Considers problems of quantifying literary style. Examines several variables that may be used as stylistic "fingerprints" of a writer. Reviews work done on statistical analysis of change over time in literary style and applies this technique to the Bible. (CFR)

Sample materials designed to enable advanced learners to read more effectively for academic purposes are presented that focus learners' attention on the role of various cohesive devices in relating parts of a text. Discovery exercises applied to an authentic text show learners ways the devices can help them understand the text. (13 references)…

Reports on a study of written protocols by 147 children, ages 7-14. Comparisons were made between those who were asked to debate an issue (formal discourse) and those who were asked to defend an opinion (natural discourse). Finds that older children were able to use different structures for argumentation and write longer arguments. (CFR)

Twenty-five Italian-speaking children (ages 4 to 7) with specific language impairments were compared to younger control children in their use of auxiliary verbs, pronominal clitics, infinitives, present-tense verbal inflections, and articles. Differences favoring the control children were found for those morphemes that required the production of…

A study investigated the importance of three elements of intonation (tone units, key, prominence) in three readers of English radio news. Results indicate intonation is used to present the structure of information as the speaker intends it to be interpreted. Intonation functions can be categorized simply under a few discourse functions easily…

A reading-specific multiple classification task was designed that required children to classify printed words along phonological and semantic dimensions simultaneously. Reading-specific multiple classification skill made a unique contribution to children's reading comprehension over contributions made by age, domain-general multiple classification…

Presents results of a longitudinal study on long-term dialect accommodation in a German dialect setting. An important model of explaining which linguistic structures undergo such convergence and which do not makes use of the notion of "salience." (Author/VWL)

The study of the structure of research articles has developed into a significant field of research. The original research focus on texts produced by English academics has been expanded over the years to allow for the investigation of the structure of texts written by academics publishing in various other languages. The ongoing discussion between…

To contribute to a better understanding of second language (L2) sentence processing, the present study examines how L2 learners parse temporarily ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses. Results are reported from both off-line and on-line experiments with three groups of advanced learners of Greek whose native languages (L1s) were Spanish,…

How would translators approach a process in which they have to make decisions on mapping the grammatically enforced regular number mechanism of a language such as English onto a system like Japanese, where there is no regular coding of number in a noun phrase? Utilizing the concepts of motivation for representation of number, and of "formal-shift"…

This study reports an investigation of the genre components and pragmatic strategies of letters of applications written by Jordanian Arabic--English bilinguals. Specifically it is set up to trace how far novice non-native speakers of English are able to utilise the generic components and politeness strategies of the target language that strongly…

Just as minority spoken languages borrow from surrounding majority languages, so British Sign Language (BSL) borrows signs from English. BSL may borrow from both spoken and written English, but here we focus on the processes involved in borrowing from the written English word, using the manual alphabet. The end result of borrowing depends on an…

The discussion of case in grammar focuses on the ways relationships between words in sentences are marked. It describes the familiar systems of suffixes, from languages like Latin, and also the roles of prepositions, postpositions, and the use of the pronominal elements on verbs. One feature of case, the recurrence of apparently idiosyncratic…

An analysis of verbs in Tlingit, a U.S. Northwest Coast Indian language, begins with an overview of its situation and usage and of previous research. The second chapter sketches its phonological and syntactic characteristics. Subsequent chapters deal specifically with the verb. An analysis of verb categories distinguishes two groups: argumental…

A study of two contemporary American novels, told in first-person narration, explored the distribution and function of relative clauses in literary narrative. For comparative purposes, data from oral conversation, 2 written expository works, 6 other novels, and 20 short oral narratives were also considered. Three types of relative clause are…