Two pilot studies investigated the accuracy of a computer parsing system for analyzing written language of deaf children. Results of the studies showed good agreement between human and machine raters. Journal availability: Elsevier North Holland, Inc., 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017. (Author)

Presents case that English is not as unsystematic as it appears nor is it a severe obstacle to learning for both native and nonnative speakers by describing the ideographic, syllabic, and alphabetic writing systems. Suggests teachers need a greater awareness of the nature of the English writing system and how to teach it. (BK)

English and Hebrew native speakers read texts mutilated by removing strips at the top or bottom of lines. Reading English texts was impaired more by mutilating the top, but the reverse was found for Hebrew texts, due to the different ways information is distributed along the vertical axis of Roman and Hebrew letters. (Author/GT)

Describes efforts toward linguistic unification and universal literacy in the People's Republic of China. (FL)

Discusses the relationship between translation and discourse analysis or text linguistics theory. (AM)

Analyzes the nature of punctuation, its functions (syntactic, suprasegmental, and semantic), its role in written language, and punctuation as grapheme. (AM)

Presents results of a survey carried out in 1977 to determine the attitude of contemporary French writers toward the importance of punctuation. Questionnaire responses, obtained from over half the 80 authors polled, are discussed. (AM)

Characterizes and evaluates the various transcriptions based on the Received Pronunciation (RP) model of Daniel Jones (A. C. Gimson 1962, J. W. Lewis 1972 and A. C. Gimson 1977). (IFS/WGA)

Reviews samples of professional annotated bibliographies (ABs), and on the basis of these, establishes a list of potential features of its genre. Uses this list to evaluate student annotated bibliographies. Results show that students, as emerging members of their professional communities, have an understanding of the conventional structure of ABs…

Dedicates this issue of "Language Sciences" to Roy Harris, former Professor of Linguistics at Oxford University, on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The article points out that because of Harris's writing style and arguments, he is viewed as a skeptic, who approaches any topic from the perspective of philosophy rather than that of…

Discusses the conflict between local knowledges and global knowledges in the specific case of indigenous literacy in northwestern Brazil, where global knowledges are represented by the ideological theories of literacy and utilitarian models of writing, and local knowledges are represented by the multimodal texts produced by the Kashinawa…

Presents a reading of "Chinese Hunter," a set of notes about big game hunting in northern China written by John Wong-Quincey, a Chinese academic who taught Shakespeare and western drama at Beijing's Singhua College for many years. (Author/VWL)

Describes general changes in sentence length, typical clause and modifier patterns, connectedness and structural explicitness over the last 400 years. Finds that the printed sentence has become shorter, the flow of information more direct, and the connections between nominalizations more implicit. Suggests that the printed sentence will continue…

This bibliography cites and summarizes theoretically grounded reports of research and discussions of central issues in second and foreign language writing and writing instruction that have become available to its compilers during the period of December 1, 1994 through March 31, 1995. The categories used represent an attempt to aid readers, not to…

Discusses such errors in transcribing real time in spoken discourse as inconsistent use of transcriptional conventions; use of transcriptional symbols with multiple meanings; measurement problems; some cross-purposes of real-time transcription; neglect of time between onset and offset of speech and silence transcription; and transcriptions that…