Studies recent trends in linguistic borrowing in English. Journal availability: see FL 512 361. (AM)

Traces in detail the development of pragmatics and its relationship to semantics. (AM)

Proposes a new theory of "delocutivite," expanding on that of E. Benveniste. (AM)

Discusses the meaning of the term "literature," surveying various definitions, and concentrating on the elements of "style" and "message". (AM)

Presents arguments, based on the evidence of anaphora, against lexical decomposition. (AM)

The longstanding educational problem of "translating theory into practice" is not a problem in the conventional sense of a question proposed for solution. Consideration of the problem's inverse, "translating practice into theory" serves to identify certain widely-shared assumptions about the nature and structure of the problem that render it…

Decisions about whether pairs of letter strings are both words or not are faster for semantically related words than unrelated words. Two experiments showed the semantic relatedness effect is greatly reduced when orthographically illegal, unpronounceable strings were used as negative items. Lexical decisions involve options on codes representing…

The semantic properties of a set of verb-particles in Mandarin are specified in the framework of movements of a theme. This approach regularizes the diverse meanings of these particles and enables one to relate spatial and temporal dimensions of activities. (CHK)

Explores the hypothesis that the meaning of a word, especially a noun, relates directly to the types of relationships that the speaker has to the various referents that the word lets him construct, and that the referents have with their environment. Polysemic, metonymic, and metaphoric uses then tend to become confused with the actual lexical…

Using data from Japanese, this article shows that the distinction between unergatives and unaccusatives is fully determined on the basis of the verb's inherent lexical meanings. (55 references) (Author/CK)

Discusses two readings of English plural noun phrases, the collective and distributive, and argues against postulating a hidden operator that would handle the ambiguity. The article postulates principles of combination, giving truth conditions for a sentence with an "n"-place predicate and demonstrative noun phrases as arguments,…

Four experiments used a free-naming task to examine four-year olds' and adults' default construals of solids and nonsolids. Found that children named an individual-related word (such as shape) for solid materials, but gave a substance-related name for nonsolids. Results suggest that children conceptualize solids and nonsolids in distinct,…

Argues that discoveries concerning the essential properties of whole categories of word concepts are critical to essentialist intuitions. Reviews studies demonstrating that words and concepts are not used in accordance with essentialism, concluding that since essentialism is not vindicated by ordinary word use, it fails to undermine the cognitive…

Discusses reusable digital learning resources or objects in distance education and training. Focuses on the pivotal role of metadata and issues relating to classification, description, and meaning, specifically issues of semantics; and describes the CanCore Learning Object Metadata Application Profile. (Author/LRW)

Notes that words such as "can" and "may" are routinely interchanged in casual conversation and professional writing and broadcasting. Proposes that because journalism students are likely to be supervised by people who care about standards, they should make the distinctions between such words. Explains why 10 pairs of words need…