A study of spontaneous sign language of six deaf children of hearing parents, examined three times in a 15-month period, is described. Processes and structures representative of and not representative of signed English were sought at various levels of linguistic complexity, including developing semantics, and compared with American Sign Language.…

Discusses three experiments investigating the development of word-by-word comprehension in 5-, 7-, and 10-year olds. Subjects monitored for target words in a sentence. Variable included types of monitoring tasks and distribution and context of target words. Results are discussed in terms of the types of comprehension processes various tasks…

To determine whether the auditory difficulties of learning disabled (LD) children are characterized by deficiencies in processing especially rapid or especially slow speech, the effect of various rates of compressed and expanded sentences on the repetition performance of 20 LD and normal children (ages 8 to 11 years) was investigated. (Author/DLS)

Studies the perceptual relationship between temporal "before" and "after" and their spatial counterparts. Adults reported temporal "before" related to spatial "after" and temporal "after" related to spatial "before." Three-year old children better understood spatial "after" and spatial "before," suggesting a temporal/spatial semantic acquisition…

Suggests that cumulative dynamic analysis of the semantic structure of the incoming message is subconsciously performed by interpreters. (Author/RL)

An experiment with 100 German students of French showed that with the word "profond" the students' semantic associations were based on the mother tongue, whereas with the word "rapide" they were more oriented to the French syntax. Semantic problems are both linguistic and sociocultural in nature. (IFS/WGA)

Three experiments examined preschoolers' and adults' understanding of distinctive semantic functions of adjectives and count nouns. Found that 4-year olds and adults, but not 3-year olds, who heard the adjective version (e.g., "a blue bird") were more likely than those who heard the count noun version ("a bluebird") to choose…

Examines recent trends in research in natural language processing and discusses some applications of this research to the solution of information management problems. The article emphasizes that the importance of natural language processing systems is reflected in their frequent use in support of other computer programs. (71 references) (CK)

Investigates the extent to which a representation of relative force can account for children's understanding of epistemic modals when their logical meaning is considered. Results confirm the influence of relative force and suggest that deductive inference is an early semantic component of modal terms. (29 references) (Author/CK)

The grammars of natural languages may be learned by using genetic algorithm systems such as LUST (Linguistics Using Sexual Techniques) that reproduce and mutate grammatical rules and parts-of-speech tags. In document retrieval or filtering systems, applying tags to the list of terms representing a document provides additional information about…

Investigated the influence of morphologically complex and simple words on the production of morphologically complex and simple picture names in five picture-word interference studies. Two variants of picture-word interference were employed to separate morphological from semantic and phonological effects. (Author/VWL)

Investigated whether: (1) the role of phonological and orthographic activation differs during semantic processing of Korean Hangul and Hanja and (2) proficiency in Korean Hanja would affect the way phonology is used in comprehension of Hanja characters. Overall, results indicate both language proficiency and script difference can affect the…

We assessed the impact of visual similarity on written word identification by having participants learn new words (e.g. BANARA) that were neighbours of familiar words that previously had no neighbours (e.g. BANANA). Repeated exposure to these new words made it more difficult to semantically categorize the familiar words. There was some evidence of…

This study uses the morphological family size effect as a tool for exploring the degree of isomorphism in the networks of morphologically related words in the Hebrew and Dutch mental lexicon. Hebrew and Dutch are genetically unrelated, and they structure their morphologically complex words in very different ways. Two visual lexical decision…

The lexical-semantic and syntactic abilities of a group of individuals with chronic nonthalamic subcortical (NS) lesions following stroke (n=6) were investigated using the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) picture description task [Kertesz, A. (1982). "The Western aphasia battery." New York: Grune and Stratton] and compared with those of a…