Text analytics refers to the process of analyzing unstructured data from documented sources, including open-ended surveys, blogs, and other types of web dialog. Text analytics has enveloped the concept of text mining, an analysis approach influenced heavily from data mining. While text mining has been covered extensively in various computer…

The nature of predictive relations between early language and later cognitive function is a fundamental question in research on human cognition. In a longitudinal study assessing speed of language processing in infancy, Fernald, Perfors and Marchman (2006 ) found that reaction time at 25 months was strongly related to lexical and grammatical…

This study compares quantitative and qualitative results for task-based second language (L2) grammar instruction conducted as whole-class, teacher-led discourse (TLD) versus small-group, learner-led discourse (LLD). Participants included 78 English-speaking adults from six university classes of beginning L2 Spanish, with two assigned to each…

The present study investigated the relative contributions of experiential and ability factors to second language (L2) passage comprehension and L2 vocabulary retention. Participants included a cross section of 99 adult learners of Spanish as a foreign language enrolled in beginning through advanced level university Spanish courses. Participants…

It is argued that pessimistic assessments of the adequacy of artificial neural networks (ANNs) for natural language processing (NLP) on the grounds that they have a finite state architecture are unjustified, and that their adequacy in this regard is an empirical issue. First, arguments that counter standard objections to finite state NLP on the…

As part of the development of a completely sub-symbolic machine translation system, a method for automatically identifying German compounds was developed. Given a parallel bilingual corpus, German compounds are identified along with their English word groupings by statistical processing alone. The underlying principles and the design process are…

Two studies investigated the processing of familiar and unfamiliar figurative language. Subjects read paragraphs containing figurative sentences (proverbs in study 1 and metaphors in study 2) or literal controls; later subjects were given a cued recall test designed to test their memory for contextually inappropriate meanings (a literal cue for a…

Discourse analysis, as an approach to text, provides the teacher, student, and professional translator with resources for achieving objectivity and for making and justifying translation decisions. It offers a strategy for relating the problems and processes and discourse and the specific concerns to the objectives of the translator. It can be…

Designed to investigate the types of responses given to a sentence completion task when constraint elements of word order, word form, redundancy, distance between lexical items, and the interaction among these elements are considered, this instrument consists of 34 sentences, half of which are high associative sentences, while the other half are…

Studies of selective attention suggest a system which operates across modalities and on many forms of internal representation. Complex analysis, even semantic analysis, of sensory input may occur automatically, but attention controls the locus of action. When computations carried out by the brain are effortful, in the sense that elements compete…

A discussion of the application of artificial intelligence to natural language processing looks at several problems in language comprehension, involving semantic ambiguity, anaphoric reference, and metonymy. Examples of these problems are cited, and the importance of the computational approach in analyzing them is explained. The approach applies…

A discussion of Stephen Krashen's Monitor Theory (1982) of second language acquisition examines five main hypotheses: the acquisition-learning distinction, the natural order hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the input hypothesis, and the affective filter hypothesis. Several problematic elements of the theory are pointed out. The discussion…

Vygotsky's views on how language is instrumental in bringing about advanced forms of intellectual functioning offer a researchable framework from which to study this development. Developmentalists in psychology and linguistics have focused for too long on continuities rather than on the process of change in mental growth. The study of the…

At some time during every fixation a decision is made to move the eyes, directing them to a new location in the stimulus array. To understand the eye movement control processes, three general hypotheses concerning the cognitive basis for deciding to move the eyes were investigated: the saccade (movement) initiation time is determined only on the…

This paper presents a simple model of the communication process and discusses the transmission of meaning from the sender to the receiver of a message. The model is applied to the library organization, and problems which may arise from various interpretations of messages are considered. The relationship between information and meaning is then…