bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A re-examination of phonological neutralization
Authors: Dinnsen Daniel A.
Published: December 2008

One of the most fundamental constructs of phonological theory past and present is ‘neutralization’, i.e. the merger of a contrast in certain contexts. It is as basic as such other constructs as ‘contrast’, ‘distinctive feature’, and ‘segment’. While there exists a substantial body of literature on the phonetics of various phonological constructs (e.g. acoustic correlates for features, acoustic invariance, descriptive phonetics of particular languages, instrumental measurement techniques and segmentation criteria), the phonetics of neutralization has largely been assumed on the basis of casual impressionistic phonetics. The assumption is that forms which are distinguishable phonetically and phonologically in certain contexts and/or levels of representation (e.g. intervocalic voiced and voiceless obstruents in German) are under certain other well-defined circumstances totally indistinguishable at the level of phonetics (e.g. only voiceless obstruents occur word-finally in German).
Markedness and antonymy
Authors: Lehrer Adrienne
Published: December 2008

Standard treatments of antonymy regularly state that of a pair of antonyms, one member is marked while the other one is unmarked. Certain semantic and syntactic properties are predicated of the unmarked (or in some cases of the marked) member of the pair. A few examples are given, usually 20 or so, which bear out the predictions.
Implications of the pragmatics of non-descriptive definition
Authors: Burton-Roberts Noel
Published: December 2008

This paper is a sequel to ‘Thematic predicates and the pragmatics of non-descriptive definition’ (Burton-Roberts, 1986, henceforth PNDD) and is best read in conjunction with it. I discuss a variety of issues arising out of the explanation there given of a phenomenon I called ‘non-descriptive definition’. In explaining non-descriptive definition, we need to explain how a definition-requesting question (e.g.What is a dandy?, (2) below) can be appropriately responded to by the utterance of a sentence that does not constitute a definition and, canonically at least, would actually presuppose knowledge of the meaning of the word to be defined (e.g.Max is a dandy?, (3) below). The explanation given depends on analysing such responses as having the predicate rather than the subject as theme. On the assumption that subject is unmarked theme, such responses thus have marked thematic structure. On the further assumption of a relation of pragmatic equivalence between an utterance with marked thematic structure and some unmarked counterpart, such responses may be straightforwardly related to strict literal ANSWERS to their definition-requesting questions; that is, they can be related to DEFINITIONS – non-descriptive in the first instance (see (4) below), and (explicit) descriptive definitions in the second (see (5) below).
Bounding theory and Greek syntax: evidence forwh-movement in NP
Authors: Horrocks Geoffrey , Stavrou Melita
Published: December 2008

It is a standard assumption of government-binding theory that the relationship between a constituent displaced by the transformational rule schema Move α and its trace is subject to the locality condition known as subjacency, the central principle of the subtheory of universal grammar known as bounding theory (Chomsky, 1981, 1982, 1986). Subjacency requires that not more than one ‘barrier’ intervene between a moved constituent and its trace, but the definition of the relevant barriers has been, and remains, an issue of considerable controversy. In Chomsky (1977) it is suggested that NP and one of S or S¯ are the ‘bounding nodes’ for English, and many standard textbooks have since argued for NP and S (e.g. Radford, 1981: Ch. 7; van Riemsdijk & Williams, 1986: Ch. 4). Nevertheless, the possibility of cross-linguistic parametric variation may have to be allowed for, since Rizzi (1978) makes out a case for S¯ rather than S as the clausal bounding node for Italian in order to account for the freedom of extraction from so-called ‘wh-islands’ in that language. Chomsky (1980), however, puts forward the possibility that S¯ may be a bounding node universally, and that languages vary according to whether S is also. If it is, then there will be no long-distance movement (cf. standard German and Russian) unless individual verbs are specified in the lexicon as ‘bridges’ which nullify the barrierhood of S¯ (cf. the majority of verbs subcategorized by clausal complements in English). This view is revised and refined in Chomsky (1981: 307), where S¯ is taken to be a bounding node universally when it includes a complementizer orwh-phrase preceding a finite clause, in which case the finite clause S may also optionally be a barrier, and S is taken to be a bounding node when it is governed, as is the case after S¯-deletion in the complements of ‘raising’ predicates. Finally, Chomsky (1986) seeks to unite the definition of barrier for the purposes both of movement and government, assuming two barriers block movement and one barrier blocks government, by proposing that any ungoverned maximal projection is a barrier, and that any maximal projection immediately dominating such a barrier, whether lexically governed or not, is also a barrier by inheritance.
Pragmatic sources of analogical reformation
Authors: Coates Richard
Published: December 2008

