Carried out simulations in which a set of morphologically-related words varying in semantic transparency were embedded in either a morphologically rich language (Hebrew) or an impoverished artificial language. Found that morphological priming increased with degree of semantic transparency in both languages. (Author/VWL)

A review of research on reading in a second language (L2) looks at how theoretical perspectives in reading research differ and searches for bases for L2 instructional practice. It draws on two perspectives in first language research, one focusing on underlying reading ability and the other on the social context in which reading develops. (MSE)

To investigate the relationship between reading accuracy and speech processing, 20 skilled readers (grades 2-3) were compared with 20 less skilled readers on a speech perception and production task. The vowel phonemes were less securely represented in the perceptual systems of the less skilled readers than were consonant phonemes. (Author/CR)

Knowledge of derivational suffix meanings was investigated in 10 subjects (ages 10-12) with language learning disabilities and typical peers. Students produced derived forms from nonce bases in an elicitation task and selected derived forms in a forced choice task. Elicitation task accuracy of subjects fell substantially below that of peers.…

Describes research conducted at the TREC (Text Retrieval Conference) interactive track that compared Boolean and natural language searching, showing they achieved comparable results; and assessed the validity of batch-oriented retrieval evaluations, showing that the results from batch evaluations were not comparable to those obtained in…

Examined the spontaneous speech of four children and their parents for use of determiners with NP-type nouns and count nouns. Found that the parents made a clear distinction between the two kinds of nouns, omitting determiners with the NP-type nouns but not with the count nouns. The children all made the same distinction by four years of age. (HTH)

In some psycholinguistic models, processing is characterized by generation of multiple outputs using information from higher processing levels. Such models are considered autonomous in word recognition domain but interactive in sentence processing domain. This confusion arises not from differences between lexical and syntactic processing, but from…

Five experiments support the argument that symmetry predication a is property of lexical items and has no special syntax; structural positioning of noun phrases in symmetricals-containing sentences sets their status as figure and ground or variant and referent, even for nonsensical nouns; and symmetrical predicate behavior varies as a function of…

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures were used to study the potential effects of individual differences in verbal working memory capacity on the processing of sentences with a local syntactic ambiguity in German. Results indicate that syntactic processes in language comprehension are related to individual differences in…

Examined whether phonological information was activated automatically in processing two kanji compound words. In one experiment, participants judged whether pairs of words were homophones, while others judged whether pairs were synonyms. In the second, participants were asked to make one of the two judgments, as in experiment one. Findings support…

The primary goal of connectionist research on language acquisition is to identify the nature of the mechanisms that support learning of phonological, semantic, and grammatical processes. A review of literature on language acquisition and connectionism looks at a range of assumptions, general approaches, and their implications. (MSE)

Three experiments investigated whether preschoolers attend to actions or object when learning a novel verb. Findings showed that children learning nouns in the context of novel, moving objects attended exclusively to appearances of objects. Children learning verbs attended equally to appearances and motions. With familiar objects, children…

Discussion of natural language processing focuses on a multi-strategic integrated text preprocessing method for difficult problems of sentence boundary disambiguation and word boundary disambiguation of Web texts. Describes an evaluation of the method using Korean Web document collections. (Author/LRW)

Describes a study that investigated the use of natural language questions on Web search engines. Highlights include query languages; differences in search engine syntax; and results of logistic regression and analysis of variance that showed aspects of questions that predicted significantly different performances, including the number of words,…

A study compared the ability of 12 children with normal language and 12 children with specific language impairment (SLI) (ages 6-11) to comprehend natural speech and DECtalk synthetic speech. DECtalk was more difficult for all subjects to comprehend. Subjects with SLI had more difficulty comprehending both natural and synthetic speech. (Author/CR)