The "Semantic Web" is an idea proposed by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the "World Wide Web." The topic has been generating a great deal of interest and enthusiasm, and there is a rapidly growing body of literature dealing with it. This article attempts to explain how the Semantic Web would work, and explores short-term and long-term…

In many tasks the effects of frequency and age of acquisition (AoA) on reaction latencies are similar in size. However, in picture naming the AoA-effect is often significantly larger than expected on the basis of the frequency-effect. Previous explanations of this frequency-independent AoA-effect have attributed it to the organisation of the…

Understanding ambiguous words, phrases, and sentences is an important part of reading well, communicating skillfully, and enjoying humor based on word play. With this seven-unit activity book--filled with creative, ready-to-use activities based on jokes and puns--students will learn how to decipher the language ambiguities they encounter inside…

We evaluated whether prior semantic knowledge would enhance episodic learning in amnesia. Subjects studied prices that are either congruent or incongruent with prior price knowledge for grocery and household items and then performed a forced-choice recognition test for the studied prices. Consistent with a previous report, healthy controls'…

As we age, our ability to select and to produce words changes, yet we know little about the underlying neural substrate of word-finding difficulties in old adults. This study was designed to elucidate changes in specific frontally mediated retrieval processes involved in word-finding difficulties associated with advanced age. We implemented two…

This article reports on an experimental investigation of knowledge of distributivity in nonnative (L2) Japanese learners whose first language (L1) is English or Korean. The availability of distributive scope in Japanese is modulated by word order and the semantic features of quantifiers. For English-speaking learners, these subtle interpretive…

This paper investigates ESL learners' awareness of pragmatic skills utilizing an activity-theory driven approach to perform an inquiry task into problem-solving service call conversations (PSSCs) between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers of English (NNSs). Eight high-intermediate ESL learners, from five different language backgrounds,…

The presence of unfamiliar words and expressions in academic texts is a serious obstacle to students reading in a second language. EAP has responded to this challenge by taking the view that there is a common core of academic vocabulary which is frequent across an academic register. This paper briefly considers this view by examining the range,…

This is a corpus-based investigation of "also" and "too" in 11 registers of Indian English. The corpus used for this study is a combination of a Corpus of Contemporary Indian English (CCIE), and certain sections of ICE-India. The study: (1) determines the proportions of "also" and "too" with respect to each…

Word finding difficulties are often reported by epileptic patients with seizures originating from the language dominant cerebral hemisphere, for example, in temporal lobe epilepsy. Evidence regarding the brain regions underlying this deficit comes from studies of peri-operative electro-cortical stimulation, as well as post-surgical performance.…

A decrease in verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity is consistently observed in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although this impairment has been mainly attributed to attentional deficits during encoding and maintenance, the progressive deterioration of semantic knowledge in early stages of AD may also be an important determinant of poor…

The purpose of the present study was to explore the contribution of phonological and general language skills to reading fluency of pointed and unpointed Hebrew scripts. Reading, language and memory tasks were performed by 48 fifth-grade monolingual native Hebrew speakers. Results showed that the most marked predictor for both pointed and unpointed…

The authors identify 2 major types of statistical data from which semantic representations can be learned. These are denoted as "experiential data" and "distributional data". Experiential data are derived by way of experience with the physical world and comprise the sensory-motor data obtained through sense receptors. Distributional data, by…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether it is possible to distinguish between "difficult" and "easy" constructions for second language (L2) learners by examining characteristics of the structures as they occur in aural input. In a multidimensional analysis of 3 English structures with different acquisition profiles--the simple past,…

A picture-word interference paradigm with visually presented distractors was used to investigate the independent effects of orthographic and phonological facilitation on Mandarin monosyllabic word production. Both the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and the picture-word relationship along different lexical dimensions were varied. We observed a…