Children with language disorders experience problems in three dimensions of semantics: (1) content of content (reference, referents, concepts); (2) form of content (structural units of meaning); (3) use of content (functional variation in meaning). Teacher intervention strategies in each area (e.g., for problems of reference, sentence meaning,…

Mildly mentally retarded adolescents (N=14) and mental age-matched nonretarded children participated in three experiments examining language processing efficiency. Results suggested that the retarded and nonretarded differ in the speed with which the semantic-analytic processes are executed but not necessarily the phonological encoding processes…

Examined five possible rules that children might use to interpret the terms "big" and "little." Increasing consistency in rule usage appeared to be the most significant developmental progression for children between the ages of three and five with respect to these terms. (Author/RH)

Discusses why translation theory has had an inadequate impact on translation practice and gives specific examples of ways in which translation theory can provide the translator with general principles and methods of translating idioms. (SED)

Examines implicit meanings and underlying assumptions evident in the word "native" as used in Canadian academic articles appearing from 1970-1980. Focuses on context elaborate, context explicit, and context implicit meanings. Concludes that writers and readers should have social responsibility to question labels they use, to understand attendant…

Proposes general semantics as the ideal means of teaching a process-oriented analysis of ethical standards. Discusses general semantics principles and their applicability in teaching business ethics. (PD)

Abilities of 2-, 5-, and 7-year-old children to interpret, judge acceptability of, and produce class extensions were assessed. It was concluded that increasing ability to deal appropriately with class extensions is primarily due to general advances in language acquisition rather than to any development unique to the class-extension word-formation…

Reports two studies which found a relationship between awareness of word order in sentences and reading readiness and achievement for children in kindergarten through third grade. Suggests this type of metalinguistic awareness may be important to early reading because it helps children to detect meaningful relationships between words. (Author/CB)

The influence of changes in wording of simple arithmetic problems without affecting semantic structure on the level of difficulty for primary-grade students was investigated. Data analysis produced results that rewording the problem so that the semantic relations are made more explicit facilitates the construction of an appropriate mental…

Reviews concepts from discourse analysis and translates them into instructional techniques that can be used in the classroom to improve reading comprehension. (FL)

When asked to read and write a given story, 20 hearing students recalled significantly larger numbers of propositions than 20 deaf high school students, but both deaf and hearing students recalled similiar numbers of story inferences in their written narratives. (Author/CL)

Learning disabled (LD) and non-LD boys (grades two and six) were given a false recognition task. Study and test items were manipulated to form visual, acoustic, and semantic distractors. Results suggest that LD students do not spontaneously use the effortful semantic processing strategy of elaborative rehearsal. (Author/CL)

Regardless of the syntactic variation of the direct object "a" in Spanish, a great deal of semantic unity underlies its use. Argues that it carries an invariant meaning that is present in every use of the form, and, concomitantly, its absence before a direct object carries an equally invariant meaning within the systematic semantic structure of…

The acquisition of "to" in infinitive complement structure was examined in the spontaneous speech data from four children who were observed longitudinally from two to three years of age. Results support the conclusion that the verb system is a determining factor in the acquisition of linguistic structure. (SED)

Semantic discourse features of written narratives of 49 hearing impaired children (10-15 years old) were examined in an analysis of the relationship between form and meaning in the writing of both hearing and hearing impaired Ss. Syntactic and semantic written language growth appear to be qualitatively and quantitatively different in the groups.…