The topic of this discussion is analogical change of a particular sort, namely that where, pretheoretically, meaning seems to have had a role to play in determining the direction taken by the change. Analogy is an area of linguistic change of the highest theoretical interest. No analogical changes can take place without the involvement of ‘performance’ factors in general, including a perceiving human agent as one of these (cf. Vincent, 1974; Anttila, 1977), for many analogical acts illustrate the human mind in a condition that is at the same time relatively free and relatively fettered. It is free in the sense that the inferential processes used in the cases that interest us are ABDUCTIVE (cf. Andersen, 1973: 775; but contrast Mayerthaler, 1980: 126–7); that is, given some facts, a law may be invoked which allows the reasoner to infer that something MAY, not MUST, be the case, and to act upon that possibility in a creative way. The basic data in this paper include instances of similarity between lexemes, a notion which will receive the closest scrutiny. In the changes we will examine, people appear to invoke a law-like principle to the effect that there is a close relation between similarity of form and similarity of meaning. And they infer, abductively, that cases of similarity in such instances may be failed examples of sameness, and accordingly may replace the state of similarity by one of sameness (cf. Panagl, 1982: 5). The result is therefore the fruit of not always unreasonable guesswork rather than of the logical security of deduction (or induction). The mind is fettered in the sense that it appears condemned to try to make something transparent, or at least formally transparent, out of what is linguistically obscure; its activity is thus constrained by the rest of the linguistic system with which it operates. It is in the condition of an electrician who is summoned to sort out a dangling wire and connects it up to the first other dangling wire that he or she finds.
Logical form: the grammar cognition interface
Authors: Kempson Ruth M.
Published: December 2008

Over the course of the last twenty-five years, linguistic theory has established itself as providing one of the major routes towards an understanding of the human mind. With increasing precision we have been able to address the problem of articulating in detail the structured capacities the human mind brings to the problem of language acquisition. Along the way there have been doubters, much of the doubt having arisen because of the apparently unbridgeable gap the theory demands between the language user's capacity and the interaction of this capacity with more general cognitive skills. Such doubters as there were received little reassurance from looking at work on performance or language use, for there has been little more than speculative philosophy on the one hand (most notably by Paul Grice, 1975) and articulation of detailed processing mechanisms on the other (e.g. Fodor, 1978; Frazier, 1979; Frazier & Fodor, 1978), without any overall theory. J. A. Fodor (1982, 1983) has led the field in cognitive psychology with his representational theory of mind. But we have till now had no theory of the central cognitive mechanism. Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) provides us with a contender. It makes specific claims about the central cognitive mechanism and about the relation of natural language to that central mechanism. Against this framework, we are at last able to formulate precise proposals about the grammar-cognition interface, and in so doing provide answers to the psychological reality questions which have gone unanswered for so long: What is the relation of grammars to utterance–interpretation? What is the nature of the link between grammars and the central cognitive mechanism? What is the relation between a speaker's knowledge of his language and his general knowledge?
Causativization
Authors: Falk Yehuda N.
Published: December 2008

In the search for linguistic universals which typifies the generative approach to grammar, nothing is as revealing as phenomena which manifest themselves in a wide variety of languages. By exploring the similarities and differences that we find in a single phenomenon cross-linguistically, we can gain insight into the nature of the linguistic universals that are responsible for the phenomenon in question. This study is an investigation into one such phenomenon, morphological causativization (henceforthcausativization), which may be illustrated by the following examples from a variety of languages.
Transportability, scope ambiguity of adverbials and the Generalized Binding theory
Authors: Nakajima Heizo
Published: December 2008

There has been much discussion, mainly by Montague grammarians, of the fact that ‘transportation’ of adverbials affects use or semantic interpretation of perfect sentences. Consider, for example, the following perfect sentences: (1) with a durational PP in sentence-final position; (2) with a durational PP in sentence-initial position; and (3) with a durationalwh-phrase in sentence-initial position:

(1) John has been in Tucson for two years.

(2) For two years, John has been in Tucson.

(3) How long has John been in Tucson?

(4) (a) John has been in Tucson for two years up to now.

(b) John was in Tucson for two years in the past.
A syntactic analysis of secondary predication in Spanish
Authors: Mallén Enrique
Published: December 2008

This article argues in favour of a syntactic analysis of secondary predication as first proposed in Williams (1980) and against the semantic approach to predication defended most recently in Napoli (1989). Most of the evidence to be adduced in the proposed analysis comes from Spanish. We posit that secondary predicates are base-generated inside VP in Spanish, confirming Culicover & Wilkins's (1984) and Roberts's (1988) analysis for English. Under this hypothesis, object-oriented (O-) predicates occur inside the c-domain of V as sisters to the verbal complement, whereas subject-oriented (S-) secondary predicates attach to VP as sisters to the subject. Based on this asymmetry and adopting Jaeggli's (1981) assumption that initialwh-traces must be lexically identified, we explain the fact that only O-predicates can undergowh-movement in Spanish. This restriction onwh-movement follows from the syntactic configuration assigned to secondary predicates in which both predicates are governed by V, but only O-predicates are c-commanded by V.
Katz on analyticity
Authors: Johnson-Laird Philip N.
Published: December 2008

