The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of varying the semantic content of active and passive sentences along a dimension of "personalness" on the comprehension of those sentences by preschool age children. The study focuses on a current linguistic controversy dealing with the relative adequacy of syntax-based and…

The report contains a comparison of oral expression by the same experimental subjects under normal conditions and in a state of emotional stress. The study permits isolation of linguistic features of the formation of oral expression under emotional tension. This report is a translation of an article originally written in Russian. (NTIS/KM)

The social, economic, political and cultural changes brought about by the Cuban Revolution have elicited linguistic changes. Although the Revolution is only fifteen years old, these changes have reached the morphological and semantic components of the language. This paper explains the Russian influence and discusses and classifies…

This bibliography consists of a select list of books and articles pertaining to a comparison of American and British English. Entries include studies of linguistic contrasts, sociolinguistic comparisons, differences in language usage, some diachronic topics, and reference materials such as dictionaries. Entries include both American and European…

Based on the assumptions that language use is selective and that language can affect an individual's perceptions in subtle ways, this paper investigates the use of the noun "man" and the pronouns "he" and "his" as generic terms. It is suggested that the use of "generic man" places women at a disadvantage in terms of understanding themselves and…

The syntactic and semantic constraints on the occurrence of HAVE-GOT and GOT, each with the meaning "possess," are analyzed with respect to differences among several ethnic dialects: American Anglo and Black English, British English, and Mexican-American and Puerto Rican English. Data from three sets of interviews which elicited these verbs are…

A series of computer programs and routines intended to assist researchers in the analysis of language usage--with a power comparable to statistical computer routines--was developed by the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL). This document is one of a series that describes the design specifications for the individual modules which comprise the…

The Language Analysis Package (LAP) was developed by the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) to assist researchers in the analysis of language usage. The function of the KWIC (Keyword-in Context or Concordance) Module of the LAP is to produce keyword listings from the input text being analyzed. Such listings will contain location information…

Children living in the deprived environment of Appalachia were studied to determine if they showed a limited verbal response to stimuli in their environment, and if their emotional characteristics differed from those of advantaged children. An earlier study (1957) of American Indian children living on a reservation provided the stimulus for this…

In this unit on the dictionary, for the eighth grade, sample worksheets and discussion questions employing excerpts from various dictionaries (e.g., "English Dictionary 1775,""Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall, 1604,""Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary." and "Webster's Third International Dictionary") both…

The present paper reviews recent research in the area of nonstandard English: the major results to date, the significance of this research for education, and suggestions for further research. The notion of "standard" English resists precise definition; there is not a simple set of linguistic features which can be said to define it. The term…

This collection of articles commenting on "Webster's Third New International Dictionary" (1961) is concerned with the problems, theory, and practice of lexicography. The following specific topics are covered: the function of the dictionary, repetition in dictionary definitions, the new dictionary's reflection of current language usage,…

A child's language development during the elementary school years is described, with emphasis on acquisition and control of structural and lexical dimensions of the language of standard and nonstandard speakers and with special concern for the relationship between language production and the reading process. Numerous research studies are reviewed…

To find out if a computer could be programmed to efficiently analyze the psychosocial factors in the speech of children, taped language samples were collected from structured interviews with 81 male and 63 female kindergarten children. Thirty psychological and social factors relevant to children's speech were drawn from the words in the samples. A…

Some of the major studies by the proponents of the Derivational Theory of Complexity are reviewed in this paper, and the results of a study to determine the adequacy of the theory as an account of message processing difficulty are included. The subjects for the study were students selected from five sections of the introductory communication class…