Notes that the employment of databases to the study of the history of a language is a method that allows for substantial improvement in investigative quality. Illustrates this with the example of the application of this method to two studies of the history of Spanish developed in the Language and Information Seminary of the Independent University…

A language-specific test-item is one which includes a distractor which is a predictable mistake made by Persian speakers, and determined by syntactic and lexical contrastive analysis of Persian and English. The term 'universal' is used for a test-item which does not contain contrastive distractors as defined here. (Author)

The ten papers in this volume are largely revisions of papers presented at the Texas conference, held March 22-24, 1973. The first paper, "Against Universal Semantic Representation," by Gilbert Harman, argues against the need for (and the possibility of) a level of semantic representation in a theory of language. "Remarks on the…

A COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF SPOKEN WORDS AND PHRASES WAS OBTAINED IN 1959 FROM THE RESPONSES OF 33 NATIVE INFORMANTS FROM 23 COUNTIES IN TENNESSEE, GEORGIA, MISSISSIPPI, AND ALABAMA. INFORMANTS WERE ASKED TO IDENTIFY PICTURES, AND THEIR RESPONSES WERE RECORDED ON TAPE AND TRANSCRIBED. A COMPUTER WAS UTILIZED TO PRODUCE LISTINGS OF PARTICULAR SPEECH…

Important characteristics of lexical databases and their applications in information retrieval and natural language processing are explained. An ongoing project using various machine-readable sources to build a lexical database is described, and detailed designs of individual entries with examples are included. (Contains 66 references.) (EAM)

Examines the syntactic aspects of affixation and compounding, processes accounting for the great majority of new word formations documented in "6,000 Words" (1976). (AM)

A bibliography of 430 books, journal articles, papers, and other references on Acadian French written in English or French is divided into two principal sections: an annotated bibliography of works focusing on the Acadian French dialect spoken in the Canadian Maritime Provinces, and an unannotated bibliography pertaining to Louisiana Acadian…

This short dictionary is designed to accompany the work of Melzian (1937) for the benefit of scholars concerned with the place and function of the Nigerian Bini language in the structure of West African languages. The conventional orthography has been used, except in three cases. The body of the general word list contains the English meaning, the…

Numerous reasons can be cited by scholars concerning lexical problems that face anyone embarking upon such an enterprise as that of preparing a Basque-English dictionary. First, "euskera," a term given to this ancient tongue, is both written and spoken today as it was millennia ago. Second, Basque, as a result, has not been subjected to…

The report documents progress and results of a 2-1/3 year effort to further the prototype Chinese-English Machine Translation System. Additional rules were incorporated into the existing grammar for Chinese analysis and interlingual transfer, with emphasis on the latter. CHIDIC was updated and revised. Approximately 16,000 new entries were added…

This report documents efforts over a five-month period toward completion of a pilot system for machine translation of German scientific and technical literature into English. The report is divided into three areas: grammar formalism, programming, and linguistics. Work on grammar formalism concentrated mainly on increasing the power of the…

This quarterly publication is designed to share information of practical, theoretical, administrative, and general interest. It provides linguistic fieldworkers with news, reviews, announcements, and articles that will stimulate interest in linguistics and help them to stay current with the field. Articles in this volume include the following: "Is…

This issue of the journal includes these papers on contrastive linguistics: "Tag Questions, Transformational Grammar and Pragmatics" (Wolfram Bublitz); "Toward Contrasting Styles" (Karol Janicki); "Some More Remarks on the Pedagogical Uses of Contrastive Studies" (Waldemar Marton); "Stress in Polish--With Some Comparisons to English Stress" (James…

Presentations by students at a colloquium on student research on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the University of Laval's Faculty of Letters, March 18-19, 1988, include: "Une enquete sur la qualite du francais ecrit au Quebec"; "Amenagement linguistique et neologie"; "Analyse syntaxique des 'arrets et retours' en…

This workbook, intended to supplement courses in the development of the English language, is based on the belief that knowledge of a language's development is best obtained by working with samples of the language in its various historical stages and linguistic branches. Material covered includes (1) facts, assumptions, and misconceptions about…