Katz (1966) attempts to explicate the notion of analyticity on the basis of a theory of natural languages. This theory assumes that grammatical transformations do not affect semantic interpretations, which are performed on the underlying phrase markers. Hence, the interpretation of the conjunction of two co-ordinate clauses consists of the logical conjunction of their interpretations. The following two sentences have therefore identical interpretations:

1. The thief snatched the money and the clerk pressed the alarm.

2. The clerk pressed the alarm and the thief snatched the money.
More on the English comparative
Authors: Huddleston Rodney
Published: December 2008

1. In the last few years there have been three papers published devoted wholly or largely to a study of the English comparative construction: Lees (1961); Smith (1961); and Pilch (1965) The focus of attention has been the structure of what, following Pilch, I shall call the comparative expansion (the constituent introduced by than or as), rather than the morphology of the compared adjective or adverb. It is not surprising that so much interest should be shown in this construction at a time when one of the main concerns of linguists is to make their syntactic descriptions maximally explicit. For as this was not the aim of traditional grammarians, they had relatively little to say on the structure of the comparative expansion, implicitly assuming doubtless that such ungrammaticalities as

(1) *John bought a bigger car than Mary went home yesterday can be ruled out by commonsense, semantics, or logic.
On the transitivity of the part-whole relation
Authors: Cruse D. A.
Published: December 2008

The expression is part of can be used in a number of different senses. One might cite as examples:A sheep is part of a flock. A priest is part of the clergy. Changing nappies is part of being a mother.A petal is part of a flower. But one does not ask What are the parts of the clergy? or What are the parts of being a mother? as one might ask What are the parts of a flower? or What are the parts of the human body? I shall refer to the latter as ‘structural parts’, to distinguish them from the rest; it is with the relation between structural parts and their wholes that the present paper will be concerned. This relation can also be expressed by sentences of the form A flower has petals, The human body has arms, etc. (The verb have can, of course, also be used in senses irrelevant to the present discussion.) The part-whole relation, thus conceived, is generally recognized as being one of the fundamental sense-relations structuring the vocabulary of a language.
The core meanings of the English modals
Authors: Perkins Michael R.
Published: December 2008

Analyses of word-meaning can usually be divided into those which assign a meaning to a word IN ISOLATION FROM a specific context of use, and those which regard the meaning of a word as being largely, if not entirely, DEPENDENT UPON a specific context of use. The ultimate expression of the latter ‘polysemantic’ approach is probably that of the later Wittgenstein who argued that ‘every difference in a word’s use is a consequence of and evidence for a difference in its meaning’ (Wertheimer, 1972: 49). One recent example of the former ‘monosemantic’ approach is that of Bolinger (1977) whose stated purpose is to ‘reaffirm the old principle that the natural condition of a language is to preserve one form for one meaning, and one meaning for one form’ (p. x); also, the proponents of lexicalism are likewise ‘monosemantic’ in inclination in that they stress the primacy of lexical units over the syntactic relations which exist between them. Both these approaches have their advocates, and it should be stated at the outset that neither is necessarily right or wrong; each can only be judged according to whether the phenomena it is used to interpret are thereby illuminated.
Remarks on rhythmic stress in Modern Hebrew
Authors: Bolozky Shmuel
Published: December 2008

In Biblical Hebrew, the tendency for rhythmic stress was primarily manifest in stress retraction, which moved word-final stress to the preceding syllable so as to avoid ‘stress clash’ with an immediately following word-initial stress, subject to certain restrictions. It was discussed in detail by the traditional grammarians of Hebrew; recent generative accounts include Prince (1975) and McCarthy (1979). In Modern Hebrew, the tendency for rhythmic stress can be realized in a variety of ways, of which stress retraction is by no means the commonest.
The question of rule ordering: some counter-fallacies
Authors: Noske Roland G. , Schinkel Jos , Smith Norval S.H.
Published: December 2008

In 1980 Koutsoudas published a paper entitled ‘The Question of Rule Ordering: Some Common Fallacies’. In this paper he attacks various types of criticism of the theory of intrinsic rule ordering, and gives a set of procedures by which he allows his version of that theory (henceforth the KSN theory2) to be falsified. In the present article we utilize the procedures prescribed by Koutsoudas to demonstrate that this theory is not tenable.
Impossible nativizations as phonological evidence and the explanation of constraints on phonological structure
Authors: Churma Donald G.
Published: December 2008

