Presents a morphological classification of languages from the information retrieval (IR) perspective. Discusses differences in inflection, derivation, and compounding; index of synthesis and index of fusion; cross-language retrieval research; the need for semantic and syntactic typologies; and the effects of morphology and stemming in IR.…

This paper explores the issues involved in the linguistic characterisation of disordered discourse and the ways in which a Systemic Functional Linguistic framework addresses these issues. For many years, language disorders were described in terms of formal grammars, with "breakdown" discussed in terms of one or more of the traditional levels of…

Individuals with agrammatic aphasia may have difficulty with verb production in comparison to nouns. Additionally, they may have greater difficulty producing verbs that have fewer semantic components (i.e., are semantically "light") compared to verbs that have greater semantic weight. A connectionist verb-production model proposed by Gordon and…

Three experiments explored the semantics of the mass-count distinction in young children and adults. In Experiments 1 and 2, the quantity judgments of participants provided evidence that some mass nouns refer to individuals, as such. Participants judged one large portion of stuff to be ''more'' than three tiny portions for substance-mass nouns…

Deviances in early event-related potential (ERP) components reflecting auditory and phonological processing are well-documented in children at familial risk for dyslexia. However, little is known about brain responses which index processing in other linguistic domains such as lexicon, semantics and syntax in this group. The present study…

Language is a fantastic gift: it empowers humans to create new ways of speaking with, for and to others about any topic or experience. Language is a rule-governed, meaningful communication system. It is a symbol system, where a word or phrase stands for or represents something else that can be touched, thought about, seen, heard, felt, done,…

Investigates the assumption that sentences comprise a presupposition and an assertion. The projection problem for presuppositions is reduced to a property of presuppositions; intersentential relations are systematized, dependent on presupposition and negation; certain syntactic structures and lexical items are analyzed in terms of these relations.…

A technique is demonstrated whereby an implicit semantic feature can be related to a grammatical alternative (pronoun-antecedent assignment) and thereby made explicit. It is also demonstrated that pragmatic, syntactic and other semantic features interact in an orderly way with this implicit feature of causality in verbs. (RC)

Polar interrogative sentences differ from declarative sentences in terms of illocutionary forces and the linguistic analysis of their meaning. It is possible to isolate small numbers of syntactic and semantic categories and an unlimited number of illocutionary forces resulting from their interaction with the total situation. (CK)

It is argued that among English sensation referents there is a primacy of vision referents for syntactic, semantic and morphological phenomena. (RM)

Data are presented that challenge the difficulty ordering for anaphoric syntax (e.g., pronouns) proposed by Bormuth, Manning, Carr, and Pearson. It is suggested that any such difficulty ordering which results from tests of the form proposed by Bormuth has uncontrolled variability due to semantic factors that have yet to be carefully analyzed and…

Concerns the language development of four children between the ages of 19 and 26 months, as they progressed from single-word utterances to a mean length of utterance of 2.5 morphemes. The observed developmental sequence is described and possible linguistic and cognitive explanations for it are discussed.

The factive nominal construction of Spanish shows to what extent semantic notions and syntactic constraints are mutually influential. Positive presupposition on the part of the speaker as to truth or falsehood of a subordinate proposition is reflected by the use of the indicative mood; negative or indefinite presupposition by use of the…

Synonyms are not in syntactic free-variation. Some text composition rules are examined and it is shown that they prevent the occurrence of paradoxical utterances which could arise if synonyms were freely substitutable. (Text is in German.) (TL)

This paper discusses the interrelations between the three aspects of semiotics - semantics, syntactics and pragmatics. Topics covered include the structure of semiotics, foundations of the category of sign, the centrality of pragmatics, relations between semiotics and linguistics, and between semiotics and the theory of art. (CK)