This guide to ERRATA, a set of HyperCard-based tools for response analysis and error diagnosis in language testing, is intended as a user manual and general reference and designed to be used with the software (not included here). It has three parts. The first is a brief survey of computational techniques available for dealing with student test…

The study examines one component of the system of complementation in Palestinian Arabic. It is argued that the complementizer in question has an inherent semantics capable of influencing the meaning of sentences in which it is embedded. Specifically, its presence in a complex sentence communicates modal meanings distinct from those communicated by…

A study examined internal structure of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), a technique used to elicit data in sociolinguistic research, and effects of systematic modification to its situational prompt on subject response. The DCT is a questionnaire containing situations, briefly described, designed to elicit a particular speech act. Subjects read…

This study examined the quality of verbal exchanges between teachers and children in 4 primary classrooms and the 4-year-old groups in 4 child care centers in Australia. Data were collected during small group activities for a minimum of 4 hours. Interactions were audiotaped, transcribed, and divided into messages which are equivalent to clauses…

Drawing data from audiotaped lessons with 10 native-speaker English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) teachers and 12 EFL learners of varied linguistic backgrounds, a study explored some of the ways in which classroom talk by learners is collaboratively built to repair errors, misunderstandings, and non-communication. Focus is on both explicit and…

Papers on semantic theory and research include: "Presupposition, Congruence, and Adverbs of Quantification" (Mike Calcagno); "A Unified Account of '(Ta)myen'-Conditionals in Korean" (Chan Chung); "Spanish 'imperfecto' and 'preterito': Truth Conditions and Aktionsart Effects in a Situation Semantics" (Alicia Cipria,…

A study examined "Learning Community" meetings at the College of Education and Human Services at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh in which professors, inservice teachers, and preservice teachers in a 15-hour semester block connected with a clinical field experience meet and engage in dialogue about the program. A total of four…

A study explored the implications of a rhetorical approach to professional education in business--specifically, how a social constructivist view of language might change how students learn concepts and theories of business. It focused on undergraduate education in management, with data drawn from a case study of a student in a pilot version of an…

Many organizations are currently experimenting with providing help services via e-mail. This investigation used content analysis of service logs and interviews with staff and users of a successful service to identify participants' models of ideal exchanges and the impacts of the communication medium on service provision. Participants' models of…

This paper proposes that a metaphor of linguistic levels, similar to that used in general linguistic theory, be applied to the study of levels within an essay. The linguistic conception of levels in a piece of writing is not sentence-paragraph-essay (which might be characterized as a rhetorical division) but rather (or in addition to)…

Currently, many college and university English departments are reviewing the purpose of their departments. Are they still departments of literature? A writing program is best served by staying in an English department, with the caveat that the department move towards a cultural studies curriculum--the writing program within an English cultural…

A study compared functional similarities and differences in the passive in English and Korean, examining several pragmatics theories (given/new information, theme-rheme structure, foregrounding/backgrounding, defocusing, role prominence, emotional function) for their explanations of the functions of the passives. It is concluded that there is a…

Good translation requires writing skills in each of its three stages: decoding the original text; transferring its cultural and linguistic element into the context of the target language; and encoding the information in that context. During decoding, the translator must be conscious of speech level, word usage, cultural references, syntactic…

The starting point of this thesis is the hypothesis that in Spanish there are conventionalized expressions that signal both the articulation of text parts and the speaker's attitude towards the utterance. "Pragmatic Expressions" (PEs) are fixed lexical forms that contribute to text creation in relation to the context of enunciation, are oriented…

Every language has different systems for expressing third party information. While in some languages grammar rules stipulate how to do this, in both Japanese and English the degree of indirection or direction a speaker should use to express information obtained as hearsay is genuinely a pragmatic language issue. English speakers tend to express…