It has been argued in a number of studies that the facts of loan phonology in Japanese and in Miami Cuban Spanish provide strong support for David Stampe's theory (see especially Stampe, 1973, Donegan & Stampe, 1979) of ‘natural phonology’ (cf. Ohso, 1971 Lovins, 1973, 1974; Bjarkman, 1976). To the evidence adduced in these studies, I would like to add some evidence from English. The English evidence is especially compelling, since it involves not only actual nativizations, but (intuitions about) IMPOSSIBLE nativizations.
Romance disagreements: phonology interfering with syntax
Authors: Plank Frans
Published: December 2008

1. On the (no doubt reasonable) assumption that cross-linguistic variation is subject to limitations due to the existence of universal constraints on linguistic rules and regularities, it is obviously desirable as a matter of descriptive principle to draw the limits within which individual languages may vary from one another as narrowly as the available cross-linguistic empirical evidence (plausibly interpreted) allows. Focusing on two interestingly interrelated aspects of linguistic regularities, viz. on possible conditions on agreement and on possible interactions of phonology and syntax, this paper once more tells a familiar tale: drawing the limits as narrowly as seems feasible vis-à-vis a relatively broad range of data may unfortunately turn out to be unjustified in the light of further, previously unavailable or – worse – ignored evidence. One always hopes, though, that having to redraw the limits is not tantamount to admitting that languages after all perhaps do vary without assignable limit.
On the distribution of bare infinitive complements in English
Authors: Mittwoch Anita
Published: December 2008

This paper explores the fit between syntax and semantics in one small corner of English. It addresses two related questions: To what extent is the distribution of bare infinitive (BI) complements, as in (1) and (2) below, semantically motivated?

(1) I saw/heard Mary slam the door.

(2) I made/let John cross the street.
Phrase structure and directionality in Irish
Authors: Ernst Thomas
Published: December 2008

In recent years the study of phrase structure has largely become a search for principles, parameters and other mechanisms to replace phrase-structure rules of the traditional sort. For capturing word order, one of the most common devices is the directionality parameter, especially the one which specifies a language as head-final or head-initial. It has also been proposed that languages may be specified for the direction of government (Stowell, 1981), or direction of Case- and theta-role assignment (Koopman, 1983; Travis, 1984). Often, such proposals focus only on the lowest (X′) level of phrase structure, that is to say the ordering of complements with relation to a head, but there have also been suggestions for directionality of specifiers or adjuncts (as in Ernst, 1989; Georgopoulos, 1991).
Effects of tempo and stress on German syllable structure
Authors: Laeufer Christiane
Published: December 2008

A comprehensive view of German syllable structure is developed based on phonetic and psycholinguistic experimental results supplemented by phonological arguments. The account is based on the interaction between universal factors (sonority/strength constraints, effects of tempo) and language-specific factors (phonotactic constraints, effects of stress). Initial, phonological syllabification reveals the distributional constraints operating in the language. This syllabification is modified by stress and rate of speech in well defined ways. The effect of a faster tempo is to maximize and thus strengthen syllable onsets within the limits predicted by sonority/strength and to minimize and thus weaken codas. This is achieved through resyllabification of stronger consonants onto following weaker ones. The effect of stress is twofold. Stress blocks faster speech resyllabification. It also modifies initial syllabification by making stressed syllables heavier through the acquisition of a branching nucleus, and in faster tempos, a branching rhyme. The effects of syllabification adjustments due to tempo and stress are interpreted as an optimization of syllable structure. The study supports a theory of syllable structure based on the arrangement of segments according to the so-called Sonority Sequencing Principle augmented by language-specific constraints which, in the absence of counteracting factors such as stress, are relaxed in faster tempos.
Featural affixation
Authors: Akinlabi Akinbiyi
Published: December 2008

Underlying free (floating) features occur crosslinguistically. These features sometime function as morphemes. Such features, like segmental morphemes, often refer to specific edges of the stem, hence they are ‘featural affixes’. They get associated with the base to be prosodically licensed. We propose to account for the association of such features through a family of alignment constraints called ‘featural alignment’ which is a featural version of McCarthy & Prince's Align (MCat, MCat). Under featural alignment, an edge is defined for a feature based on a possible licensor, which may be a root node or a mora. We argue that misalignment takes place under pressure from feature co-occurrence constraints. Thus a featural suffix may get realized elsewhere in the stem, surfacing as a featural infix or even as a featural prefix. This constraints based approach is preferred to rule-based approaches since it does not require a variety of additional assumptions needed within rule-based approaches to account for the same phenomenon. These include structure preservation, prespecification, extrationality and filters.
A note on Chomsky on form and function
Authors: Newmeyer Frederick J.
Published: December 2008

It has become commonplace in the anti-generative literature to portray Chomsky as denying that any systematic relationship exists between linguistic form on the one hand and meaning and function on the other and, in particular, that the latter might exert any direct influence on the former. The purpose of this note is to challenge such portrayals by making reference to some of Chomsky's relevant published statements over the past three and one half decades.
On whimperatives and related questions
Authors: Holmberg Anders
Published: December 2008

