Presents a description and explanation for the use of "lie" and "lay" in a sentence. Gives several examples in addition to a 10-sentence quiz. (SG)

Considers the concept of "Language Lapses" and presents 10 examples of common mistakes found in language. (SG)

Explores the notion of lexical diffusion in relation to an ongoing change in modern French nasal vowels. Data are interviews with 42 Parisians. Reveals an independent lexical and grammatical conditioning, one not entirely explicable in terms of stress or phonetics. (Author/VWL)

Considers how students who have to guess a lot when spelling do not believe they have control over their language; they think the language has control over them. Suggests that teaching students the patterns and rules of the language helps their spelling improve. Gives specific examples of rules that teachers can teach students to help improve…

Offers journalism advisers and students guidelines on the proper use of everyday/every day, anyway/any way, anyone/any one, and sometime/some time. (RS)

Explores the interactional significance of grammar on turn-taking in Japanese in view of reported conversation analytic findings on turn-taking for Anglo-American English. Particular focus is on ways in which grammar may be implicated in the conversation of turns at speaking and the projection of turn endings in Japanese talk-in-interaction.…

Provides an explanation for the existence of free variation in learner language. Argues that interlanguage is best conceptualized as sets of loose lexical networks that are gradually reorganized into a system or systems. Free variation arises when learners add items to those they have already acquired and before they analyze these items and…

Discusses theoretical and empirical aspects of the neural bases of the mental lexicon and the mental grammar in the first and second language (L1 and L2). Argues that in the first language, the learning, representation, and processing of lexicon and grammar depend on two well-studies brain memory systems. (Author/VWL)

This study examines knowledge of a constraint on the form of synthetic noun-noun compounds in a group of 12 children and adolescents with Williams syndrome (WS; age 8-16 years). The constraint blocks regular plurals from appearing inside compounds (e.g., ferrets breeder) while allowing irregular plurals in the same environment (e.g., mice…

Semantic substitution errors (e.g., saying "arm" when "leg" is intended) are among the most common types of errors occurring during spontaneous speech. It has been shown that grammatical gender of German target nouns is preserved in the errors (E. Mane, 1999). In 3 experiments, the authors explored different accounts of the grammatical gender…

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated attention control for tasks involving the processing of grammaticized linguistic stimuli (function words) contextualized in sentence fragments. Attention control was operationalized as shift costs obtained with adult speakers of English in an alternating-runs experimental design (R. D. Rogers & S.…

Studies of the second language acquisition of pronominal arguments have observed that: (1) L1 speakers of null subject languages of the Spanish type drop more subjects in their second language (L2) English than first language (L1) speakers of null subject languages of the Korean type and (2) speakers of Korean-type languages drop more objects than…

In this study, errors in the English writing of students in the College of World Englishes at Chukyo University, Japan are examined to determine if there is a level of acceptance among teachers. If there is, are these errors becoming part of an accepted, standardized Japanese English Results show there is little acceptance of third person…

We address the possibility of combining the results from hemodynamic and electrophysiological methods for the study of cognitive processing of language. The hemodynamic method we use is Event-Related fMRI, and the electrophysiological method measures Event-Related Band Power (ERBP) of the EEG signal. The experimental technique allows us to…

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…