A work entitled "Suicide" by Louis Aragon is used to illustrate how the reader must create the meaning of a poem. (MSE)

Focuses on the infiltration of English into the French language. The article covers terms belonging to one of three levels of acceptability and perception: (1) terms that have been in the French language for a long period; (2) terms that have recently gained a foothold in the language; and (3) terms that still escape the notice of dictionaries.…

Researchers have emphasized the similarity of the semantic and self-report mood circumplexes. Study investigated systematic differences in theses structures. Demonstrated that when making judgments of their mood, people weigh the arousal dimension less than the valence dimension. Dimensions are weighed equally in semantic structure. (JBJ)

The grammars of natural languages may be learned by using genetic algorithm systems such as LUST (Linguistics Using Sexual Techniques) that reproduce and mutate grammatical rules and parts-of-speech tags. In document retrieval or filtering systems, applying tags to the list of terms representing a document provides additional information about…

Reports on two experiments investigating the relationship between topical subject expertise and the assessment of relevance. Results indicate that topical subject expertise enhances effects of the semantic distance model (SDM), and that relevance assessment is a contingent, psychological phenomenon that is part of the human-perception task of…

Introduces a framework for comparing and evaluating knowledge representation schemes based on the requirements for "good" representation discussed in extant literature. Comparative analysis and evaluation of four popular knowledge representation schemes--Logic, Production Rules, Semantic Nets and Frames--are discussed in support of validity and…

Investigates changes in the internal structure of semantic categories as a result of cultural transition. Examines typicality shifts in semantic categories of Jewish Argentine immigrants in Israel. Presents a model mapping typicality shift patterns onto acculturation patterns. (HB)

Discusses the language of criminal justice ("rehabilitation" and "incapacitation") and public policy. Uses statistics from the United States Bureau of Justice to show that United States society deals with convicted felons with an approach that does not put much emphasis on either rehabilitation or incapacitation. (SR)

Student understanding of 30 nontechnical words used in science was investigated. No significant differences were found between the understanding of nontechnical words in science or between the verbal reasoning ability of males (n=108) and females (n=89). Of the four different question formats, students had the most difficulty with the synonym…

Provides an initial review of social scientific research on the causes and effects of alcohol use and abuse. A framework is provided for exploring some of fundamental and everyday sociolinguistic and communicative dimensions of drinking, with attention to their implications for drinking and driving practice and anti-drunk-driving campaigns. (118…

Proposes an argumentation-based method for information retrieval that involves representing a scholarly article by means of rhetorical structure rather than by a semantic representation of content. Topics addressed include problems with indexing practices, the argumentative nature of articles, rhetoric as an information categorizing schema, and…

A cued recall study and a semantic verification study with individuals with mental retardation (n=93) found that increasing the degree to which the words in sentences were semantically related increased subjects' ability to utilize contextual information in sentences to essentially normal levels. (Author/DB)

Analyzes attributes of symbols and identifies the need for a suitable management system for retrieving images from a database. A classification structure that incorporates graphic, semantic, and bibliographic dimensions is described; experiments with describing, sorting, and drawing symbols are reviewed; and future work on a database management…

Reports preliminary results of a research project that investigated the effectiveness of a new technique for information retrieval interfaces called colinked descriptors, based on the concept of cocited references in the field of bibliometrics. Examples of colinked descriptors from the "Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors" are presented.…

Several examples of genre analysis are examined to identify criteria employed for the identification of textual boundaries. The conclusion is that there are nonlinguistic reasons for generic staging in texts and that the search for structural divisions is a search for cognitive boundaries in terms of convention, appropriacy, and content. (42…