In a number of works up to 1974 Jerrold Sadock advanced and defended the claim that there are a limited but distinct number of sentence structures in English which exhibit true illocutionary ambiguity. Structure (1) belongs to this limited number.
The i-umlaut of the Old English West Saxon diphthongs (again)
Authors: Mclaughlin John C.
Published: December 2008

The attention by ‘modern’ linguists to the problems of Old English diphthongal spellings and their phonetic realizations may perhaps be dated (without doing anyone an injury) from the study by Robert P. Stockwell and C. Barritt (1951). Since that time much ink has been spilled (or typewriter ribbons worn out) in attempts to specify in some precise and principled way the phonological structure of the entities spelled in Old English ea, eo, io, Ia and ie. I will spare the reader a review of these articles and commentaries since such a review would prove both tiresome and uninformative.
Harris on performatives
Authors: Edmondson Willis J.
Published: December 2008

Harris (1978) argues against the ‘descriptive’ interpretation of performative utterances on the ground that on a particular occasion of its use I apologize may not constitute a ‘genuine instance of apologizing’, although the use of that utterance on that occasion may be ‘correctly described’ by using the verb APOLOGIZE non-performatively, as in (these are Harris's examples): (1) S apologized to the lamp-post, and even the police sergeant laughed. (2) S apologized on T's behalf, although T himself flatly refused to.
Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2
Authors: Halliday M. A. K.
Published: December 2008

Transitivity, mood and theme. Part I of this paper (sections 1–3) was an attempt to sketch some of the principal syntactic options, having the clause as point of origin, that are available to the speaker of English for the representation of processes and relations, and of objects, persons &c. as participants in them. The term ‘transitivity’ was used as a general label for this area of grammatical selection. Part II (sections 4–7) is concerned with another range of grammatical options, also associated with the clause, for which ‘theme’ is being used as the cover term.
DIA and DA solitary waves in adiabatic dusty plasmas
Authors: MAMUN A. A. , JAHAN N. , SHUKLA P. K.
Published: December 2008

We consider an adiabatic dusty plasma containing adiabatic inertialess electrons, adiabatic ions, and adiabatic negatively charged dust. The basic features of the dust–ion-acoustic (DIA) as well as the dust-acoustic (DA) solitary waves (SWs) in such an adiabatic dusty plasma are investigated using the reductive perturbation method, which is valid for small amplitude SWs, and by the pseudo-potential approach which is valid for arbitrary amplitude SWs. The combined effects of the adiabaticity of electrons/ions and negatively charged static/mobile dust on the basic features (polarity, speed, amplitude and width) of small as well as arbitrary amplitude DIA and DA SWs are examined explicitly. It is found that the combined effects of the adiabaticity of electrons/ions and negatively charged static/mobile dust significantly modify the basic features (polarity, speed, amplitude and width) of the DIA and DA SWs. The implications of our results in space and laboratory dusty plasmas are discussed briefly.
Departures in the spoken narratives of normal and language-disordered children
Authors: Liles Betty Z. , Purcell Sherry
Published: December 2008

The spoken narratives of 38 normal and language-disordered children (CA 7;6–10;6) were analyzed by describing their departures from the original text during recall. The narrative texts were presented to an adult listener following each child's viewing of a 35-minute film. The following departure types were compared across groups: (a) acceptable departures from the original text meaning, (b) unacceptable departures from the original text meaning, (c) grammatical departures (i.e., agrammatical utterances), (d) exact repetitions of words or phrases, (e) unacceptable departures from the text's meaning correctly repaired, (f) unacceptable departures from the text meaning incorrectly repaired, (g) departures from text meaning left unrepaired, and (h) repaired grammatical departures. Results indicated that both groups used a higher rate of acceptable departures from the original text meaning than any other departure type, with the normal children producing a higher rate of acceptable departures and a lower rate of unacceptable grammatical departures. Both groups repaired fewer unacceptable grammatical departures than unacceptable departures from text meaning. The groups did not differ in their tendency to ignore grammatical departures. Implications for language processing in narrative discourse are discussed.
Detection of mispronunciations: A comparison of adults, normal-speaking children, and children with articulation errors
Authors: Bernthal John E. , Greenlee Mel , Eblen Roy , Marking Kim
Published: December 2008

Recent studies have shown that children as well as adults can detect mispronounced words presented in running speech contexts. Listeners' detections are influenced by both phonological and lexical characteristics of the mispronounced words. The present study compared the performance of normal-speaking children, misarticulating children, and adults on a task which required the detection of mispronounced words. Phonological shifts presented in the stimuli represented both developmental and nondevelopmental patterns. Analysis of errors in detecting these mispronunciations indicated that adults were significantly more accurate than either group of children. In contrast, the performance of the two groups of children was relatively similar. Both children and adults more readily detected mispronunciations patterned after developmental errors than those mispronunciations manifesting more unusual, nondevelopmental sound shifts. Individual mispronounced words varied widely in their detectability. Nevertheless, those words which children found most difficult were also those on which adults most often erred. Parallels observed between the performance of the misarticulating children and their normally developing peers indicate that both younger groups use linguistic knowledge in a similar way in the perception of others' fluent speech.
Lexical retrieval: The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
Authors: Kohn Susan E. , Wingfield Arthur , Menn Lise , Goodglass Harold , Gleason Jean Berko , Hyde Mary
Published: December 2008

