We used Barton and Sanford's (1993) anomaly detection task to investigate text processing differences between skilled and less-skilled readers. The results of 2 experiments showed that many readers had the tendency to process text in a shallow or incomplete manner, frequently failing to detect anomalous nouns or noun phrases (NPs) in text such as…

An important question in the study of language production is the nature of the semantic information that speakers use to create syntactic structures. A common answer to this question assumes that thematic roles help to mediate the mapping from messages to syntax. However, research using structural priming has suggested that the construction of…

The potential of online language learning has received much attention recently. This paper reports the design of an online writing system featuring learning support for non-native students during their writing process. The central premise is that in the online writing situation, students are in great need of writing aids. The proposed system…

This study investigates the phraseological patterning that occurs in reporting clauses used to make references to others' research. It examines finite reporting clauses with "that"-clause complement and draws upon two corpora of theses written by native speakers in contrasting disciplines: approximately 190,000 words in politics/international…

Although Keenan and Comrie's (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) has been shown to predict the difficulty order of relative clauses (RCs) in SLA, most studies of the NPAH have been on European languages. This paper tests the prediction for Japanese. Study 1 analyzes RCs in an oral interview corpus from 90 learners of Japanese at four…

This article discusses the reasons why Chinese learners of English avoid using phrasal verbs in an English community context or when using English as an inter-language in China. The avoidance of phrasal verbs often leads to ineffective communication. By adopting appropriate pedagogical and methodological approaches or providing proper guidance to…

Kaki Ae is a non-Austronesian language spoken by about 300 people on the south coast of Papua New Guinea, at best distantly related to any other language in that area. A brief grammar sketch of the language is presented, including discussion of the phonology, sentences, phrases, words, and morpheme categories. Kaki Ae phonemics include 11…

The internal structure of verb phrases (VPs) are investigated. Using the Path Containment Condition, as developed by May (1985), to establish relations between quantified arguments, this study draws two conclusions about the structure of argument-relations within VPs. First, arguments have binary relations with projections of the verb, and second,…

This study investigates the phenomenon of obligatory dative doubling, examining data based upon a critique of two analyses of clitic doubling in Spanish within different grammatical frameworks. Previous analyses propose that dative clitic doubling is obligatory whenever the Noun Phrase in indirect position is not a semantic Recipient/Addressee…

Recent proposals concerning the relationship between thematic structure and syntactic structure, including the idea of thematic hierarchy, when used with certain language-specific properties, offer insight into some problems concerning the Mandarin Chinese phrase structure condition (PSC). The PSC is such that the internal structure of XP contains…

It is proposed that syntactic processes (rules and constraints) may have a semantic basis. Evidence is presented that the constraint against backward pronominalization with indefinite antecedents derives from the semantic properties of various classes of definite noun phrases. (CK)

A discussion of Japanese topic construction argues that topicalization is merely an attachment of the topic particle "wa". It also proposes that other operations associated with this construction, such as movement and base-generation, are not specifically related to topicalization but can be explained in terms of more general rules of…

Discusses rules governing the intonation of French phrases and sentences. (Text is in French.) (RM)