Developmental differences in preschool children's abilities to communicate about basic and subordinate level semantic contrasts were examined in a referential communication situation. Twenty-four three, four, and five-year-old children communicated with children of the same age and adults about pictures' referents. Speakers talked about one…

Techniques of teaching the English finite verb to speakers of other languages must account for meaning that is signalled by the structure alone and meaning derived from the context. Accordingly, this study attempts to distinguish the semantic components of the finite verb structure. The structure is viewed as being always composed of the following…

This paper 1) discusses the problems encountered in preparing objectives for instructional programs; 2) describes an informal research project in which seven instructional designers working on the same project attempted to determine agreement on an objective; and 3) suggests how to prepare objectives so that difficulties can be minimized. One…

This research examines how semantic information influences syntactic parsing decisions during sentence processing. In the first experiment, subjects were presented lexical strings having syntactically identical surface structures but with two possible underlying structures: "The children taught by the Berlitz method," and "The…

This paper looks into the question of the relationship between language and thought, and in particular, various theories advanced by Soviet psychologists. These theories are to be viewed within the context of the Soviet ideological legacy which proclaims that ideas do not exist apart from language. The current Soviet position can be summarized as…

Two groups of preschoolers and one of young grade-schoolers were tested for their comprehension of presuppositions and negation in complex syntax. Four types of sentences were presented: affirmative and negative versions of sentences with factive main predicates (which presuppose the truth of the proposition of the complement clause) and with…

To provide an authority on usage, this book presents an analysis of the treatment of American English as it appears in a number of dictionaries and usage guides. The first chapter presents brief sketches of the usage guides and studies that provided the basis for this compilation and discusses the organization of the book. After a resume of the…

A semantic differential technique was used to determine the connotative meaning of specific grades to college students. The 161 upper division undergraduates rated each of three specific grades on 20 semantic differential items. Two descriptive questions were answered: (1) What are the basic dimensions of the connotative meanings of grades? (2)…

This report discusses the problem of the meansings of words used in information retrieval systems, and shows how semantic tools can aid in the communication which takes place between indexers and searchers via index terms. After treating the differing use of semantic tools in different types of systems, two tools (classification tables and…

Implementation of curriculum innovations requires that teachers have both knowledge of the change and commitment to use it. In order to determine what type of teacher is most likely to perceive and practice a curriculum innovation effectively, an in-service project was set up and studied. Nineteen elementary school teachers with varying degrees of…

Since teacher attitude is an important factor in implementing curriculum change, teacher education programs are designed to communicate the spirit and philosophy of new curriculum programs. This study attempted to determine which factors contribute most to teacher attitudinal change. Sixty elementary school teachers from 7 adjoining Texas school…

Current views both of reading and of understanding spoken language conceptualize the process of deriving meaning as similar to hypothesis testing. The listener or reader is seen as selecting whatever information is required to confirm the hypothesized meaning. In the present study, 60 children (12 each in grades four through eight) reworded…

A Conference Role Semantic Differential was developed and field-tested as a brief, diagnostic measure of conference role performance of administrators. Principal components analysis of 52 staff member's evaluations of three institutional researchers yielded one task and three interpersonal skill factors which demonstrated the construct validity of…

The study examines attitudes toward blacks of 127 randomly selected county level white 4-H and youth professionals in 12 Northeastern States (a 98 percent response rate). The subjects were randomly divided between one control and one treatment group and administered the Situational Attitude Scale, a racial attitude measurement instrument…

These readings on language and culture are divided into sections on: "Principles of Language,""Culture and Language,""Structure of the English Language,""Ancestry and History of English,""Aspects of American English,""Americans and the Other World,""Language and Literature," and "Aspects of Applied Linguistics." Contributing authors include Noam…