Lexical derivation in the Navajo verb system is described, with examples. Derivation involves four broad processes: (1) straightforward use of verbal roots and adverbial-derivational prefixes, with their base meanings; (2) extension of base root meaning, often by metaphor, to permit application to disparate concepts; (3) figurative use of…

A study investigated the extent to which native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs) of Portuguese understand implicatures in Brazilian television commercials in Portuguese. Subjects were nine Brazilian graduate students and 11 American students of Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Correct inference of the…

This paper explores the evolution of multiculturalism in the Canadian context. Some opponents of multiculturalism in Canada detect in the ideology an undermining of a unique Canadian identity in favor of hyphenated Canadians, while proponents see the hyphenation as adding richness and color to the Canadian character. This controversy is nothing…

A sample of 214 rural citizens in Iowa's Crawford and Ida Counties were surveyed to gather information on community attitudes towards the care of children and other family members. The sampled group closely paralleled the area's 1980 census norms, except in the proportion of males to females. Respondents perceived community problems with…

The development of a modified semantic differential measure of school-related attitudes of grades 3-6 children is described and its validation involving 99 children is reported. Each of the four scales of this measure, Attitude Toward-School, -Language Arts, -Teachers, and -Arithmetic, was found to be unidimensional. Internal consistency estimates…

A study of the functions and structure of referential third- person pronominal chains in spontaneous English conversation as compared to those in written English is discussed. The study found the frequencies of these pronouns and of their chains to be generally much higher in the spoken corpus than in the written corpus. In the spoken corpus,…

The results of studies of English adverb usage undertaken by Swedish university students participating in a research and writing skills program are summarized. The studies focus on the incidence of structural and semantic types of adjuncts used in two samples of spoken and written British English. Frequency distributions are charted and…

A study of advanced English learners' use or avoidance of English idioms is described. The investigation looked at whether the subjects would attempt to use English idioms in a translation task containing idioms, or would instead use non-idiomatic synonyms or paraphrase. It also looked at which idioms are used and which are avoided: those that are…

Question development in English as a second language in four native Spanish-speaking children is described. The English questions initiated by four children differing in English proficiency (two limited English speaking and two fluent English speaking) were examined at two points in time to determine how question use changes in the syntactic,…

Noting that there are students with limited writing ability who belong neither in regular English composition classes nor in classes for speakers of other languages (ESOL), this paper reports on a study conducted at the University of Texas, EL Paso to produce a profile of 30 limited English writers. Following an introduction to the family…

Beginning with the 1985-86 school year, the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) tests have been based on the objectives provided in this publication for teachers and test development specialists. Reading skills objectives for grade 7 include the ability to: (1) identify the main idea; (2) use context to understand the meaning of…

A framework for describing relationships among the different linguistic systems in a bilingual or second language learner is proposed. The framework attempts to represent the ways in which knowledge of one language is used in integrating into memory new knowledge about another language. The model is partially implemented in a computer program that…

A study focused on the nature and effect of constraints on the hypotheses that learners make about the meanings of words. Two experiments were conducted at a large midwestern university: the first, involving 68 undergraduate students divided randomly into two groups, tested taxonomic and durative constraints on nouns, and time of day and cessation…

Consisting of two separate papers, "Representational Issues in Systemic Functional Grammar," by Christian Matthiessen and "Systemic Grammar and Functional Unification Grammar," by Robert Kasper, this document deals with systemic aspects of natural language processing and linguistic theory and with computational applications of…

The Halliday and Hasan (1976) method of categorizing semantic units was used to analyze the cohesive strategies used by secondary students learning English as a second language. The method involves classifying and charting the network of semantic relationships, the types of cohesive devices, and the number of breaks in the flow of a text or…