The problem of providing a systematic understanding of Language Awareness (LA) is reviewed. Topics covered include principles behind the various terms used to refer to LA and types of knowledge about language, intervention, and the value of studying genre awareness. (39 references) (Author/LB)

Explores the importance of grammatical morphemes for constructing spatially organized situation models, especially how readers infer location in spatial models from prepositions and verb-aspect markers. Shows that grammatical units are as important as lexical units for guiding the construction of situation models during comprehension. (SR)

Provides evidence that automatic lexical priming is a product of an informationally specific lexical level network. An alternative account appealing to retrospective but automatic semantic integration processes is discussed.(52 references) (JL)

Considers specific aspects of phonological and orthographic processing in Chinese that may differ from those in English. Emphasizes that early phonological processes and phonological mediation are two different questions in the identification-with-phonology hypothesis. Shows that "mediation" and "prelexical phonology," two very…

Finds phonological priming effects on compound targets (characters containing separate radical components); no evidence of phonological priming on integrated targets (those not containing separate radicals); semantic priming effects on both compound and integrated target recognition, suggesting that phonological and semantic activation are…

Investigates how a person comprehends a subject-verb-object sentence. Obtains effects of both reference scope and location of superordinates. Supports a slot-filling model of sentence comprehension (which should apply to English as well as Chinese sentences) in which subjects successively create a slot for filling the previously integrated unit in…

Finds that, because kanji morphemes of opposite and similar concepts are semantically activated both as morpheme units and compound-word units, semantic representations of the two morphemes and the compound word which they create compete with each other at the concept level, which slows down lexical decision and naming of the compound word. (SR)

Focuses on the role of cognitive structures in the reader's knowledge. Argues that causality is an important category in structuring human knowledge and that this property has consequences for text processing. Discusses research illustrating that the more the information in the text reflects causal categories, the more easily the information is…

In a recent "Cognition" paper ("Cognition" 85 (2002) B21), Bornkessel, Schlesewsky, and Friederici report ERP data that they claim "show that online processing difficulties induced by word order variations in German cannot be attributed to the relative infrequency of the constructions in question, but rather appear to reflect the application of…

We present the results from an experiment that tests the perception of English consonantal sequences by Korean speakers and we confirm that perceptual epenthesis in a second language (L2) arises from syllable structure restrictions of the first language (L1), rather than linear co-occurrence restrictions. Our study replicates and extends Dupoux,…

In 2 picture-naming and 2 grammaticality judgment experiments, the authors explored how the phonological form of a word, especially its termination, affects gender processing by monolinguals and unbalanced bilinguals speaking German. The results of the 2 experiments with native German speakers yielded no significant differences: The reaction times…

Event-related potentials were measured as subjects read sentences presented word by word. A small N400 and a robust P600 effect were elicited by verbs that assigned the thematic role of Agent to their preceding noun-phrase argument when this argument was inanimate in nature. The amplitude of the P600, but not the N400, was modulated by the…

One of the tasks of language learning is the discovery of the intricate division of labour between the lexical-semantic content of an expression and the pragmatic inferences the expression can be used to convey. Here we investigate experimentally the development of the semantics-pragmatics interface, focusing on Greek-speaking five-year-olds'…

The influence of lexical stress and/or metrical stress on spoken word recognition was examined. Two experiments were designed to determine whether response times in lexical decision or shadowing tasks are influenced when primes and targets share lexical stress patterns (JUVenile-BIBlical [Syllables printed in capital letters indicate those…

This study investigates whether second language (L2) phonological learning can be characterized as a gradual and systematically patterned replacement of nonnative segments by native segments in learners' speech, conforming to a two-stage implicational scale. We adopt a dynamic approach to language variation based on Gatbonton's (1975, 1978)…