An experiment is reported in which university undergraduates were given word definitions and asked to say aloud all responses that came to mind in the course of their attempts to retrieve the target words. Results showed that phonologically similar responses and word-fragments are good predictors of target word knowledge and the likelihood of eventual success in retrieval. Responses which were semantically related to the target word were less predictive of eventual success. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for interpreting tip-of-the-tongue analyses as a “window” on the process of word retrieval.
A redefinition of the syndrome of Broca's aphasia: Implications for a neuropsychological model of language
Authors: Berndt Rita Sloan , Caramazza Alfonso
Published: December 2008

A neuropsychological theory is offered to account for the syndrome of Broca's aphasia. A critical review of the literature, with emphasis on recent research, provides the basis for a redefinition of the syndrome that considerably broadens its classical description. The argument is advanced that the focus of neuropsychological explanation should be on theoretically separable psychological mechanisms that might be disrupted in relative isolation from other components in conditions of focal brain damage, rather than on isolated units of aphasic performance. The symptoms that characterize Broca's aphasia are explained as predictable behavioral manifestations of a central disruption of the syntactic parsing component of the language System, coupled with a (theoretically independent) articulatory deficit that affects only the speech output System. The neuroanatomical implications of this argument are considered within the framework of the classical “strong localizationist” hypothesis.
Verbal comprehension deficits after right hemisphere damage
Authors: Hier Daniel B. , Kaplan Joni
Published: December 2008

We have compared the verbal comprehension abilities of 34 right hemisphere damaged patients to 16 hospitalized control subjects of comparable age and educational attainment. The right hemisphere damaged patients performed as well as the control subjects on a vocabulary test, but were impaired in their ability to interpret proverbs and comprehend logico-grammatical sentences. Impairment on the proverbs test was the result of a decrease in the number of abstract interpretations, whereas impairment on the logico-grammatical sentence comprehension test was related to difficultes in grasping spatial and passive relationships. These comprehension impairments tended to correlate with visuospatial deficits and hemianopia, but not with the degree of hemiparesis or the presence of sensory extinction. Patients with anterior right hemisphere damage performed better on the logico-grammatical sentence conprehension test than patients with posterior damage. A variety of factors probably contribute to these verbal deficits including impaired intellect, inattention, an inability to grasp spatial relationships, and difficulties in manipulating the inner schemata of language.
Language disabilities in infantile autism: A brief review and comment
Authors: Schwartz Steven
Published: December 2008

Experimental studies of autistic children's memory for linguistic materials have yielded what appear to be conflicting results. A review of these studies reveals a pattern of findings consistent with the hypothesis that autistics do, in fact, have a special linguistic coding difficulty. The apparent discrepancies are the result of the use of low-power statistical tests in some experiments. Because the autistic deficit may arise from a failure to use semantic or syntactic knowledge or even from a failure to acquire such knowledge in the first place, future research should be aimed at explicating the precise mechanisms underlying the autistic deficit.
Schizophrasia: case study of a paranoid schizophrenic's language
Authors: Herbert Robert K. , Waltensperger Karen Z.
Published: December 2008

The various descriptions of schizophrenic language have concentrated on a structural treatment of the schizophrenic's spoken or written language or an elucidation of the relationship between linguistic and cognitive disturbances. The structural treatments in fact often focus on the content of schizophrenic discourse, e.g. circumstantiality, flight of ideas, etc., rather than on grammatical structure. In this paper, the linguistic performance of a chronic schizophrenic, paranoid type (DSM-II:295.3) is examined via a large corpus of continuous spoken and written narrative texts collected over a three-year period. A striking agreement was noted in the oral and written language of this subject in features such as the types of agrammatic errors which occur and extreme perseveration. The data reveal important differences with the six characteristics of schizophrenic language noted by Chaika (1974). A brief comparison is made with aphasic and similar neurolinguistic disturbances suggesting organicity in the present case.
Accounting for individual differences when comparing the effectiveness of remedial language teaching methods
Authors: Friedman Philip , Friedman Karen A.
Published: December 2008

