The purpose of the present research is to examine which of the two factors: (1) the iconic-semiotic factor; or (2) the human-phonetic factor is more relevant in explaining the appearance and distribution of the hand shape B-bent in Israeli Sign Language (ISL). The B-bent shape has been the subject of much attention in sign language research…

Suggests that many kinds of aphasic errors demonstrate what slips-of-the-tongue do, and that the study of aphasia can shed light on normal language processes. (Author/BK)

Women are better than men at verbal memory tasks, such as remembering word lists. These tasks depend on declarative memory. The declarative/procedural model of language, which posits that the lexicon of stored words is part of declarative memory, while grammatical composition of complex forms depends on procedural memory, predicts a female…

Up to two-thirds of African languages have a system of noun classification of some sort. This paper proposes an alternative approach to the noun class system of the Dagaare and Akan languages based more on an interaction between morphology and phonology than on semantics. Dagaare and Akan are two West African languages that exhibit mainly suffixal…

CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN VERB STEMS ENDING IN "I" HAVE TWO VARIANT NONFINAL SUFFIXES TO MARK IMPERFECTIVE ASPECT, "IVAJ" AND "AJ." PURELY PHONOLOGICAL FACTORS DO NOT SEEM TO DETERMINE WHICH PREFIX IS USED AND THERE IS LITTLE EVIDENCE FOR A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A PARTICULAR PREFIX AND A PREFERRED SUFFIX. IN MANY…

Analysis of Taiwanese tone sandhi, i.e., the various changes in tonemes as a result of their mutual influence on each other when used in conjunction. (RS)

The goal of the present study was to explore the pattern of lexical connections between translation equivalents represented in the cognitive system of an Arabic-Hebrew bilingual. To achieve this goal, repetition priming effects (reaction times (RTs) and accuracy measures) were compared between translation equivalents in the two forms of Arabic,…

Purpose: The purpose of this experiment was to determine if nonreferential morphophonological information was sufficient to facilitate the learning of gender subcategories (i.e., masculine vs. feminine) in individuals with normal language (NL) and those with a history of language-based learning disabilities (HLD). Method: Thirty-two adults…

THE RELATION IS EXAMINED BETWEEN SIMPLE VOWEL SOUNDS IN ENGLISH AND VOWELS ASSOCIATED WITH GLIDES, OR SEMIVOWELS, SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS "COMPOUND PHONEMES." THESE COMPLEX VOWEL NUCLEI PARTICIPATE IN MORPHOPHONEMIC ALTERNATIONS WITH SIMPLE VOWEL NUCLEI, AS FOR EXAMPLE, IN THE ALTERNATION OF VOWEL NUCLEI IN THE PAIR "SLEEP/SLEPT." THE SYSTEM…

A series of experiments employing an agreement-error elicitation task allowed the examination of the effects of variations in notional, lexical, and morphophonological features on the implementation of agreement between subject and verb in English. Results show that lexical number seems to dominate verb agreement. (64 references) (CP)

Examines the similarity of clitic to other syntactic relationships, such as modifier plus noun, and demonstrates that the consistency of linking in each case may reflect a syntactic unity justifying obligatory liaison. (MSE)

The articles in this report explore the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical research applications. Titles of the papers and their authors are as follows: (1) "Phonological Awareness: The Role of the Reading Experience" (Virginia A. Mann); (2) "An Investigation of Speech…

The phonemic effects of word length, consonant-vowel structure, syllable structure, and meaning on word segmentation were investigated in two experiments with young children. The decentration hypothesis, which predicts that children who habitually direct their attention to word meaning would concentrate better at analyzing a spoken form without…

An examination is made of the f o, or "pitch," contours which underly the five tones of Thai in an effort to describe their shapes and compare these descriptions with those of earlier phonetic accounts of the tones. (Author/RM)