This paper provides a review of some basic general semantic principles and then applies them to the area of prenatal classes and labor room practices. It first presents an overview of the principle that language is not a neutral factor in human perceptions but an active, reactive force. Next, it looks at the relationship between language and…

The functional approach, which views language as a potential for meaning in social situations, seems particularly relevant in analyzing the dynamic interaction between text and context. Function determines structure, and the context, which comes to define the function, determines the kinds of text that will be communicative. As the contextual…

Syntactic synonymy enables the speaker to use syntactic devices to say the same thing in a number of different ways. It is based on three criteria: (1) similarity of semantic content, (2) certain syntactic similarity between the components of the synonymous structures, and (3) differences in surface structures. The third criterion separates…

One hundred short test items representing the style and grammatical usage of ten preschool age children were selected from large samples of their narrative and directive speech. Three groups of adults predicted successive words in an effort to reconstruct the actual vocabularies and grammatical forms of the utterances. The predictors' correct…

The central concern of this book is the pursuit of experimental methods whereby grammatical and semantic inquiry can be put on a satisfying objective basis. (To state that the aim is to find out whether a given linguistic form is "acceptable" is true, but an oversimplification which is misleading because it implies a "yes or no" decision and…

This paper considers such contracted forms as "I'm,""he's,""we'd," and "isn't" or "won't." It is often assumed, the author states, that every contracted form is derived by surface-level phonological rules from a non-contracted and semantically equivalent counterpart. The author presents evidence to…

The bidialectal freshman handbook will be the next gimmick of textbook companies, even though they will contain nothing new and will foster several fallacies. The information will be questionable, factually inaccurate and unsound because while no linguist has really been able to define dialect, linguists claim to have knowledge about the structure…

This study was conducted in order to determine the extent to which the choice of pronoun and noun gender stereotyped sex-role in illustrative sentences of the most recent unabridged dictionary, "The Random House Dictionary of the English Language" (1966). The author systematically sampled 2,028 sentences, each containing at least one gender word,…

Assuming that all problem solving has both its rational and poetic aspects and that the solution to a problem is often found in the poetic well before it surfaces in the rational, this study examined in detail the ebb and flow of figurative language as it occurred in the course of a single, highly successful hour of gestalt therapy involving both…

This study was built on the hypothesis that linguistic cues distinguish the speech of the poor and the ethnically different. Eight samples of connected interview discourse were taken from a two-by-two-by-two matrix of sex, race and social status. The samples were played to groups of elementary, secondary and college students who rated each voice…

In a study of adolescent language, eight adolescents were recorded speaking in response to three classes of stimuli: TAT cards, photographs of "hippie" scenes, and discussion topics relevant to adolescent adjustment. Every fifth word of their transcribed speech was eliminated (the Cloze procedure), and these experimentally altered transcripts…

The first section of this study traces the history of the story of "Little Red Riding Hood," from its possible primitive origins, through its first publication in 1697, up to its current status. The second section analyzes the language of an interesting 1856 version of the tale and compares it with more modern versions. Table I indicates…

Examines the form that poetic function assumes in American Sign Language, a language that has a structural organization different from oral languages and where the possibilities for poetic organization are radically different. Examples of a complex type of composition called art-sign distinguished by three levels of structure are analyzed.…

The effective conductor accompanies word reduction with precision of statement. Author offered practical advice for any director who needs to watch his or her language more closely. He described evaluative, informative, remediative, and perfective phases of rehearsal language, and the initial, medial, and terminal stages of each phase. (Editor/RK)