Uses structural linguistics to offer an impartial frame of reference to analyze science education in the non-Western world. Outlines the associative relation proposed by Saussure and investigates how it works in science education. Examines the problems peculiar to science education in Japan and argues that science education should be identified…

Reviews the evolution of semicolon use in English, examining the frequency of semicolons, colons, and dashes in grammar, language, and linguistic books from the mid-16th century to the present. Concludes that after flourishing in the 17th and 18th centuries, the semicolon may have become a marginal component of the English punctuation system. (42…

Two experiments with French university students investigated whether the visual recognition of short prefixed and suffixed words was affected by their morphological structure. Results indicated that encoding times were sensitive to the lexical status of the unit, with a significant benefit occurring only when the subword unit corresponded to the…

Two experiments investigated the processing and representation of Dutch compound words as a function of their semantic transparency. The results provided clear evidence for the sensitivity of the lexical processing system to morphological complexity, independent of semantic transparency. (50 references) (MDM)

Summarizes the results of Finnish studies dealing with single-word experiments with aphasics as well as lexical decisions and eye-movement registration tests performed on normals. It then proposes a processing model for Finnish nouns, Stem Allomorph/Inflectional Decomposition (SAID), which predicts that both inflected and productive derived forms…

One fundamental difference between spoken and written language has to do with the "linearity" of speaking in time, in that the temporal structure of speaking is inherently the outcome of an interactive process between speaker and listener. But despite the status of "linearity" as one of Saussure's fundamental principles, in practice little more…

To express object transfer, Cantonese-speakers use a "ditransitive" ([V-R-T] or [V-T-R] where V = Verb, T = Theme, R = Recipient), or a more complex prepositional/serial-verb (P/SV) construction. Clausal elements in Cantonese datives can be optional (resulting in "full" versus "non-full" forms) or appear in variant…

Investigated preschool children's understanding of temporal relationships in terms of their comprehension of sentences containing clauses linked by "before" and "after". Also evaluated was the relative importance of order of mention and main-subordinate relations strategies in children's interpretation of temporal order information. (Author/SDH)

Asserts that the term "co-verb" can be replaced by the term "preposition." Linguistic arguments indicating that preposition is a valid category in Chinese grammar are discussed, and the historical development of the co-verb is described. (RM)

This course, one of 16 sequential courses comprising phase one of a part-time Bachelor of Arts degree program in Australian Studies, examines a number of theoretical approaches to the study of language, particularly those which place language in a social context. It is designed for independent study combined with tutorial sessions. Chapter 1 is an…

This study considers whether or not the various sentence structures in standardized reading tests cohere to facilitate the extraction of information. In the context of the theoretical framework of the study, a schema theory of reading, a diffuse discourse structure may legitimately activate more than one way of conceptualizing an answer to a test…

Two dimensions of the definition of idiom (the semantic and the structural) that may be relevant to the foreign language learner language learner are abstracted from non-specialist dictionary definitions of the term "idiom." The structural dimension is further subdivided into two aspects: place in a structural hierarchy, and degree of…

Two crucial factors in teaching spelling are the teacher's understanding of the material to be learned and the teacher's understanding of the nature of the learner. Psycholinguistics is relevant to both the material and the learner. In teaching spelling, it is possible to draw insights from behavioral and cognitive psychology as well as from Noam…

Public interest in language is strong, as evidenced by recent articles on spoken and written forms of contemporary English in major news magazines. The December 8, 1975 issue of "Newsweek" contains several allegations, notably by Mario Pei, castigating linguists for causing the decline in writing ability in the United States. In this paper an…

It is important that we reflect on the conceptual framework from which our study of language has emerged, since the problems, methods, and aims of what has been called modern linguistics are rapidly being replaced by the concerns of another framework or paradigm. Such new paradigms, to be viable, must not be distorted by starting points that…