The purpose of this research is to support the language revitalization and reclamation of Nuu-wee-ya', a Dene language from Southern Oregon and Northern California, and to contribute to the discussions on methodological particularities of archive-based research for language revitalization. Nuu-wee-ya' is a sleeping language comprising three…

"Reclaiming Ga?" is a curious title for readers oblivious to the fact that the meaning of "?a?" has been lost. Indeed, "?a?" is but one of several linguistic signals of Koine Greek that allude the grasp of the modern scholar. This has created an environment within NT studies described here as conjunctive…

Each of us as language learners had different language experiences, yet somehow we have converged upon broadly the same language system. From diverse, often noisy samples, we have attained similar linguistic competence. How so? What mechanisms channel language acquisition? Could our linguistic commonalities possibly have converged from our shared…

The three structural possibilities marking a noun with an English article are "a," "the," and "Ø" (the absence of an article). Although these structural possibilities are simple, they encode a multitude of semantic and pragmatic functions, and it is these complex form-function interactions that this study explores and…

This paper examines the key linguistic arguments underpinning Basil Bernstein's theory of "elaborated" and "restricted" "codes". Building on a review of selected highlights from the collective critical response to Bernstein, the paper attempts to clarify the relationship of the theory to "deficit" views…

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…

The primary concern of this thesis is how we can achieve rigorous testability when we set the properties of the Computational System (hypothesized to be at the center of the language faculty) as our object of inquiry and informant judgments as a tool to construct and/or evaluate our hypotheses concerning the properties of the Computational System.…

The question of whether or not linguistic sounds might convey inherent meaning has never conclusively been resolved. This is an empirical study weighing evidence for and against the existence of phonosemantics, also known as sound symbolism or iconism. Contrary to well established principles such as the arbitrary nature of the sign and the double…

This study investigates the developmental rate of "estar" production by Chinese-speaking learners in planned written production. The forms of Spanish copula verbs have no equivalent forms in Chinese in pre-adjectival position (i.e. no copula verb exists between a referent and an adjective in Chinese). This contrast between languages provides a…

Argues that inferring the intension (meaning) of children's words solely from the words' extension (referential scope) is problematic and describes two studies of the intension of children's words which involve a different approach. (JMB)

The inadequacy of the use of the linguist's introspective judgments of meaning and grammaticality as a basis for language studies in syntax and semantics is described, as is the need for improved methods. The evaluation of alternative methodologies by replication experiments is explored. (Author/RM)

Discusses two experiments into a subject's "Different" reaction time in judging whether two test instances are members of the same semantic category. (Author/RM)

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…

Examines the different meanings of the term discourse, comparing the common use of discourse analysis in applied linguistics with its use both in critical discourse analysis and in a Foucauldian use of the term. An attempt is made to show how these different approaches imply profoundly different understandings of the relationship between language,…

Provides a technical analysis of the factors involved in the ability of latent semantic analysis to assess student knowledge (grading essays and matching students with appropriate instructional texts). Addresses the role of technical vocabulary, how long the student essays should be, and how one deals with the directionality of knowledge in the…