A visual representation involves delivering messages through visually communicated images. The study assumed that semantic recognition can affect visual interpretation ability, and the result showed that students graduating from a general high school achieve satisfactory results in semantic recognition and image interpretation tasks than students…

This thesis investigates the nature of grammatical patterns through an in-depth study of resultative constructions in Mandarin and Thai. At the heart of the thesis lies the proposal that event structure templates--complex, meaning-based grammatical patterns--must be recognised as primary objects of linguistic analysis. As content-theoretic objects…

This book focuses on appropriate English for Academic Purposes instructional concepts and methods in the Japanese context. It investigates a variety of pedagogical techniques, addressing the fundamental academic English skills -- listening, speaking, reading and writing -- as well as assessment and materials development. All the research included…

Semantic Minimalism is a position about the semantic content of declarative sentences, i.e., the content that is determined entirely by syntax. It is defined by the following two points: "Point 1": The semantic content is a complete/truth-conditional proposition. "Point 2": The semantic content is useful to a theory of…

There is a general debate as to whether constituent representations are accessed in compound processing. The present study addresses this issue, exploiting the properties of Italian compounds to test the role of headedness and semantic transparency in constituent access. In a first experiment, a lexical decision task was run on nominal compounds.…

We report three experiments investigating how people process anomalous sentences, in particular those in which the anomaly is associated with the verb. We contrast two accounts for the processing of such anomalous sentences: a syntactic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are similar in nature to the ones…

The present study investigates whether two types of word combinations (free combinations and collocations) differ in terms of processing by testing Howarth's Continuum Model based on word combination typologies from a phraseological tradition. A visual semantic judgment task was administered to advanced Swedish learners of English (n = 27) and…

This study examines English and Arabic binomials, identifies the similarities and differences in their semantic features, semantic structure, and semantic relations between the members of binomials. It also investigates translation students' ability to comprehend and translate binomials from English to Arabic and vice versa. It was found that…

Studies have begun to focus on what skills contribute to the development of phonological awareness, an important predictor of reading attainment. One of these skills is the perception of prosody, which is the rhythm, tempo and stress of a language. To examine whether prosodic perception contributes to phonological awareness prior to reading…

Word finding difficulties are often seen in children with language difficulties. Their problem is readily observed and has led to investigations of its nature and encouraged attempts at intervention. Semantic errors in their naming suggest that their knowledge of items is poorly developed and that therapies to strengthen it may be effective.…

In recent decades, a growing number of children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a condition characterized by social interaction deficits and language impairment. Yet the precise nature of the disorder's impact on language development is not well understood, in part because of the language variability among children across…

Domain adaptation of natural language processing systems is challenging because it requires human expertise. While manual effort is effective in creating a high quality knowledge base, it is expensive and time consuming. Clinical text adds another layer of complexity to the task due to privacy and confidentiality restrictions that hinder the…

This paper reports an experiment designed to evaluate an attempt to improve the effectiveness of an existing L2 idiom-learning tool. In this tool, learners are helped to associate the abstract, idiomatic meaning of expressions such as "jump the gun" (act too soon) with their original, concrete meaning (e.g. associating "jump the…

Current models of idiom representation and processing differ with respect to the role of literal processing during the interpretation of idiomatic expressions. Word-like models (Bobrow & Bell, 1973; Swinney & Cutler, 1979) propose that idiomatic meaning can be accessed directly, whereas structural models (Cacciari & Tabossi, 1988;…

Despite the fact that they play a prominent role in everyday speech, the representation and processing of fixed expressions during language production is poorly understood. Here, we report a study investigating the processes underlying fixed expression production. "Tip-of-the-tongue" (TOT) states were elicited for well-known idioms…