Describes an information-retrieval schema that takes into account linguistic variation based on phrases. Introduces the phrase-retrieval hypothesis to replace the keyword-retrieval hypothesis, and discusses natural-language processing systems; syntactical, morphological, and lexico-semantical normalization; and future work. (Author/LRW)

Investigates the relationship of specific semantic and syntactic text characteristics to what information readers recall. Confirms that readers are more likely to recall more versus less important information and information in clauses, independent clauses, and first paragraphs. Suggests how writers can use these findings to help readers retain…

Discusses dictionaries for learners of English as a foreign language and reveals typical problems of syntactic complexity, idiomaticity, and cultural specificity that inappropriate explanations and examples may pose for learners. (Author/VWL)

Suggests that agent-focus verbs in Tzotzil are inverse, in the sense of Algonquian linguistics, and that their distribution is determined by the relative obviation status of agent and patient. Evidence for the analysis comes from syntactic constraints on agent-focus verbs and on their use in discourse. (Author/VWL)

Investigates how the purpose of three types of business and technical documents (instructions, annual reports, and sales promotional letters) affects the syntactical and rhetorical choices authors make in writing these documents. Outlines partial syntactical and rhetorical "fingerprints" of these documents to offer students norms they can go by in…

Examined the influence of working memory on the off-line and real-time sentence comprehension/ processing of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Twelve children with SLI, 12 normally developing children matched for chronological age (CA), and 12 children matched for receptive syntax completed three tasks. Suggests that SLI children…

Using a word order correction paradigm, this study assessed syntactic awareness skills in children with good and poor reading comprehension, matched for age, decoding skill, and nonverbal ability. Poor comprehenders performed less well than normal readers, and the performance of both groups was influenced by the syntactic complexity and semantic…

Considers how New Zealand has seen a need for providing readily understandable business and government documents. Reports a psycholinguistic study testing the level of consumer comprehension of bank contracts, and the effect of using plain English to rewrite them. Finds that the most effective means of enhancing comprehension was that which…

Presents fine-grained longitudinal analyses of one child's language production over the period of change from single to multiword utterances. (Author/VWL)

Reviews current research in three domains of bilingual acquisition: pragmatic features of bilingual code mixing, grammatical constraints on child bilingual code mixing, and bilingual syntactic development. Examines implications from these domains for the understanding of the limits of the mental faculty to acquire language. (Author/VWL)

Examines differences in metalinguistic development between monolingual and bilingual children in terms of three subcategories: word awareness, syntactic awareness, and phonological awareness. In each case, some studies have reported advantages for bilingual children, while others have found either no difference between the groups or monolingual…

Describes HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and its use on the Internet's World Wide Web, including main HTML tags and their syntaxes. Alternatives to HTML, such as Adobe's Acrobat software and Sun's new Java application language, are briefly described. (Author/LRW)

Explains instructional syntax analysis, a tool to demonstrate and analyze the interaction and communication between the computer instructional system and the computer user. Focuses on two areas of technology-based instruction: modeling/visualization and online learning. Discusses the rating of interactivity on scales of immersion and of…

Discussion of terms and how they are used in queries in information retrieval focuses on a transaction log analysis of queries posed on an Internet search service that isolated basic query structure syntactic patterns. Describes a linguistic model that classified Web queries and suggests implications for information retrieval system design.…

Grammaticalization is often regarded in the literature as a distinct process requiring explanatory machinery unique to its own domain. Argues, on the contrary, that grammaticalization is simply a cover term for certain syntactic, semantic, and phonetic changes, all of which apply independently of each other. (Author/VWL)