This article presents an overview of current automatic sign recognition research. A review of recent studies, as well as on our own research, has identified several problem areas that hamper successful sign recognition by a computer. Some of these problems are shared with automatic speech recognition, whereas others seem to be unique to automatic…

Modern primary teachers must adapt literacy programmes and ensure efficient learning for all. They must also support children with language and literacy difficulties, children learning English as an additional language and possibly teach a modern foreign language. To do this effectively, they need to understand the applied linguistics research…

The classroom practices discussed in "Effective Second Language Writing" reflect various trends and methodologies; however, the underlying theme in this volume of the Classroom Practice Series is the need for clear and meaningful communication between ESL writers and their readers. While approaches differ, two core beliefs are constant: ESL…

This paper analyzes the use of a special type of unspecific noun, called "shell nouns" [Hunston, S., & Francis, G. (1999). "Pattern grammar". Amsterdam: Benjamins; Schmid, H. (2000). "English abstract nouns as conceptual shells: From corpus to cognition". Berlin: Walter de Gruyter], which are frequently used as cohesive devices, in the written…

Many programs designed to compute the readability of texts are narrowly based on surface-level linguistic features and take too little account of the processes which a reader brings to the text. This study is an exploratory examination of the use of Coh-Metrix, a computational tool that measures cohesion and text difficulty at various levels of…

One of the genuine contributions of theoretical linguistics to the interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics is to elucidate the nature of "what should be taught" and "how it should be taught". Traditionally, the input supplied in vocabulary teaching has consisted either of word lists (most often) or of words-in-context…

The importance of repetition in the acquisition of lexical items has been widely acknowledged in single-word vocabulary research but has been relatively neglected in collocation studies. Since collocations are considered one key to achieving language fluency, and because learners spend a great amount of time interacting with their textbooks, the…

This paper describes an attempt to combine the advantages of both example-based translation and stochastic translation methods in an attempt to develop a method for inferring symbolic transfer functions from a bilingual corpus. By formalizing the translation process and applying standard optimization techniques, a system can be developed that will…

Three computer-based systems for phonetic/graphemic transcription of language are described, compared, and contrasted. The text is entirely in French, with examples given from the French language. The three approaches to transcription are: (1) text entered in standard typography and exiting in phonetic transcription with markers for rhythmic…

Computer analysis of linguistic models leads the author to state that highly controlled transient memory should be considered in studies of the learning and use of grammar. (SD)

The concept of the verb phrase in natural and programming languages is discussed. (RM)

Still no decisive result has been achieved in the automatic machine recognition of sentences of a natural language. Current research concentrates on developing algorithms for syntactic and semantic analysis. It is obvious that clues from all levels of perception have to be taken into account if a long term solution is ever to be found. (Author/MSE)

New problems in translation, as between natural and artificial languages, may be explained and solved by the application of semiotics to translation. One rule emerging is that semiotic transformations are replacements of signs encoding a message by signs of another code while preserving invariant information. (CK)

"The Sourcebook," a database of exemplars of representative problems in natural language understanding, is being developed for use in evaluating natural language processing systems. A literature search of the computational linguistics literature was used to identify the exemplars, which are analyzed in terms of the general issues…

As a consequence of research in machine translation, several related applications of Electronic Data Processing have developed in linguistics and literature. A survey of this development is followed by an exposition of the process necessary for setting up an automatic lexicon. (TL)