A study investigated the role of certain discourse and language processing factors in the production of narratives under controlled conditions. Subjects watched a short segment from a movie and then narrated the events to a researcher. The narrations were taped, transcribed, and analyzed in terms of such factors as: (1) the number and types of…

A study of speakers of a range of English dialects was conducted to investigate some influences on the pattern of phonetic final devoicing of phonologically voiced fricatives and affricates. With the help of spectrographically examined tape-recorded speech derived from sociolinguistic interviews of the subjects, the study examined seven English…

Compound verbs such as "stage-manage" and "curry-comb," taken from Alex Haley's novel "Roots," are compared to their equivalents in the German version of the book. In most cases, one of three strategies is used for translation: (1) using a non-compound semantic equivalent, (2) constructing an expression that coincides…

This document presents a study of natural language understanding of computer programs. In the study, the performance of IRUS, a natural language query system designed to interface with a database, was compared with the performance of preschool and early elementary school children in answering questions about a specific database. Questions used in…

The study was designed to determine if there was an identifiable pattern of language deficit in 10 children (6 to 12 years old) undergoing treatment in a hospital inpatient psychiatry ward for behavioral and emotional problems. Ss were administered the standard hearing and speech clinic test battery which included the Binet Memory for Sentences,…

A study of the phonetic changes occurring when a speaker attempts to revise an unclear word for a listener focuses on changes made in the sound segment duration to maximize differences between phonemes. In the study, five-year-olds were asked by adults to revise words differing in voicing of initial and final stop consonants; a control group of…

Although research in episodic recall memory, comparing younger and older adults, favors the younger adults, findings in semantic memory research are less consistent. To examine age differences in semantic and episodic memory recall, 72 young adults (mean age, 20.8) and 72 older adults (mean age 71) completed three memory tests under varied…

The extent to which Basque displays ergative characteristics (an ergative language treats the underlying subject of intransitive clauses alike in some manner and differently from the underlying subject of transitive clauses) in its syntax is examined. The amount of evidence needed to conclude that Basque or any other language is ergative is…

In this paper the morphological argument for the conditioning of Sanskrit aspiration and deaspiration is renewed in theoretically current terms, bringing forth new arguments and examining previously undiscussed major weaknesses in the purely phonological (autosegmental) argument. Relevant phonological, morphological, and lexical facts are…

The order of constituents in Finnish clauses having free word order is analyzed. It is proposed that these clauses are defined only in terms of their immediate constituency, and that the logically possible permutations of these constituents form another set of sequence constructions, which transcend individual clause types. Each sequence…

An analysis of two different WH-clause types (relative clauses and free relatives/indirect questions) in Yiddish investigates the acceptability of a gap in the first position. A model is presented that accounts for the differences between the two by positing three constraints on their formation. It is then argued that either these constraints…

Thirty undergraduate students were asked to read and recall information presented in one of two parallel expository passages about the professional athlete. These passages differed only in their use of the "he" or "she" generic referent. The passages were parsed into 19 idea units, and 5 target words in each conveying the…

Examines the effect of repatterning representative passages from a tenth grade social studies text upon the average sophomore's comprehension. (RB)