Used the semantic differential technique to examine attitudes of 115 business students toward middle-aged and older professionals. Results showed older persons were rated lower in all professions and on all attitudinal dimensions (autonomy, effectiveness, personal acceptability). Ratings of professionals were higher than ratings of the average…

Bipolar adjective rating scales were constructed to evaluate selected needs from Murray's theory of personality. Internal consistency estimates of the bipolar adjective measures compared favorably to those of the Personality Research Form scales. Results suggest that certain personality traits are more amenable to valid measurement by bipolar…

Discusses focusing, the manner in which speakers center attention on a particular element of discourse, and describes a process model of focusing that specifies what syntactic, semantic, and world knowledge constraints are needed for a hearer to track a speaker's focus in a discourse. (FL)

A semantic differential technique was used to compare the attitudes of 70 adolescents and 65 young adults toward the aged. The Instrumental-Ineffective dimension illustrated that the adolescent population demonstrated a more favorable attitude toward the aged than did the young adults. (Author)

Underlines the importance of semantic, situational, and phonological factors such as intonation in the teaching of French as a second language. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Explores the use of reflexive pronouns in French. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Temporal and causal uses of "since" are examined. (RM)

On the basis of empirical data this paper concludes that knowledge relating to the use and meaning of American English Kin terms is shared and that multiple semantic models do not exist in the minds of American English speakers. (CFM)

Discusses questions involved in the depiction in pictures of various kinds of linguistic items, particularly semantic fields, culture-laden concepts and relative "picturability" of various types of words. It is suggested that linguistic criteria should more consciously determine the composition and organization of visuals. (KM)

Discusses the semantics and structure of sentence adverbs, with particular reference to negation of the declarative sentence. "Nicht" is found to be not properly reckoned with sentence adverbs. By means of examples, suggestions are given about teaching foreigners the use of German adverbs. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

This research explored the defining characteristics of first- and third-grade children in conceptualizing 17 American kin terms. The data indicate that even when children were able to identify a relationship, they did not all base their identification on the same attributes. (Author/RM)

Chinese students have particular problems with the intersection of two English verb classes: transitional event verbs and state verbs of having and being. The problem is that these two verb classes appear to "pair up." Chinese students tend to be unaware that these two classes pair up. This study investigated whether lexical aspect could…

This collection of papers examines how children acquire language and how this affects language change over the generations. It proceeds from the basis that it is important to address not only the language faculty per se within the framework of evolutionary theory, but also the origins and subsequent development of languages themselves, suggesting…

This article considers a mechanism of the linguistic change that occurs at the grammatical- and lexical-functioning levels. The linguistic phenomenon that stem from these mechanisms can be seen in the socio-linguistic macro context of the autonomization and vehicularization of the speech. This article examines the development of the…