Reviews literature pertaining to the subtle differences between the meanings of the particles "waw al-ma iyya" and "fa al-sababiyya," emphasizing their construction differences. (CB)

Examines the linguistic and technical factors that are responsible for the intractability of the computer input problem caused by Japanese orthography and the social factors that lend it a sense of urgency. (FL)

Defines metadiscourse, writing about writing, and examines specific kinds of metadiscourse researchers identify, such as text connectives, illocution and validity markers, narrators, and commentary. (HTH)

Examines the nature of American Sign Language, indicates its intricate morphological structure, and demonstrates one experimental way of uncovering and validating this structure. (FL)

This book is an accessible introduction to learnability theory and its interactions with linguistic theories. Working within the principles and parameters framework, the book surveys general concepts from formal learning theory and complexity theory, together with important findings from developmental psycholinguistics, historical linguistics, and…

To determine what psycholinguistic evidence (or external evidence) such as slips of the tongue, monosyllabic word blends, and novel word games reveals about syllable structure, this study focused on psycholinguistic research on the English and German syllable. English and German provide a good testing ground for evaluation of external evidence…

This book is a concise history of structural linguistics, charting its development from the 1870s to the present day. It explains what structuralism was and why its ideas are still central today. For structuralists, a language is a self-contained and tightly organized system whose history is of changes from one state of the system to another. This…

Describes the instructional procedures used in a method to enhance children's concept of story. (FL)

Examines whether a discourse consistent with functional sentence perspective (FSP) theory, which predicts how units of information should be distributed in a sentence and how sentences should be related in a discourse, is more memorable and readable than one contradictory to FSP. (HOD)

Argues that syllabication is a highly sophisticated skill requiring extensive knowledge of types of syllables, vowels, and consonants and their various graphic representations, and that syllabicating words in terms of sound patterns may give divisions that are more consistent with speech patterns. (FL)

Examines morphemic markers that signal the opening and closing of discourse units, emphasizing their complexity and their central role for a descriptive model of conversation. Then proceeds to analyze their functions within the overall structure of conversation, classifying them according to their properties and uses. Societe Nouvelle Didier…

Describes a program for improving student language competence by involving them in the making of language. (JL)

Describes three experiments that investigated the influence of a context sentence on the processing of a subsequent sentence. Concludes that context can affect within-sentence processes in comprehension. Test materials used in the experiments are appended. (FL)

Examines recently coined American Sign Language signs to show how the ASL lexicon is expanded. Included are elicited signs for relatively new objects or ideas, signs referring to metalinguistics concepts in ASL, signs used as jargon or specialized vocabulary, and signs "invented" by young deaf children. (Author/PJM)

Analysis of the communicative skills of a nine-year-old deaf boy with minimal schooling showed pantomiming and gestures to be his major mode of communication. Certain semantic patterns prevailed. Use of left or right hand also had semantic correlates. Formal and idiosynacratic signs were discovered in the boy's vocabulary. (Author/PJM)