Advanced learners of second languages and natural language processing systems both demand much more detailed lexical information than conventional dictionaries provide. Text composition, whether by humans or machines, requires a thorough understanding of relationships between words, such as selectional restrictions, case patterns, factives, and…

A study of the factors affecting the burring of word-initial /r/ in a small English village found variability in the temporal, spatial, social, sexual, and phonic aspects of usage. Six categories of burrers are distinguished according to their speech habits. The evidence points to an ongoing socially and phonetically conditioned change in the…

The English spoken in India is too close to standard English to be characterized as a separate variety. Although phonological variations give English in India some regional flavors, they do not have any structural or semantic base and do not constitute a new language. Cultural differences have not caused English-language literature written in…

Modern Ethiopia has made progress that has altered the status and functions of its various languages. With modernization, the reasons for and means of interethnic contact have multiplied, creating the need for a common language. Amharic, once confined to a rather small area, has spread geographically and grown in status in the last thousand years,…

The need for an analytical approach to the study of phatic, metalingual, and metacommunicative functions in asymmetrical communicative situations (between native speakers and language learners) is discussed. The study presents theoretical frameworks for gambits and repairs, the linguistic phenomena that primarily serve those functions, and…

A course in child development offered at a British secondary school focused on language development. The primary objective was to sharpen college students' awareness of the language development of children they meet in their everyday lives and children they study during the course. The teacher's role is to extract linguistic theory from the…

The reports describe the institutional context, design, and administration of language awareness courses and course components in seven British secondary schools: the Oratory School in Reading, North Westminster Community School in London, the Priory School in Barnsley, Hambrough Middle School in Southall, the Henry Box School in Witney,…

A keynote address, five selected conference papers, and two panel discussions are presented in these conference proceedings. The keynote address, "Breaking the Disciplines" (Florence Howe), examines the development of traditional disciplines as the mainstream of higher education's curriculum and the omission of women from these…

Contrastive rhetoric theory, an extension of contrastive grammar, holds that the rhetorical predispositions of a student's native language will interfere with attempts to learn the rhetoric of a second language; and that because speakers of different languages think differently, they organize paragraphs differently, a situation which influences…

Language learning is complex and mysterious--because of the many diverse factors that affect its development and because of the many unanswered questions about its nature. Even so, the efforts of countless researchers have provided sufficient knowledge to prompt some recommendations about how adults may nurture the language and literacy…

A study undertaken by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) to assess the bilingual language and literacy education services made available by the school district to a group of Chinese American elementary school children in Seattle is the focus of a discussion on bilingual program policy formation. The role of theory in the…

Spaning 30 years, the essays in this collection present variations on the theme of how, through language and social interaction, humans evolve increasingly more accurate maps of their worlds. The six essays in the first section, "Literature and the Shaping of Experience," point to a central concern for literature as a fundamental way of knowing…

This is one of five panel reports that have been prepared as part of the first phase of Project 2061, a long-term multipurpose undertaking of the American Association for the Advancement of Science designed to help reform science, mathematics, and technology education in the United States. Major sections included are: (1) "Introduction";…

In order to investigate the text structure/reading comprehension relationship, this paper reviews recent research on text representation theories. Text structure investigation--research on semantic memory as it is concerned with meaning from the word level through the inference level--follows the premise that sentences are understood in the…

In Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, foreign language tests have been used rarely in schools, because more traditional oral and written examinations are preferred. However, recent changes in socialist pedagogical theory support a trend toward increasing efficiency in the instructional process, increased use of diagnostics, development of more…