Reviews psycholinguistic theories on the relationship between structure and function in language production. Criticizes the theory that sentence structures are reducible to the general forces of cognition that drive interpretation and communication. Argues that syntactic structures are necessary elements in an explanation of language use. (FMW)

Examines the effect of general statements against sexist usage in the style manual for "The Washington Post." Analysis is provided of a minor usage pattern that was not the subject of an explicit rule: the difference in the use of middle initials in references to men and to women. (GLR)

Discusses the impact of possible sex-based differences in communication styles on the technical writer's job. Argues that technical writers can choose to use both male and female communication styles to acknowledge multiple audiences and to improve the quality of their documents. (KEH)

Reviews William Lutz's book "Doublespeak: From 'Revenue Enhancement' to 'Terminal Living'--How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive You." (KEH)

Reviews research on counselor profanity and provides guidelines for its use in counseling. Discourages use of profanity with children; discusses profanity to establish rapport, in later sessions, to reach deeper levels of affect, to help clients focus. Considers counselor's personal value system and offensiveness of profanity to clients.…

As part of an argument for social and textual views of literacy, this review summarizes some of the accomplishments and shortcomings of constructivist accounts of reading and writing activity. A rhetorical perspective calls attention to the way language use crystallizes relations between readers and writers. (SLD)

In a study of event knowledge, 13 2-year-olds were observed interacting with their mothers over a 5-month period. Results indicated that children's increasing event knowledge facilitated their language development (e.g., lexical type use, action verb use) and their lexical token use. (Contains 33 references.) (Author/LB)

This article compares three models of morphological storage and processing: (1) the dual-processing model of Pinker, Marcus and others; (2) the connectionist model of Marchman, Plunkett, Seidenberg, and others; and (3) the network model of Bybee and Langacker. Type frequency of a morphological pattern is shown to be important in determining…

Examines the rhymes and linguistic tricks used by children, focusing on the rhyme, syllable structure, word boundaries, rhythm, meaning, and social uses of school children's poetry and rhymes. Examples are provided of various past and current poems and rhymes. (Contains 10 references.) (MDM)

Examines the distinctive dialect of the British royal family, as well as the "advanced" Received Pronunciation (RP) of the British upper class. Particular focus is on usages, such as the royal "we" and "one," as well as intergenerational differences among RP speakers. (Contains 21 references.) (MDM)

Individuals with autism without mental retardation (ages 8-18), Asperger syndrome, and nonspecific social problems (controls) engaged in a 10-minute conversation. Compared to controls, the higher functioning autistic group referred less to a previous stretch of the conversation and more to an aspect of the physical environment. The Asperger group…

Some recent studies on question formation in formal and informal spoken French are summarized and evaluated, and a number of first- and second-year textbooks published since 1986 are evaluated regarding their treatment of question formation. Recommendations are offered for teaching strategies. (Contains 33 references.) (LB)

Spontaneous utterances from 3 conversational contexts were generated by 3 groups of 10 children, including children with specific language impairments (SLI), and analyzed for accuracy of pronoun usage. Results indicated that children with SLI exhibited more total errors than chronological peers but not more than their language level peers. A…

Discusses the eight-month examination of interactive student-teacher journal entries of first-, third-, and fifth-grade Spanish-English bilingual classrooms. Concludes that students did not make a "transition" from native to second language, instead used a bilingual approach, shifting language in journal entries. Suggests mandatory…

Four experiments examined three- and four-year olds' interpretations of novel words applied to familiar objects in the sentence frame "This Y is X," where X is a novel word and Y is a familiar count noun. Results indicated that preschoolers understood that the novel words were either proper names or adjectives/mass nouns. (MDM)