Investigates a pedagogical approach to identifying and bridging the gap between cultural prototypes in second language lexical meaning acquisition. Within the framework of prototype theory and a sociocultural perspective,argues that lexical meaning is culturally situated and the teaching and learning of a culturally loaded word may be achieved by…

Explores frequency and use of adjectives in five advanced scientific texts on biochemistry and analyzes the semantic implications of the observed occurrence. The aim is to provide a better understanding of the role of adjectives in research articles and to suggest how to guide Spanish-speaking students to effectively comprehend, read, write, and…

How do children determine the syntactic category of novel words? In this article we present the results of 2 experiments that investigated whether German children between 12 and 16 months of age can use distributional knowledge that determiners precede nouns and subject pronouns precede verbs to syntactically categorize adjacent novel words.…

Picture naming and picture identification tasks were used to investigate lexical-semantic skills in young children learning Hmong as a first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). A total of 19 children, ages 3; 4 (years; months)-5; 2, participated in this study. Performance on lexical tasks was analyzed as a function of development…

Two studies examined the possibility of retrieval-induced forgetting by 7-year-olds. Children heard a story while viewing pictures of events mentioned in the story, each highlighting objects drawn from two distinct semantic categories (e.g. animals and food). Over the next several days, children were asked the same yes/no questions about half the…

This study investigates how different encoding strategies affect retention of Chinese characters (words) as measured by recall of the sound and meaning of the characters. Three types of encoding strategies were investigated during character learning: rote memorisation (shallow processing), student self-generated elaboration, and instructor-guided…

This empirical study examines how English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners use their vocabulary knowledge for inferring meanings of unknown words in reading comprehension. The data, collected through interviews with young adult ESL students in Canadian universities, indicate that: (a) semantic and morphological aspects of vocabulary knowledge…

How would translators approach a process in which they have to make decisions on mapping the grammatically enforced regular number mechanism of a language such as English onto a system like Japanese, where there is no regular coding of number in a noun phrase? Utilizing the concepts of motivation for representation of number, and of "formal-shift"…

Semantic Web and Adaptive Hypermedia come from different backgrounds, but it turns out that actually, they can benefit from each other, and that their confluence can lead to synergistic effects. This encounter can influence several fields, among which an important one is Education. This paper presents an analysis of this encounter, first from a…

In this article, we examine the construction of word meaning by students during collaborative activities in a multicultural classroom at a Dutch primary school. The analysis is based on recordings of student talk in small groups of four or five students during mathematics lessons. Difficulties with specific terms and expressions frequently arose…

The challenge of the semantic web is the provision of distributed information with well-defined meaning, understandable for different parties. e-Learning is efficient task relevant and just-in-time learning grown from the learning requirements of the new dynamically changing, distributed business world. In this paper we design an e-Learning system…

For the past 150 years public schools in the United States have, in one form or another, tried to address the presence of children in classrooms whose cognitive, behavioral or physical characteristics have been deemed sufficiently problematic to merit a "special" education. Current federal law identifies thirteen categories of…

Dimensions of word meaning are examined, and a framework for describing and teaching Chinese words in the context of Chinese second language instruction is offered. It is argued that every word has limitations of usage that must be understood before it can be used appropriately. The limitations, or dimensions, include these: connotative (emotional…

This study examines the elements of "work and play" as they are conceptualized by the children of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia. Recreation and work are semantically distinct, but this distinction can be blurred in particular contexts and according to differing individual perceptions. As part of a study evaluating a distance…

An analysis of verbs in Tlingit, a U.S. Northwest Coast Indian language, begins with an overview of its situation and usage and of previous research. The second chapter sketches its phonological and syntactic characteristics. Subsequent chapters deal specifically with the verb. An analysis of verb categories distinguishes two groups: argumental…