Describes a computational model of the human process of generating text. The system design and generation process are discussed with particular attention to domain independence and cross language portability. The results of system tests are presented, the generator is evaluated with respect to current generators, and future directions are…

Argues that the best strategy for building integrated, personalized information systems consists of linguistically oriented knowledge and inference, rather than artificial intelligence techniques. The discussion addresses difficulties in the evaluation of such systems and strategies for devising performance studies. (five references) (CLB)

Describes the possible improvements in the quality of automatic indexing systems gained by using complex descriptors, and reports on the effectiveness of a simple nonsyntactic phrase indexing procedure. The discussion covers shortcomings of this approach, possible methods for improvement, and areas needing further research. (43 references) (CLB)

Unlike conventional information retrieval systems, natural language processing (NLP) systems translate queries automatically into the language of the system. This paper discusses the potential impact of NLP on both the indexing and retrieval of text and examines some current NLP projects and systems that have established knowledge bases in narrow…

Proposes that topic representations should consist of excerpts from domain thesaurus, generated by spreading activation technique. Algorithm for generating excerpts is outlined and exemplified, and problem of assessing resemblance between two excerpts is discussed. Whether existing thesauri are adequate for this purpose is questioned, and ideas…

Presents a statistical model for predicting the performance of an automated keywording system on each document it keywords. Methods of text analysis are described, including statistical methods, discriminant analysis, linguistic approaches, and artificial intelligence; performance measures are discussed; and regression models are explained. (16…

Defines cognitive approaches to second-language acquisition research first in terms of goals and theoretical orientations, next, in terms of its methods (observations, experimentation, simulation), and last, in terms of its applications. (Author/VWL)

Explores the potential of a corpus-based approach for promoting language awareness in student translators. Examines principal criteria required to produce a good translation and discusses obstacles to language awareness that can be found in the classroom: resistance to correction, lack of motivation, and lack of awareness of the distinction…

Examines theoretical views of language use, learning, and teaching that underlie the work on tasks. Two broad and disparate views are identified: the psycholinguistic perspective and a perspective based on sociocultural theory. (Author/VWL)

Outlines a scenario for the future of Teaching English as a Second or Other Languages that has seldom, if ever been considered in academic discussion: that advances in and availability of quality machine translation could mitigate the need for English language learning. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on semicommunication and accommodation and discusses two longer extracts from a large corpus of authentic communication from Scandinavia. Various aspects of a comprehensive model of semicommunication are presented and discussed, showing code switching and accommodation are not considered antagonistic but rather as scalar phenomena covering…

Using Biber's multidimensional analysis (1988) to examine a large corpus of world English literatures written in Indian, West African, Britain, Anglo-American, and Mexican American varieties of English, examines whether quantitative analyses can also be insightful and useful in the examination of the influence of gender on language and in…

Examines recent studies of linguistic corpora in Italian, and presents the results of an analysis of "piace" and "piacciono" conducted on a corpus of 3.5 million words of written Italian, accessible at the University of Birmingham in England. Focuses on pedagogical applications of the data and on the inductive methodologies…

There has been a call for approaches that connect science learning with literacy, yet the use of, and research on, children's literature information books in science instruction has been quite limited. Because the discipline of science involves distinctive generic linguistic registers, what information books should be integrated in science…

The poverty of stimulus argument is one of the most controversial arguments in the study of language acquisition. Here we follow previous approaches challenging the assumption of impoverished primary linguistic data, focusing on the specific problem of auxiliary (AUX) fronting in complex polar interrogatives. We develop a series of corpus analyses…