Examines the conflict between one group of educators which is calling for a more complete, precise, expanded vocabulary and another group, which is calling for fewer terms and simpler meanings in the development of evaluation terminology. (CMV)

Discusses the applicability of "fuzzy sets" to explicating the notion of "vagueness." (Author/HP)

Many errors in ESL students' writing are caused by misleading cognates, words in the two languages which look alike, yet do not mean the same thing. (DD)

Describes an approach to teaching freshman composition which begins with the study of the power of words. (DD)

Differences between Spanish "ir" and "irse" are explained. Use of these verbs is determined by the adverb used with them: an adverb of place will govern use of "ir," while an adverb of time will govern use of "irse.""Ir" also involves a return trip, while "irse" communicates only a going away. (CHK)

A semantic differential scale, designed to assess users' attitudes toward batch mode retrieval of the ERIC data base, grouped ten concepts and matched them with 16 adjective pairs. Although response was somewhat low, concepts and adjective pairs were clustered. (Author/KP)

Examines the semantic articulations of the notions of "consensus" and "conflict" within the framework of political power. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

This study employs a lexical-decision task to investigate second- and fourth-grade children's use of semantic context in word recognition. Results showed that younger and poorer readers benefit at least as much from semantic context in word recognition as do older and better readers. (Author/JMB)

Considers the conventions of quotation marks--or "perverted commas"--and identifies seven uses, including shudder quotes (slang or inappropriate words) and scare quotes (used for attention or emphasis). Notes that quotation marks influence meaning and that finding a personal voice entails using language without quotes. (MM)

Introduces the transitivity model of textual analysis, assesses its application to news reports, and discusses the critical linguistic background in which it has proved popular. (JK)

Argues that the case-filter, essentially a morphological condition which determines the distribution of noun phrases, should be replaced. This new principle would relate morphological dependency of maximal lexical projections to a certain type of semantic dependency. (CB)

Describes a model for a front end query processor to deal with incomplete information in a database. The effectiveness of the processor in restricting the number of objects to be processed in a query and in aiding the interpretation of a query is discussed. (26 references) (Author/CLB)

Two studies examined the ability of 22 deaf high school students to instantiate (select appropriate word meaning from context) particular exemplars of general nouns and to use those instantiations as retrieval cues. Among results were that subjects could instantiate when asked to do so but did not do so spontaneously. (Author/DB)

Offers evidence that brain hemispheres process information differently, and that semantics influence hemispheric processing. Suggests directions for research on message style, source perception, and threat perception. (MS)

Results of tasks measuring speed with which mentally retarded (N=9) and nonretarded adults retrieved information from short-term memory and processed permanently stored semantic information revealed that the retarded adults were slower in both processing domains. The relative magnitude of "processing inefficiency" was quite similiar across domains…