This paper critically examines one particular issue against the background of changes in South Africa's higher education system consequent upon the advent of a non-racial democracy--the possibility of implementing multilingual instructional polices that include indigenous African languages in its universities. Currently, a great deal of applied…

English learners of French whose first language (L1) does not mark the perfective/imperfective distinction have shown verb semantic influence and an overall preference for perfective over imperfective in their use of second language (L2) tense-aspect markers. This study investigated whether learners whose L1 marks the perfective/imperfective…

This paper examines the relation between bodily actions, artifact-mediated activities, and semiotic processes that students experience while producing and interpreting graphs of two-dimensional motion in the plane. We designed a technology-based setting that enabled students to engage in embodied semiotic activities and experience two modes of…

Research on graphic symbol learning suggests that symbols with a greater visual resemblance to their referents (greater iconicity) are more easily learned. The iconicity hypothesis has not yet been explored within the intervention protocol of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). Within the PECS protocol, participants do not point to a…

Starting with Lyotard's characterisation of postmodernity as incredulity, this is related to another of his key concepts--that of "performativity". Lyotard appears to deploy performativity to characterise those technologies that bring about the optimisation of efficient performance. However, there is another sense of performativity where it is…

Semiotics is the scientific study of signs and sign functions. While semiotics has most often focused on human phenomena, it has been suggested that the field should be broadened to include elements of the system of signs from the entire continuum of living reality. Such an approach is to make explanatory in a relatively "universal" way…

The first section of this paper outlines the aims of the socio-semiotic way of looking at cross-cultural lexicology, including its ability to affect research methodology, objects, and goals, and argues that it is in accordance with an integral concept of linguistics. In the second section, the socio-semiotic approach is contrasted with the…

This is a bibliography of articles and other works on modality with relation to: (1) logic, (2) linguistics, and (3) semiotics. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

Presents different types and degrees of modalizations which are necessary for the construction of a discourse grammar. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

Presents deontic logic to linguists, particularly semioticians, with a view towards strengthening the relations between logicians and semioticians. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

Studies an extension of the modality system currently in use in narrative semiotics in order to determine the status of prophecy in narrative syntax. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

Reexamines the basic tenets and assesses the use-value of phenomenology as a methodology of film study. Suggests that phenomenology can assist in restoring a proper role for the spectator in the creation of meaning, as part of a dialectical human sensuous activity. (MS)

Genericization theory developed as a response to claims from outside of linguistics that generic use in brand names (for example, using Kleenex as a generic noun for all facial tissues, or Xerox for all photocopiers) is the result of marketing factors or misuse by consumers. This paper examines the linguistic factors that create an environment…

Discusses the empirical importance of Shannon's Information Theory and its impact on information science, and investigates the principle of least effort as a means of broadening the empirical foundation of Information Theory. Listed are 14 sources. (Author/RBF)

The problem of modeling information systems is studied with a focus on predictability. Syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic criteria are discussed, and 11 references are cited. (Author/BK)