This overview of the current state of English for specific purposes (ESP) begins by surveying ongoing debates on key topics: needs assessment and its goals, specificity in instructional methods, and the role of subject knowledge in instructor expertise. Two strands of current theory and research are next surveyed, namely, genre theory and…

This collection consists of 21 papers presented at the July 1983 Annual Summer Conference on "The Computer: Extension of the Human Mind II," in Eugene, Oregon. Six papers were presented at general interest sessions; 15 were from special interest group sessions. The general interest papers include David Ahl's "Keeping Up with Computers in Education…

Advanced learners of second languages and natural language processing systems both demand much more detailed lexical information than conventional dictionaries provide. Text composition, whether by humans or machines, requires a thorough understanding of relationships between words, such as selectional restrictions, case patterns, factives, and…

The encoding of Swedish syntactic information in a study of linguistic data processing is described in detail. The choice of syntactic variables and classification criteria, illustrated with examples, is also discussed. In addition, uses of the coding for contrasting languages, as in this study's comparison of Swedish, Finnish, and English word…

This volume is a collection of papers presented at the second annual meeting of the American Council of Teachers of Uncommonly-taught Asian Languages (ACTUAL) held in Boston, Massachusetts. The following papers are included: (1) "Passives as Reflections of Thought: A Case in Indonesian" by S. Dardjowidjojo, (2) "Acquainting Language…

This paper consists of three parts. Section 1 considers how difficult it is to analyze natural languages by computer, and, therefore how difficult it is to evaluate automatically the student's responses to some types of questions in computer-aided instruction systems for language teaching. Section 2 discusses drawbacks of conventional computer…

To supplement other lists of most useful words based on such criteria as frequency of usage, range, and availability, this listing measures the capacity of 3,000 words of the French vocabulary to define, extend the meaning of, or to replace other words. Descriptions of the measures of definition, inclusion, extension, and combination are followed…

A study to facilitate computer generation of test items succeeded in developing a set of criteria which could be used by a computer to select sentences suitable for sentence completion question items. The sentence completion item requires the student to complete a sentence from which one or more words have been deleted. Analysis of 110 appropriate…

This paper describes the notation and underlying organization of an augmented, recursive-transition network grammar and illustrates how such a grammar is a natural medium for expressing and explaining a wide variety of facts about the psychological processes of sentence comprehension. A general discussion of transformational grammar and…

Describes a system developed for the automatic recognition of biological concepts in titles of scientific articles; reports results of several pilot experiments which tested the system's performance; analyzes typical ambiguity problems encountered by the system; describes a disambiguation technique that was developed; and discusses future plans…

The nature of literacy associated with the widely used new medium of microcomputers has not been fully exploited by schools to foster development of literacy programs. Microcomputer applications need integration with classroom activities where students construct language meaning. (19 references) (CJH)

The development of communicative approaches and strategies in specialized discourse has led to revising notions of representative and significant language. Particularly in work with academic genres, in science and technology settings, the need for determining these factors is growing. The application of specific language corpora becomes…

With computer corpora firmly established as research tools in linguistics, their application for language teaching purposes is also increasingly advocated to the extent that corpus-based language teaching has even been praised as the new revolution in language teaching (cf. Sinclair, 2004b). This article takes a more critical view and examines…

Variations in the amount and nature of early language to which children are exposed have been linked to their subsequent ability (e.g. Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer & Lyons, 1991; Hart & Risley, 1995). In three computational simulations, we explore how differences in linguistic experience can explain differences in word learning ability due…

This document consists of the four issues of "Notes on Linguistics" published during 1990. Articles in the four issues include: "The Indians Do Say Ugh-Ugh" (Howard W. Law); "Constraints of Relevance, A Key to Particle Typology" (Regina Blass); "Whatever Happened to Me? (An Objective Case Study)" (Aretta…