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Purpose: The typicality treatment approach on improving naming was investigated within 2 inanimate categories (furniture and clothing) using a single-subject experimental design across participants and behaviors in 5 patients with aphasia. Method: Participants received a semantic feature treatment to improve naming of either typical or atypical items within semantic categories, whereas generalization was tested to untrained items of the category. The order of typicality and category trained was counterbalanced across participants. Results: Results indicated that 2 out of 4 patients trained on naming of atypical examples demonstrated generalization to naming untrained typical examples. One patient showed trends toward generalization but did not achieve criterion. Furthermore, all 4 patients trained on typical examples demonstrated no generalized naming to untrained atypical examples within the category. Also, analysis of errors indicated an evolution of errors as a result of treatment, from those with no apparent relationship to the target to primarily semantic and phonemic paraphasias. Conclusion: These results extend our previous findings (S. Kiran & C. K. Thompson, 2003a) to patients with nonfluent aphasia and to inanimate categories such as furniture and clothing. Additionally, the results provide support for the claim that training atypical examples is a more efficient method of facilitating generalization to untrained items within a category than training typical examples (S. Kiran, 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo enfoca en los sistemas de significación de la literatura policial y del psicoanálisis. Considera las tradiciones griegas de la significación y, utilizando la perspectiva del filósofo italiano Giorgio Agamben, explora los sistemas de significación de la literatura policial y el psicoanálisis de Freud y Lacán.

The article provides information about the variabilism in names and pronouns. The author proposed that names and pronouns have uniform semantic analysis which is the variables. Variabilism contains a semantic piece confirming that the reference of names can be controlled in the course of the compositional derivation of truth conditions. The term names are variables also signifies that names are directly referential and nondescriptive. Names can be also nonconstant and can be changed from default value set through context.

The traditional single-candidate learning model for anaphora resolution considers the antecedent candidates of an anaphor in isolation, and thus cannot effectively capture the preference relationships between competing candidates for its learning and resolution. To deal with this problem, we propose a twin-candidate model for anaphora resolution. The main idea behind the model is to recast anaphora resolution as a preference classification problem. Specifically, the model learns a classifier that determines the preference between competing candidates, and, during resolution, chooses the antecedent of a given anaphor based on the ranking of the candidates. We present in detail the framework of the twin-candidate model for anaphora resolution. Further, we explore how to deploy the model in the more complicated coreference resolution task. We evaluate the twin-candidate model in different domains using the Automatic Content Extraction data sets. The experimental results indicate that our twin-candidate model is superior to the single-candidate model for the task of pronominal anaphora resolution. For the task of coreference resolution, it also performs equally well, or better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the philosophical meanings of icon, index, and symbol. It discusses the distinction among these three which are considered as kinds of signification or the three kinds of relationship between a sign and its object. It is stated that icons signify objects by resembling them, indices signify objects paradigmatically by being in contact with them physically via causation or through copresence, and symbols are the triadic signification of objects using some kinds of conventions or rules

