic markers to indicate the logical linkage between utterances. However, the understanding of the interactions among various kinds of connectives in discourse has been limited. A method of quantifying the overall correlation between different kinds of connectives occurring on…

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…