A study was conducted to explore the effect of systematically modifying story structure propositions and pronoun antecedents on monolingual, English-speaking students. The study was a replication of earlier work that had involved bilingual students. Thirty fourth-grade students were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Those in the first…

The authors review their work on helping physicaly handicapped persons gain spatial cognition through the interactive graphics learning environment of a computer LOGO system. The findings are said to demonstrate that the LOGO tasks are a viable part of a school curriculum for students with cerebral palsy, as shown by severely/profoundly…

The ways in which preschoolers use the word "but" were studied. It was found that the eight preschoolers, who ranged in age from 3;9 to 5;5, were able to use "but" to express a number of different types of adversative relationships. "But" introduced clauses containing information that: (1) contrasted with shared knowledge about the usual state of…

A study analyzed the cohesive elements found within a text and the difficulty of their resolution within a particular text structure. The specific cohesive form used was pronominal reference. Each of forty-four students in grades ten through twelve was asked to read, sentence by sentence, a text which contained pronouns and pronoun referents. They…

Noting that rhetorical critics have ignored the study of nonwestern movements and have failed to construct theories that help to explain and interpret the rhetorical form of such movements, this paper synthesizes concepts from rhetorical theory and anthropology to explain the linguistic process that made up the 1978 Israeli peace movement. The…

The learning machine described in this paper acquires concepts representable as conjunctive forms of the predicate calculus and behaviors representable as productions (antecedent-consequent pairs of such conjunctive forms): these concepts and behavior rules are inferred from sequentially presented pairs of examples by an algorithm that is probably…

A preliminary study was conducted to identify the precipitating conditions and strategies used for vocabulary acquisition and to relate these findings to one theory of elementary and post-elementary cognitive development. Twenty-six college seniors were asked three questions regarding precipitating conditions and strategies used for vocabulary…

Paragraphs, as well as sentences, can be spoken of as having a deep and a surface structure. The amount of deep structure of the paragraph that is mapped onto the surface paragraph is related to the mode of discourse in which the paragraph is found: the deep structure in scientific paragraphs is relatively uncomplicated with few assumptions made;…

An experiment was conducted to investigate the nature of synonyms by using multidimensional scaling. The selected concept was "pig" and three of its synonyms--"hog,""boar," and "swine." These terms vary in their frequency of use in English, which makes it possible to explore a behaviorally based theory of…

The study reported in this paper addresses the problem, "What makes an answer appropriate?" The claim is made that an appropriate answer must address the goals of the question either directly or indirectly. The conditions of the experiment were dialogues between an expert and an apprentice who were repairing an appliance. In the…

The effects of level of interpersonal attraction (or friendship) on young children's language production were examined during a 15-minute play episode, in which 40 pairs of 3-5 year-olds were separated and then reunited. Friendship was measured by a picture sociometric test validated against free play choices. Language measures focused on…

High school students in Quebec city were tested for their ability to choose Standard French as opposed to Anglicized modes of expression. Lexical, syntagmatic, and phrase Anglicisms were covered. Both direct lexical borrowings from English and translations of idiomatic English terms were included. Students were divided into categories according to…

Modern linguistic theory offers two main contributions to the improvement of writing: readability and appropriateness. Readability can be developed by improving the correctness of forms used and achieved by carrying out an error analysis on the student's writing to provide insights into errors and clause structure. Linguists have determined that…

A study was undertaken to examine how the variables that comprise the construct social situation (interlocutor, setting, and topic) influenced which language variety--standard English (SE) or black English (BE)--was chosen as a means of communication within a black English-speaking community and how that language variety was used to elaborate…

THIS STUDY OF LANGUAGE PRESENTS A SPECIFIC, SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTION OF THE WAYS IN WHICH A SPEAKER ADJUSTS HIS MANNER OF SPEAKING ACCORDING TO THE CONTEXT IN WHICH HE EMPLOYS LANGUAGE. FOUR USAGE-SCALES OF "NATIVE CENTRAL ENGLISH" ARE INTRODUCED--AGE, BREADTH, RESPONSIBILITY, AND STYLE. A KNOWLEDGE OF THESE FOUR DIMENSIONS HOPEFULLY WILL OVERCOME…