Reports the results of three experiments that used vowel and tone monitoring tasks to investigate the role of tone information in processing Mandarin. (Author/VWL)

Gives a brief characterization of the ways second-language acquisition researchers use the computer to elicit second-language (L2) production data or to record how L2 learners process L2 input. Eight tasks and/or techniques are described. Discusses the use of computer technology in ongoing investigations that pertain to the acquisition of…

Two experiments investigated the effect of kanji morphemic homophony on lexical decision and naming. Effects were examined from both the left-hand and right-hand positions of Japanese two-kanji compound words. The number of homophones affected the processing of compound words in the same way for both tasks. For left-hand kanji, fewer morphemic…

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate the temporal relationship between lexical selection and the semantic integration in auditory sentence processing. Participants were presented with spoken sentences that ended with a word that was either semantically congruent or anomalous. Information about the moment in…

The increasingly integrative use of images with language in many different types of texts in electronic and paper media has created an urgent need to go beyond logocentric accounts of literacy and literacy pedagogy. Correspondingly there is a need to augment the genre, grammar and discourse descriptions of verbal text as resources for literacy…

Acquisition by Processing Theory (APT) is a unified account of language processing and learning that encompasses both L1 and L2 acquisition. Bold in aim and broad in scope, the proposal offers parsimony and comprehensiveness, both highly desirable in a theory of language acquisition. However, the sweep of the proposal is accompanied by an economy…

In this article we discuss different views about how information flows through the lexical system in bilingual speech production. In the first part, we focus on some of the experimental evidence often quoted in favor of the parallel activation of the bilinguals' two languages from the semantic system in the course of language production. We argue…

The origin and functions of the hand and arm gestures that accompany speech production are poorly understood. It has been proposed that gestures facilitate lexical retrieval, but little is known about when retrieval is accompanied by gestural activity and how this activity is related to the semantics of the word to be retrieved. Electromyographic…

Many second-language learners in their early stages of development are known to make an extensive use of prefabricated formulae. These formulae are extracted holistically from the input and memorized by rote. Learners can learn to use expressions that are far beyond their current knowledge of syntax and vocabulary, by guessing their meaning from…

A discussion of agency looks at cross-linguistic evidence concerning the place of volition, animacy, and person in a model of agentivity. Two views of agentivity are presented as complementary rather than mutually contradictory. Data from Lhasa Tibetan that support a less restrictive notion of agency than is often assumed are presented. In this…

One of a series of semiannual reports, this publication contains 13 articles which report the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications. Articles and their authors are as follows: "The Role of Contrast in Limiting Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation in Different…

Summarizing research activities from January 1977 to September 1978, this is the fourth annual report of research on speech processing conducted in the Department of Psychology at Indiana University. The report includes extended manuscripts, short reports, progress reports, and information on instrumentation developments and software support. The…

A study investigating the independence of linguistic abilities from each other, specifically the separability of syntax and semantics and the autonomy of syntactic abilities, is described. In the study, 30 individuals with Alzheimer's disease produced spontaneous conversations, completed sentences eliciting 16 grammatical forms, and when possible,…

The relation definition theory proposed in this paper is explicitly different from previous semantic memory theories since it is the first to make a relation's definition the basis of semantic processing. The paper suggests that this relation definition theory successfully predicts relation similarity on the basis of one key primary assumption:…

The present paper describes results of a study that investigated 209 bilingual Puerto Rican college students' ability to solve verbal deductive reasoning problems administered in Spanish and English in relation to their reading comprehension skills in either language. A series of confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the data on reasoning and…