Explores the relation of attitudes toward individual words and attitudes toward simple sentences made up of those words. Prediction equations showed a high level of accuracy. Bibliography and tables. (JB)

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…

Presents four chief categories of common mistakes in French along with some of their causes and cures. (EKN)

In order to determine (1) the major speech characteristics of mothers and fathers and (2) the relationship between parental input and child language development, a longitudinal analysis of parents' input language was conducted during the period in which four first-born children progressed from no words to the stable use of one-word utterances in…

Expounds Firth's views on the problems of translation and surveys theories of translation by some Firthian linguists. Defines the concept of meaning and the concept of varieties within a language, discussing various dialect categories and other categories that relate to constant features of speakers' and writers' use. (MES)

Presents a historical analysis of the Chinese in Cuba and examines the influence of the Chinese language on Spanish. Examples are given of Chinese words used in Cuba today and it is concluded that they have made a considerable contribution to Cuban Spanish. (NCR)

Cree has a grammatical distinction that differs from the Western concept that is relevant for the selection of nominal and verbal endings between animate and inanimate nouns. Examples illustrate how the Cree distinction cuts across animate/inanimate boundaries. (PMJ)

Examines the use of the neuter form in predicate adjectives, drawing examples from Swedish and French, and working within the framework of nexus constructions. (AM)

A study explored the ability of children to comprehend expressions of uncertainty in varying degrees (e.g., "not likely, possible, probable"). Subjects were 42 French students aged approximately 9, 12, and 15. Results, including age and gender differences, and implications for classroom communication are discussed. (MSE)

Describes and categorizes patterns we construct between texts of different kinds (patterns of intertextuality). Whether the principles of intertextuality can be applied to other sorts of semiotic "texts" such as computer graphics and hypermedia is raised as a crucial question for the future of educational research. (Contains 48…

Analyzed the argument linking of the commercial transaction frame in English, Russian, and Japanese. The commercial transaction frame is semantically complex, because there are two transfers in opposite directions (money goes from buyer to seller and goods from seller to buyer). English and Russian construe the commercial frame in essentially the…

This article reviews the cultural and linguistic background of Asian Indians in the United States. It highlights some of the phonological, grammatical, semantic, and vocabulary usage peculiarities of the variety of English called Indian English spoken by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. (Author/DB)

Properties of the input, such as raw frequency and syntactic diversity, have been shown to play a role, to different extents, in the acquisition of nouns and verbs. This study investigated the relationship between three properties of the input (input frequency, syntactic diversity, and variety in noun-type co-occurrence) and age of acquisition of…

This paper presents a discussion of the constraints imposed on lexicalisation during production by language-specific patterns, such as whether words exist in a language to describe a given event and whether language-specific syntactic and phonological information correlates with semantic properties. First, we introduce in broad strokes relevant…

Much earlier controversy surrounding the Chinese "ba" construction stems from dissention over whether or not "ba" has any independent semantic content. "Ba" was assumed either to be a purely formal particle whose function was to assign case, or to have semantic content translating into thematic content. However, under the hypothesis that abstract…