The process of developing a computer program that can turn French text into speech is described. The program is designed to change a conventionally-spelled text into a phonemic transcription with an accuracy level of over 99.9%, divide the text into breath-groups that are syntactically correct and not over 14 syllables long, treat the unstable…

The verb stem "maka" ("give") in Nahuatl is unusual in its range of options with respect to transitivity. Like all transitive verb stems, it regularly occurs with an object and must do so, but it also appears in an unusually large number of constructions in which it has two objects. These constructions are examined within the…

Structure mapping theory is a way of characterizing analogies and certain classes of metaphors. The central claim of this paper is that all analogies and many metaphors are fundamentally devices for mapping relational structures from one domain to another. This theory differs from other theories in postulating that the interpretation rules for…

Developing and integrating two lines of research, one focusing on discourse and the other on intention recognition in discourse, this paper presents the basic elements of a computational theory of discourse. The paper argues that by specifying the basic units a discourse comprises and the ways in which they can relate, an account of discourse…

To examine the relationship between spelling and reading using full graphemic cues, a study administered tests of oral reading, verbal IQ, reading comprehension, knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, and spelling achievement to 47 fifth-grade students. In addition, data was collected relative to gender and time spent reading outside the…

A structural analysis provides new evidence concerning the internal structure of the syllable in Wolof, a West African language, through examination of the secret code called Kall, spoken mainly in Senegal's Ceneba area. It is proposed that Kall is better described as involving primarily a reduplication of the prosodic word. The first section…

An analysis of the nature of secondary predicates takes a comparative approach, using Italian and English. Distributional properties and extraction facts are accounted for, and an explanation for the fact that resultatives are not allowed in Romance languages is sought on the basis of Italian evidence. It is argued that the semantic distinction…

This book provides instruction and drill in the grammatical structures of Hindi-Urdu; it does not include dialogues or conversational stimuli, readings, or cultural notes. The lessons are arranged into sections that can be covered in 50 minutes of class time; structures and vocabulary are reused at regular intervals, and more difficult topics are…

The acquisition of reading fluency crucially involves the beginning reader's tacit recognition that he or she must learn to compensate for the absence of graphic signals corresponding to certain prosodic cues by making better use of the morphological and syntactic cues that are preserved. The success of the method of repeated readings and similar…

The degree to which good and poor high school readers comprehend prose was studied in relation to their ability to (1) use passage organization to facilitate comprehension; (2) use task instructions to facilitate comprehension; and (3) answer verbatim and paraphrase items used to measure comprehension. Eleventh grade students were given the…

This self-instructional book is designed for students interested in learning to speak present-day standard Albanian. It is intended to be used in conjunction with a teacher or with tape recordings that can serve as a model for oral/aural exercises. The 30 units provide material for about 180 hours of study. Each unit consists of five parts: (1)…

Discusses various definitions of markedness in terms of second language acquisition and describes a study testing one such definition which found that second language learners did not accept preposition stranding in the second language but did accept double object construction and suggested that transfer took place only with one of two marked…

This review of findings in the field of readability research discusses the differences in meaning between readability and legibility, examines the origins and developments of readability formulas for children's and adult materials, and describes several of the best-known formulas for English-language materials. (46 references) (Author/LRW)

This article discusses structural factors responsible for a number of subtle differences in the outcome of language contact in Brussels (Belgium) and Strasbourg (France), and suggest that sociolinguistic factors have little explanatory power in this area. Differences between the rules for past participle formation in Dutch as spoken in Brussels…

A study of the noun incorporation phenomenon in Korean suggests that noun incorporation occurs at D-structure and obeys the Head Movement Constraint syntactically, and the Theme-Only Constraint semantically. First, the structure of "sunrise"-type words is identified, showing that before derivation through nominalization of the affix "-i,"…