The purpose of this experiment, conducted with second-grade children (mean age: 7;8), was to examine the hypothesis that less skilled comprehenders in a reading situation suffer an impairment in spoken language comprehension and, more specifically, in the on-line processing of anaphoric pronouns. Skilled and less skilled comprehenders performed a…

Introduction: The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether children who have reading disabilities in an alphabetically transparent orthography show a syntactic processing deficit. This research focuses on exploring syntactic processing and the use of morphological markers by subjects with reading disabilities. We analyze these groups'…

This study compares the linguistic knowledge of adult second language (L2) learners, who learned the L2 after puberty, with the potentially "eroded" first language (L1) grammars of adult early bilinguals who were exposed to the target language since birth and learned the other language simultaneously, or early in childhood (before age 5). I make…

An analysis of war reporting in Japan during World War II examines, from a semantico-syntactic perspective, how language is used to systematize, transform, and sometimes mask reality. In wartime, a strong form of solidarity and control is essential as a device for unification and for maintaining popular morale. The approach is based in the notion…

Analogy items from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) were evaluated for differential performance by black and white examinees. Black and white examinees were first matched for overall SAT-V scores prior to conducting item analyses. A content and psycholinguistic analysis of 220 disclosed SAT analogy items from 11 test forms was performed.…

The revised second edition of a 1976 book explores the literature of research on memory, creation of meaning in language learning, and second language teaching methodology, incorporating results of recent work in those areas. Each of the 12 chapters begins with a series of questions to be addressed and ends with further questions. Chapter topics…

A study applied Relevance Theory to interpretation of texts written in Ghanaian English, particularly those intended for reading by multiple audiences. The nature of such "hybrid" texts is examined and key principles of Relevance Theory are outlined. Relevance is defined in terms of contextual effect and processing effort. Contextual…

The main method of locating information on the World Wide Web is to use a search engine. Given a set of terms, a search engine will return a list of documents containing those terms. Often, though, this list of documents is extremely large. Unfortunately, there are currently no tools to assist the information seeker in determining whether these…

This report examines the importance of an individual's linguistic capability and its impact on academic achievement. Main areas of examination include an historical perspective on linguistics, descriptions of formal linguistics and psycholinguistics and their role in understanding academic achievement, and the educational implications of…

To determine formal principles of discourse processing and production, a study reviewed theories in various disciplines related to language and/or thought and thereby rationalized an approach of quantitative matrix analysis to the problems caused by discrepant discourse structures encountered in second language learning. Statistical analyses of…

A study tested hypotheses concerning thinking in a foreign language. Specifically, it looked at whether (1) inferencing in a foreign language relies on mental models and propositional thinking; (2) the three stages of the theory of comprehension apply to understanding foreign-language discourse; and (3) propositional thinking manifests native…

A study investigated how text features influence the amount of vocabulary knowledge students acquired incidentally while reading expositions. Three sets of text features were identified from studies on comprehension: (1) features associated with the macrostructure, (2) features associated with logical and temporal relations in the microstructure,…

A study of the effects of learning Swedish as a third language on the previously-learned English of native Finnish-speaking students examined 10,000 English-language school-leaving examinations of Finnish students for possible examples of Swedish influence in vocabulary, grammar, and word order. The examinations were those graded by a native…

Preliminary versions of the papers from the 1985 Summer Institute of Linguistics presented at the University of North Dakota session include: "Referential Distance and Discourse Structure in Yagua" (Thomas E. Payne); "A Note on Ergativity, S', and S'' in Karitiana" (Daniel Everett); "Some Aspects of Zapotecan Clausal…

The attitudes of educators toward computers were assessed as well as their attitude change while taking an introductory microcomputer course. Sex and age differences were also investigated. Subjects included a sample who were surveyed by mail and a group of 22 teachers who were enrolled in a microcomputer course. A 44-item attitude questionnaire…