Two language intervention methods were compared on their effectiveness at improving syntactic structures as measured by gain scores on the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) procedure. Forty-one expressive language delayed children were assigned to either an Interactive approach (n= 25) or a Programmed approach (n= 16), following a series of 13 pre-training diagnostic tests. An analysis of group mean DSS gain scores did not indicate a significant difference between the two teaching methods. However, when individual differences on the pre-training tests were incorporated into further group comparisons, disordinal Aptitude × Treatment interactions occurred for measures of intelligence, initial syntax level, and visual-motor integration. The Interactive approach optimized syntax improvement for children with relatively high pre-training scores on each of the three measures, whereas the Programmed approach resulted in superior syntax performance for low-scoring children.
Longitudinal development of English morphology in French immersion children
Authors: Gray Vicky A. , Cameron Catherine Ann
Published: December 2008

Development of plural and past tense morphological rules was examined longitudinally with 272 English-speaking children enrolled in French immersion or traditional English curricula. Children were tested in grades one through four on 18 items from Berko's test (1958). There were no performance differences between the two curriculum groups, girls performed better than boys, and there were correlations between intelligence and performance. Syllables requiring the plural /-z/ and past tense /-d/ and /-t/ were acquired earlier than those calling for /-∂z/ or /-∂d/. Inflection acquisition was orderly and sequential within subjects. By age 10 children began using adultlike irregular formations, but regular or overregularized forms preceded irregulars. Whereas basic rules were mastered by 10 years, more difficult forms were still developing.
An invited article Facilitating human–computer communication
Authors: Black John B. , Sebrechts Marc M.
Published: December 2008

Basic cognitive psychology can provide guidelines for how to design computer systems that are easy for people to use. Prior knowledge of the real world and natural language affect the way people use computers, so computer systems that are consistent with this prior knowledge are easier for people to use. Providing users with mental models for a computer system will allow them to solve more complex problems and understand sequences of commands better. Computer systems should be flexible to accommodate the individual differences between users, but the complexity of understandable computer systems is constrained by the limited information processing capacity of users. The domain of human–computer communication promises to be a fertile domain for applied tests of cognitive theories.
An invited article: Syntactic performance of hearing impaired and normal hearing individuals
Authors: Quigley Stephen P. , King Cynthia M.
Published: December 2008

The article describes two research programs on the syntactic abilities of hearing impaired and normal hearing individuals. The first program was concerned with describing some of the syntactic problems of deaf students in acquiring English structure; the second involved the construction of theTest of Syntactic Abilitiesand its application to deaf, hard of hearing, and normal hearing students in the United States, Canada, and Australia. This report has four objectives: (1) to summarize and integrate the findings of the two research programs, (2) to relate the findings to the literature on other populations, (3) to discuss strategies used by the research populations in handling English syntax, and (4) to discuss some applications of the findings to language development.
Some aspects of semantic-lexical impairment in aphasia
Authors: Gainotti Guido
Published: December 2008

Naming disorders of aphasic patients have generally been considered as resulting from an impairment of the ‘peripheral’ mechanisms connecting the central semantic system with the cortical structures subsuming perceptual and motor operations.

In recent years, however, some investigators have suggested that semantic-lexical disorders of aphasic patients may be due to a disruption of the semantic system itself. The results of some personal investigations supporting this last view are reported and two alternative (or complementary) interpretations are advanced to explain the central semantic disorder of aphasic patients. These interpretations assume: (a) a disruption of the information stored in each semantic representation; (b) a disorganization of the mechanisms subsuming semantic storage and semantic retrieval.
An invited article: Bilingual education of majority-language children: The Immersion experiments in review
Authors: Genesee Fred
Published: December 2008

Second-language “Immersion” school programs that have been developed in Canada and the United States during the last two decades are described and the results of evaluative research pertaining to them are reviewed. Major Immersion program alternatives (i.e., Early, Delayed, and Late variants) along with their theoretical bases and pedagogical characteristics are described first. Research findings are then discussed with respect to the impact of participation in an Immersion program on the students' native-language development, academic achievement, second-language proficiency, and on their attitudes and second-language use. Also, the suitability of Immersion in different geographical/social settings and for students with distinctive, potentially handicapping characteristics is considered. It is concluded that second-language Immersion programs are feasible and effective forms of education for majority-language children with diverse characteristics.
The contribution of phonological, acoustic, and perceptual techniques to the characterization of a misarticulating child's voice contrast for stops
Authors: Maxwell Edith M. , Weismer Gary
Published: December 2008

This paper examines the voicing contrast for word-initial obstruents in a child whose functional misarticulation initially was characterized by a severe lack of contrasts normally used in the English language. Specifically, auditory analysis indicated that the child represented a large number of both voiced and voiceless obstruents with [d]. Acoustic analysis demonstrated, however, that the child was producing an obstruent voicing distinction, albeit one that was not generally perceptible to listeners. Following a therapy program, the child produced an acceptable voicing distinction, at least for stops. The importance of these findings is that 1) they seem to indicate that the child is attaining articulation skills in a delayed, and not deviant fashion, and 2) they illustrate the utility of acoustic analyses in refining phonological descriptions.
Language impaired children's performance in an additive bilingual education program
Authors: Bruck Margaret
Published: December 2008

