Discusses some of the historical background of the movement to do away with the verb "to be" and employ E-Prime (a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be"). (HB)

Suggests that the form of English called "E-Prime" (which eliminates all forms of the verb "to be") has a certain attraction, but argues that many important uses of the verb "to be" remain in the English language. Provides examples and develops a method of designating the various forms of the verb in terms of the…

Discusses the beneficial aspects of "E-Prime" (a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be") and shows how it can be used to alert students to the pitfalls of that verb. Provides examples of how one form of the verb can be greatly overused and abused. (HB)

Argues that a complete alteration of English to the form called "E-Prime" (a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be") is not possible and would result in losing important speech patterns, such as identities and identification. Lists patterns of identification. Concludes by advocating "E-Choice"…

Expands on an earlier article that explained how a Gricean theory of implicature might provide a systematic partial reduction of the Binding Conditions, and introduces a radical alternative that uses the same pragmatic framework but gives an account better adjusted to some languages. (113 references) (GLR)

Describes a conceptual Knowledge Representation Language (KRL) developed at the French National Center for Scientific Research, that is used for the construction and use of Large Knowledge Bases (LKBs) and/or Intelligent Information Retrieval Systems (IIRSs). Semantic factors are discussed, and the specialization hierarchies used are explained.…

Studies intertextuality in teachers' peer dialog journal exchanges. Findings show that the meaning of intertextual links between entries has much to do with partners' shared stances toward gender roles (for the exchange between two women) and their roles as teachers within the school (for the exchange between two men). (Author)

Argues that text construction and the construction of subjectivity are coimplicated, historical, intertextual, social, and political. Interpretative analyses of the essays of two fourth-grade children demonstrate how these intertextual links implicate and are implicated in particular social formations and political ideologies. (Contains 39…

Six experiments involving 155 adults studied whether lexical entry for derivationally suffixed and prefixed words is morphologically structured, and how this relates to the semantic and phonological relationship between stem and affix. Results with 155 adults suggest that the morpheme is the basic unit in which the lexicon is organized. (SLD)

Three studies involving 198 undergraduates asked to construct mathematics word problems show that inferred semantic relations between objects help people decide when and how to apply their abstract formal knowledge of mathematics. The same mechanism that mediates analogical reasoning leads to interpretive content effects in reasoning about word…

Discusses language embodied by practice, or the interrelations among traditional areas of linguistics, such as grammar and semantics and conversational organization, on the one hand, and gesture and prosody on the other. Specific focus is on the role of prosody and gesture in turn-taking. (Author/VWL)

Finds that words were named faster in kana than in kanji but were translated faster in kanji than in kana. Shows that semantic access takes places 10 to 19 msec earlier in kanji words than in kana words, whereas phonological access takes places 27 to 31 msec earlier in kana words than in kanji words. (SR)

Classifies information-retrieval applications into three groups depending on the correspondence between a user's request and the queries posed to the document base. Argues that the mapping of requests, on a semantic level, to formalized queries, on a lexical level, determines the range of retrieval effectiveness. (Author/LRW)

Provides a technical analysis of the factors involved in the ability of latent semantic analysis to assess student knowledge (grading essays and matching students with appropriate instructional texts). Addresses the role of technical vocabulary, how long the student essays should be, and how one deals with the directionality of knowledge in the…

Reports the results of experiments with MEDLINE that used lexical statistics such as word-frequency counts to discover hidden connections in medical literature. Discusses problems with relying on bibliographic citations or standard indexing methods to establish a relationship between topics that might profitably be explored by scientific research.…