Both the speaker and hearer of a conversation can make use of ambiguity to achieve their special purpose in a given situation. The strategies stemming from pragmatic ambiguity offer distinct advantages to speakers and hearers. When dealing with ambiguity, linguists have concentrated on the source of ambiguity and how to analyze it. References to…

A study investigated the differences made in the meaning of a passage in English by placing adverbial clauses before (preposing) or after (postposing) the verb. Examples are: "When the wolf arrived, he was picking apples"; "He was picking apples when the wolf arrived"; "While he was picking apples, the wolf arrived"; and "The wolf arrived while he…

The linguistic philosophies of H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin are discussed, and ways of applying their ideas to learning activities for gifted students are suggested. Grice's work focuses on prerequisites for successful conversation, the cooperative principle, and features of conversational implicature. Austin's work analyzes the distinction…

To create not a text-bound but a reader-based procedure for identifying global coherence within a discourse, five major writing tasks of 13 college students enrolled in a basic skills composition course were evaluated by three readers--doctoral students and faculty members in English and Reading Education. After choosing the five most and the five…

Research in the active-passive verb relation has indicated that there is an interaction between syntactic form and verb semantics among children of preschool age. The present study examines the contribution of active-passive syntax and verb semantics to comprehension difficulty for preschoolers, 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and adults. An additional…

Three experiments examined how people compare sentences about spatial location to pictures and images. (Editor)

Author attempted to further examine the sphere concept, introduced by R. A. Smith in 1970, in relation to its "utility for thinking about problems of aesthetic education" and aesthetic welfare. (Author/RK)

An adaptive network model is proposed to represent the structure and processing of knowledge. Accessibility of subjects' stored information was measured. Relationships exist among (a) frequency of verifying a test relation, (b) other relations involving concepts used to evaluate test relation, (c) frequency of verifying those relations. (CHK)

An essay on the etymology and various meanings of the Spanish words for "hotel,""inn,""hostelry," or "lodgings." (Text is in Spanish.) (CHK)

Examines the direct and indirect support for the Whorf hypothesis which states that one thinks in a language and that language shapes what one thinks and perceives. (RB)

Establishes the considerations of factivity, or concern with truth-value, and fictivity, or concern with realizational status, as basic to the concept of modality. This makes possible the inclusion of factive and implicative verbs in the concept of modality, and clarifies semantic differences between the Russian and English modal auxiliary…

Argues that Charles Morris' division of signs into syntactics, semantics and pragmatics is too rigid. The line between pragmatics and semantics is not sharp, and a language theory is needed that can predict and explain borderline cases without forcing them into arbitrary established categories. (CHK)

Distinguishes between "mode" as a verb-form and "modality," a category of meaning expressed mainly by lexical and syntactical means. Describes the subjunctive in Russian and German; a schematic summary shows both languages using the subjunctive for hypothesis and wish, but only German for indirect discourse. (Text is in…

Transformational analysis of verb phrases in English is discussed. More than 150 transformations are classified arising from 10 basic kernel strings. See FL 508 197 for availability. (RM)

The subjunctive in English is analyzed, based on plays of Beaumont and Fletcher from the Early New English period. See FL 508 197 for availability. (RM)