Cognitive, academic, first language, and second language abilities of language impaired children attending French immersion programs were assessed in kindergarten and in grade 1. After two years of instruction in a second language the linguistic and cognitive skills of these children were similar to a comparable group of language impaired children who were educated in their first language. The language impaired children were also acquiring proficiency in second language skills, although not to the same levels of proficiency as French immersion children with normal first language abilities. The results are discussed in light of current theories of optimal language of instruction.
Transcription systems for videotaped interactions: Some advantages and limitations of manual and computer rendering techniques
Authors: Zukow Patricia Goldring
Published: December 2008

This paper examines various rendering techniques and emphasizes the unique contribution that computer technology offers to transcription. First, the basic manual transcription procedure and its grounds are discussed. Next, three methods of generating transcripts are considered separately: (a) completely manual preparation; (b) a combination of manual and computer procedures; and (c) the on-line processing/monitoring by computer. Finally, the relative advantages and limitations of these techniques are discussed in terms of a trade-off between several factors which include initial investment in equipment, person hours, cost of copying and modifying transcripts, and reduction of errors in transcribing data.
Use of orthographic structure by deaf adults: Recognition of fingerspelled words
Authors: Hanson Vicki L.
Published: December 2008

Deaf adults' access to English word structure was tested in a task requiring letter report for fingerspelled words, orthographically regular nonsense words (pseudowords), and orthographically irregular nonsense words (nonwords). Deaf subjects, like hearing subjects, were sensitive to orthographic structure as indicated by accuracy of letter report: Letters of words were reported most accurately, while letters of pseudowords were reported more accurately than letters of nonwords. Analysis of errors on letter reports revealed that deaf subjects tended to produce orthographically regular responses. These results provide clear evidence that deaf adults are able to make use of orthographic structure.
Prediction of production: Elicited imitation and spontaneous speech productions of language disordered children
Authors: Lahey Margaret , Launer Patricia B. , Schiff-Myers Naomi
Published: December 2008

Two forms of an imitation task designed to elicit eleven language behaviors were presented to 32 language impaired children (mean age 7;4, mean MLU 2.9). The tasks differed in terms of the presence or absence of contextual support. To determine how well the imitation tasks could predict spontaneous productions, a multiple regression analysis was performed using the children's spontaneous productions of each behavior as the criterion variable and responses to the same behaviors on each imitation task plus age, sex, MLU, and a measure of memory as predictor variables. The major finding was that predictions of spontaneous production varied among the eleven language behaviors. Additionally, the presence of contextual support had little effect.
Situational influences on mentally retarded and nonretarded children's production of directives
Authors: Abbeduto Leonard
Published: December 2008

This study investigated the influence of the communicative situation on the directives produced by retarded children and nonretarded kindergartners. The two groups were matched on nonverbal MA and on the linguistic maturity of their spontaneous speech. All children could produce the linguistic forms appropriate for the experimental task. In the experimental task, directives were elicited in role-playing situations which differed on three dimensions: addressee age, cause of the directive, and purpose of the directive. As measured by directive politeness, the retarded and nonretarded children were influenced similarly by the situational manipulations. However, they relied on different linguistic forms to convey directives. Many children had a preferred form. Within and between group differences in form preferences were observed.
Phonological recoding skills and learning to read: A longitudinal study
Authors: Jorm A. F. , Share D. L. , Maclean R. , Matthews R. G.
Published: December 2008

The study sought evidence consistent with the hypothesis that phonological recoding of printed words is important during reading acquisition. Children at the end of their Kindergarten year were given a test of nonsense word reading (as a measure of phonological recoding skill) as well as tests of sight word reading and verbal intelligence. Two groups of 28 children were matched on sex, school attended, sight word reading, and verbal intelligence, but differed on phonological recoding skill. If phonological recoding was important in reading acquisition, the children with greater skill in this area should make greater gains in reading achievement over the following years. When reading achievement was tested at the end of Grades 1 and 2, these children were found to be significantly ahead.
Deaf readers' comprehension of relative clause structures
Authors: Lillo-Martin Diane C. , Hanson Vicki L. , Smith Suzanne T.
Published: December 2008

It is commonly found that most deaf readers display an overall depressed level of reading performance in conjunction with specific difficulties in complex syntax. In this study, deaf good and poor readers' comprehension of relative clause structures was tested in written English, signed English, and American Sign Language. It was found that the behavior of deaf good and poor readers was parallel across relative clause sentence types, and that the deaf readers generally performed similarly to hearing readers tested in a different study. These results support the hypothesis that a specific syntactic disability does not differentiate deaf good and poor readers. Instead, it is suggested that a processing deficit may underlie the poor readers' comprehension difficulties.