Presents the gating paradigm as it is used in spoken word recognition research. In this task, a spoken-language stimulus is presented in segments of increasing duration and subjects are asked to propose the word being presented and to give a confidence rating after each segment. The advantages and problems associated with this task are discussed.…

Suggests that knowledge organization must encompass theories that focus on the more fundamental and less technical view and raises the questions of epistemology and general linguistic theory. Focuses on the meaning aspect of language and the terminological aspect of knowledge organization. Considers theories of terminology, language and meaning,…

Syntactic processing was explored in nine individuals who stutter (IWS). Grammaticality judgments and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were obtained while participants read sentences, half containing verb-agreement violations, via computer or paper. Judgment accuracy of IWS for the online task, but not offline, was lower, especially for more…

Two eye-tracking experiments examined spoken language processing in Russian-English bilinguals. The proportion of looks to objects whose names were phonologically similar to the name of a target object in either the same language, the other language, or both languages at the same time was compared to the proportion of looks in a control condition…

Revives Eric Hawkins' idea of a language "trivium" where language awareness activities should fill the space between the learner's two languages. Draws a distinction between awareness and consciousness of language and suggests that cross-linguistic relationships are a major source of input salience strengthening, due to bilinguals'…

A study evaluated the language production of 12 children (ages 5-8) who continued stuttering for 36 months or more after onset, 10 who recovered 18-36 months post onset, and 10 who recovered within 18 months of onset of stuttering. The majority of the children performed in the average range on measures of language production. (Author/CR)

Justification offered by Steven Pinker for his theory that thought is independent of language, and that thought is couched in some silent medium of the brain ("Mentalese"), is outlined step by step and critiqued. It is argued that the theory ignores deep technical issues and is not explanatory. (MSE)

Proposes a theoretical framework called NLPIR that integrates natural language processing (NLP) into information retrieval (IR) based on the assumption that there exists representation distance between queries and documents. Discusses problems in traditional keyword-based IR, including relevance, and describes some existing NLP techniques.…

Considered whether modeling and the type of an adult's request influenced children's ability at age 1 year and 8 months and 2 years and 2 months to comprehend gestures and replica objects as symbols for familiar objects. Evaluated whether modeling and type of request influenced children's ability at 1 year and 8 months to understand familiar…

Responds to comments made regarding an earlier article written by the author on processing instruction in second language learning. (Author/VWL)

Evaluated adult age differences in language comprehension with groups of young adults (age 20-35), young old adults (age 55-69), and old old adults (age 70-87). The results suggest that speed of comprehension processes required to match related terms in sentence pairs is not impaired with age as long as terms do not have to be remembered.…

A systematic analysis of the French interrogative focuses on the distinction between the syntactic processes (identification of question words, interrogative phrase preposing, and rules of question formation) and phonological processes (intonation patterns) that characterize questions in French. (Author/MSE)

Investigates whether patient animacy affected the acquisition of the passive construction of syntax of 32 children aged two-five years. Results indicate that children who were taught the passive with animate patients produced more passives in the teaching phase than did comparable children who received inanimate patients. (RJC)

Examines effect of training 70 preschool children with animate agent + animate patient sentences (AAV) or animate agent + inanimate patient sentences (IAV). Children were tested with noun-noun-verb (NNV) order sentence to assess whether AAV or IAV produced better comprehension. AAV and IAV showed comparable results at age three, IAV resulted in…

Investigation of profoundly deaf adolescent students' ability to read signs in peripheral vision revealed a mean success rate of about 80 percent. Results support the supposition that peripheral vision may be linguistically and communicatively useful for deaf people, particularly as signs in isolation are more difficult to read than signs in…