This study aims to identify the cementing devices used in the Holy Qur'an, Al-Qasas Surah, in particular. Specific cementing devices appear to connect the phrases and clauses contextualized in the verses of this Surah. Three exegeses and three different translations of the meaning of the Holy Qur'an were referred to in this study for data…

This response argues against the proposal that novel utterances are formed by analogy with stored exemplars that are close in meaning. Strings of words that are similar in meaning or even identical can behave very differently once inserted into different syntactic environments. Furthermore, phrases with similar meanings but different underlying…

These studies investigated two hundred and forty-four 24- and 30-month-olds' sensitivity to generic versus nongeneric language when acquiring knowledge about novel kinds. Toddlers were administered an inductive inference task, during which they heard a generic noun phrase (e.g., "Blicks drink milk") or a nongeneric noun phrase (e.g., "This blick…

Carers recognize that the linguistic problems associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be detrimental to effective communication, but they are often not sure what they can do to help. This article examines the use of formulaic language in AD, including routines, repetitions, and fillers, through the lens of a model of how cognitive and social…

This paper evaluates two classes of hypotheses about how people prosodically segment utterances: (1) meaning-based proposals, with a focus on Watson and Gibson's (2004) proposal, according to which speakers tend to produce boundaries before and after long constituents; and (2) balancing proposals, according to which speakers tend to produce…

Previous work on intrasentential codeswitching has noted that switches between determiners and their noun complements are frequent in both Spanish-English and Welsh-English data. Two major recent theories of codeswitching, the Matrix Language Frame model and a Minimalist Program approach, make potentially competing predictions regarding the source…

An important topic in the evolution of language is the kinds of grammars that can be computed by humans and other animals. Fitch and Hauser (F&H; 2004) approached this question by assessing the ability of different species to learn 2 grammars, (AB)[superscript n] and A[superscript n] B[superscript n]. A[superscript n] B[superscript n] was taken to…

Formulaic language is widely recognized to be of central importance to fluent and idiomatic language use. However, the mechanics of how formulaic language is acquired are not well understood. Some researchers (e.g. Nick Ellis) believe that the chunking inherent in formulaic language drives the language learning process. Others (e.g. Wray) claim…

Noun-noun combinations like "dog scarf" are common in everyday discourse but often have more than one interpretation. How do language users arrive at an interpretation of the relationship between the two nouns? This paper reports three expression-picture matching experiments that used a priming paradigm to investigate the influence of modifier and…

Proposes a new system of analysis of English-for-Science-and-Technology data. The article reanalyzes data from previous grammatical-rhetorical interpretations and proposes that each grammatical tense/aspect form in English, including the passive, can be reduced to a semantic core that may be combined with one of several types into which predicate…

In this paper we argue that investigation of third language (L3) acquisition by adults and children provides essential new insights about the language learning process that neither the study of first language (L1) nor second language (L2) acquisition alone can provide. The focus of this paper concerns the role the learner's L1 plays in succeeding…