Recent research suggests that phonotactic probability (the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence) and neighborhood density (the number of words phonologically similar to a given word) influence spoken language processing and acquisition across the lifespan in both normal and clinical populations. The majority of research in this area has…

Speech technology--especially automatic speech recognition--has now advanced to a level where it can be of great benefit both to able-bodied people and those with various disabilities. In this paper we describe an application "TalkMaths" which, using the output from a commonly-used conventional automatic speech recognition system,…

For many purposes, it is useful to collect a corpus of texts all produced to the same stimulus, whether to measure performance (as on a test) or to test hypotheses about population differences. This paper examines several methods for measuring similarities in phrasing and content and demonstrates that these methods can be used to identify…

Writing researchers have developed various methods for investigating the writing process since the 1970s. The early 1980s saw the occurrence of the real-time computer-aided study of the writing process that relies on the protocols generated by recording the computer screen activities as writers compose using the word processor. This article…

Research articles (RAs) have been recognized as a distinct genre in the English-using discourse community because of their unique writing conventions. Despite the great number of studies on the analysis of the textual or phrasal aspects of abstracts of RAs, few have been transformed into actual teaching materials for EFL graduate students. The…

The data for this study consisted of a longitudinal corpus of narratives from 17 English second language (L2) children, mean age of 5;4 years at the outset, with first languages (Lls) that do not have definite/indefinite articles (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) and Lls that do have article systems (Spanish, Romanian and Arabic). We examined these…

In recent decades, there has been a surge of interest in the origin of language across a wide range of disciplines. Emergentism provides a new perspective to integrate investigations from different areas of study. This paper discusses how the study of language acquisition can contribute to the inquiry, in particular when computer modeling is…

Until now, teachers and learners of NZSL have not had access to information on the most frequently used signs in the Deaf community. This article describes the first study of the distribution of signs in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). We hope that it will help teachers of NZSL make decisions about which signs to teach first and suggest…

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 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…

Looks for a method to formulate algorithms useful for the synthesis of Czech in machine translation where the point of departure for the synthesis can be more or less identical with the semantic representation. (Author/PF)

DESIGNED FOR LINGUISTS AND LEXICOGRAPHERS, THE COLLECT SYSTEM CAN ANALYZE THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF RUSSIAN SENTENCES BY SEARCHING A FILE OF RUSSIAN TEXT. IN A TYPICAL SEARCH ON A GIVEN SENTENCE, GRAMMATICAL RELATIONSHIPS, INDIVIDUAL WORD SPELLINGS, AND WORD OCCURRENCES CAN BE DETERMINED. SINCE THE SYSTEM INCLUDES INTERPRETERS, THE LINGUIST CAN…

Interaction with computers in natural language requires a language that is flexible and suited to the task. This study of natural dialogue was undertaken to reveal those characteristics which can make computer English more natural. Experiments were made in three modes of communication: face-to-face, terminal-to-terminal, and human-to-computer,…