Investigates the semantical aspects of Oceanic language elements that function as directional verbs of motion (e.g., "go,""come,""return"). It is argued that human conceptualization of phenomena (viz. metaphor and metonymy) directly motivate the variety of grammaticalization processes observed with respect to these…

The effects of simplification, type of linguistic item, and second-language experience on learners' intake of linguistic items contained in written input were studied. Results suggest that simplification does not have a facilitating effect on learners' intake. Sample passages are appended. (56 references) (Author/LB)

Reviews how second-language acquisition (SLA) research appeals to ideas of attention and distinguishes among attention, awareness, and consciousness. Suggests how problems in SLA might be investigated through an alliance of SLA insights with those of the cognitive literature on attention. (Contains 90 references.) (JP)

A framework for developing a coherent research agenda for discovering how language teachers think and work is suggested that includes the following: conceptions of teaching, dimensions of knowledge, and teachers' lives and careers. (Contains 21 references.) (LB)

This paper discusses the cyclical nature of second-language instruction, examining the stages of an entire cycle (introduction, input, output, conclusion) and of the cycle's component activities (introduction, set up, performance, outcome, and conclusion). It also discusses how such frameworks can be used in language instruction research. (41…

Provides an acoustic profile of the prosody of right-dislocations in French, using the CECIL computer hardware and software package to analyze 28 right-dislocations occurring in a corpus of natural French discourse. It was found that, although right-dislocations appear to fulfill various functional roles in discourse, no correlation appears…

Presents a discourse-functional account of English inversion, based on an examination of a large corpus of naturally occurring tokens. It is argued that inversion serves an information-packaging function and that felicitous inversion depends on the relative discourse-familiarity of the information represented by the preposed and postposed…

Investigates persuasion as a sociolinguistic phenomenon in Jordan. This study focuses on three main modes of persuasion and explores attitudes toward factors contributing to persuasion success. Devices such as the Quranic verses, the Traditions, wisdoms and proverbs, as well as trustworthiness, are crucial in influencing listener beliefs. (50…

Responds to Sarah J. McCarthey's article in the same issue. Considers particularly the limitations of McCarthey's research design. (HB)

Explores trends in critical discourse analysis, its domain and definitions, and its applications, including theoretical foundations and sources, critical discourse analysis in practice, and problems and developments. A 16-citation annotated and a 44-citation unannotated bibliography are included. (CB)

Reviews research concerning instructional applications of discourse analysis for student reading and writing, including large-scale studies of student writing, text-based studies, reading comprehension, and semantic mapping. A large unannotated bibliography is included. (CB)

An experimental elicitation task with children between the ages of 20 and 27 months shows that children learning Thai numeral classifiers begin with purely distributional information: specifically (1) that classifiers must appear in the postnumeral position, and (2) that classifiers comprise a conventional, closed set of words. (35 references) (JL)

An investigation focuses on the portion of preschool verbal action that could be considered successful dialogue. Ten dyads of four-year olds were videotaped during freeplay, where segments of talk were identified as dialogue or nondialogue. (35 References) (JL)

Standard outcome measures used in a referential communication (route finding) task showed that 7-year olds were inferior to 10-year olds and adults in terms of adequacy of messages provided (as speakers) and selection of referents (as listeners). (10 references) (JL)

A series of monitoring studies is reported, in replication of the cross-language research of Cutler, Mehler, Norris, and Segui, which found evidence of language-specific perceptual routines. It is suggested that factors outside the perceptual system may affect responses and that the case for language specificity in perceptual routines has not been…