In the age when environmental sustainability is among the chief concerns and goals of communities around the world, a number of linguistic studies have been conducted to illuminate the roles of language in protection and destruction of ecological systems. Most of the studies, however, focus on written and/or formal discourses. The present study…

Drawing on unique observational data from police training with child volunteers, this study evaluates the linguistic patterns used by officers for transmitting complex, legally-binding information to children during the opt-out procedure (which determines how children's evidence is presented in court). It is shown that while the officers realise…

This column examines the term "variable rules," which accounts for patterning in language. Variable rules can show variation in the structural description and/or in the process involved in the rule. (SW)

This paper accepts Labov's (1973) criticisms of the categorial approach, i.e., the view that linguistic units are categories which are discrete, invariant, qualitatively distinct, conjunctively defined, and composed of atomic primes, and follows Labov in attempting to develop a non-categorial (or fuzzy-categorial) approach to lexical semantics,…

The book, designed as a textbook for introductory study of semantics within college-level linguistics, focuses on the study of meaning as it is systematically encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages. The term "semantics" is presumed here to include pragmatics. An introductory section explains fundamental theoretical and…

This article is concerned with the possible existence of a verbal anatomical representation comparable to that deriving from neural relationships concerned with somatic functions on the sensorimotor cortex of the brain, as seen in linguistic evidence available from Melanesian languages. (CLK)

This article discusses Aronoff's (1976) theory of the lexicon and states that the theory must be modified to describe a more richly inflected language, such as French. A more comprehensive theory of the lexicon is then outlined. (NCR)

Examined accentuation patterns that appear in Japanese adaptation of French words. Argues that these patterns reflect the default accentuation of Japanese grammar; they correspond to accent patterns found in some marginal sectors of Japanese vocabulary where the accent is predictable. (Author/VWL)

Replicating research originally performed with native speakers of English, this study investigated the mutability of vowels in Spanish. The study was based on the theory that when presented with non-words, native speakers are more likely to change the vowel than the consonant to arrive at an existing lexical item. It was hypothesized that if…

Deals with patterns of limited borrowing in Tarahumara, or Raramuri, a Uto-Aztecan language in northern Mexico. Probes the sociolinguistic constraints that have apparently caused Raramuri to have borrowed surprisingly little from Spanish. (Author/RM)

Compared responses of English-French bilinguals performing semantic categorization and lexical decision tasks using translation-priming stimuli. Using the same stimuli, priming effects were significantly stronger in semantic categorization than in lexical decision, suggesting the translation-priming effect in the former is mediated by semantic…

Proposes an account of linking patterns that does away with intermediary mechanisms such as thematic or actor/undergoer hierarchies. Shows that the generalizations a linking theory needs to capture can be modeled via the same mechanisms as other lexical generalizations, using conditions specified within the hierarchy of word classes. (Author/VWL)

A subset of a Seri-English bilingual dictionary (in preparation) is presented that includes terms referring to people, kinship terms, and verbs closely related to them. This version includes an English-to-Seri dictionary with 61 basic terms and variants, and a Seri dictionary with both Spanish and English glosses. It uses a practical orthography…

An analysis of a corpus of 252 specialized terms relating to the field of videotex, 144 in French and 108 in English, is presented in this document. The methods by which these terms are formed in both languages is examined, focusing on whether the terms have a linguistic basis in the French language or are borrowed from English. The differences…

A study of two language corpora (recommendations and specifications produced by the International Telecommunications Union for its members, and a corpus containing university syllabi for economics, biology, and history) investigated lexicographic strategies for identifying terms in specialized texts. In the first phase, a list of all possible term…