Abstract: Pronouns typically have explicit antecedents in the prior discourse otherwise processing difficulty is experienced. However, it has been argued [Gordon, P. C., & Hendrick, R. (1997). Intuitive knowledge of linguistic co-reference. Cognition, 62, 325–370; Gordon, P. C., & Hendrick, R. (1998). The representation and processing of co-reference in discourse. Cognitive Science, 22, 389–424] that when a pronoun appears in a preposed subordinate clause (as in, Before she began to sing, Susan stood up), incremental interpretation is suspended and no antecedent is immediately sought, since the pronoun cannot be resolved until the main clause is encountered. We report results from an eye-tracking study showing that on encountering a pronoun that has no prior antecedent (compared to cases where there is an explicit prior antecedent), readers experience immediate difficulty whether or not the pronoun appears in a preposed subordinate clause, suggesting that attempted incremental interpretation is not suspended in these cases. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper argues that two distinct and independent notions of plurality are involved in natural language anaphora and quantification: plural reference (the usual non-atomic individuals) and plural discourse reference, i.e., reference to a quantificational dependency between sets of objects (e.g., atomic/non-atomic individuals) that is established and subsequently elaborated upon in discourse. Following van den Berg (PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1996), plural discourse reference is modeled as plural information states (i.e., as sets of variable assignments) in a new dynamic system couched in classical type logic that extends Compositional DRT (Muskens, Linguistics and Philosophy, 19, 143–186, 1996). Given the underlying type logic, compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically and standard techniques from Montague semantics become available. The idea that plural info states are semantically necessary (in addition to non-atomic individuals) is motivated by relative-clause donkey sentences with multiple instances of singular donkey anaphora that have mixed (weak and strong) readings. At the same time, allowing for non-atomic individuals in addition to plural info states enables us to capture the intuitive parallels between singular and plural (donkey) anaphora, while deriving the incompatibility between singular (donkey) anaphora and collective predicates. The system also accounts for empirically unrelated phenomena, e.g., the uniqueness effects associated with singular (donkey) anaphora discussed in Kadmon ( Linguistics and Philosophy, 13, 273–324, 1990) and Heim ( Linguistics and Philosophy, 13, 131–177, 1990) among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Readers immediately slow down when an anaphor (e.g. herself) refers to an antecedent that mismatches in stereotypical gender (e.g. minister). The mismatch-cost has been attributed to a clash between the gender of the pronoun and the gender associated with the stereotypical role noun. However, the nature of such stereotypical gender is still controversial; according to the mental models approach it is inferred from world knowledge, while according to a lexical view it is stored as part of the lexical representation. We report two eye-tracking experiments designed to investigate the processing of stereotypical gender. In these experiments stereotypical nouns (e.g. minister) are contrasted with definitional nouns (e.g. king) in which gender information is part of the definition of the word. Experiment 1 shows that in anaphora sentences, where the role noun is presented earlier than the reflexive that conveys gender information, stereotypical and definitional gender nouns lead to a similar mismatch-cost. Experiment 2 shows that in cataphora sentences, where the reflexive precedes the stereotypical noun, a mismatch-cost is exhibited only for definitional gender nouns. These results indicate that stereotypical gender can be overridden when gender is specified by prior discourse, unlike lexically defined gender. We discuss the differences between these noun types and their implications for the representation and processing of stereotypical gender. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper starts out from the observation that the semantic labels of ‘fact’ and ‘action’ (Lees 1968[1960]) that are traditionally used in the description of English gerundive nominalizations (e.g. I worry that my posing the question defines me as a depressive) cannot distinguish gerundives from so-called action - ing nouns (e.g. Saddam's targeting of Israel) and also fail to capture the more subtle semantic distinctions within the system of gerundive nominalization. The descriptive analysis that is presented tries to move beyond the action/fact dichotomy, is firmly grounded in the nominal-constructional properties of the system and covers all subtypes of gerundive nominalization. Building on Schachter (1976), it argues that gerundive - ing nominalizations have shifted from the representational semantics of action - ing nouns to a more schematic, constructional semantics: gerundives, it is suggested, nominalize either a type or kind of process, with no subject implied, or they nominalize an instance of a process, characterized by the (clausal-)constructional link which it implies between the process type and a subject (Davidse 1997, Heyvaert 2003). The system of gerundive nominalization exploits all nominal-constructional options which it has within the structure of the NP to encode the absence or presence of this subject. Gerundives thus opt for non-specific, generic reference to encode the name of a type or class of process (with no subject implied) or to encode an instance with generic reference. They use specific (definite or indefinite) reference to designate a specific, non-generic instance. The subject is either included in the nominalized clausal unit (and in the oblique case), or it is encoded through nominal means: in the form of bare definite reference of the gerundive NP (signalling control by the matrix clause or anaphoric/exophoric reference with the co(n)text), or in the form of a possessive/genitive determiner. The analysis that is proposed sheds new light on previously undifferentiated categories of gerundive nominalization (such as the control type of bare gerundives), as well as points to interesting resemblances between gerundive nominalization and diachronic changes in other systems of deverbal nominalization. Crucially, it also allows for a better understanding of the semantics of the system and its differences with action - ing nominals, whose nominal-constructional options do not revolve around encoding the presence or absence of a subject but instead allow for a wide range of modifying elements and determiners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the beneficial effect of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) in relation to the national language education policies. She claims that CEFR can contribute to the development of language education policies in spite of its multifaceted nature and complexity. She cites three areas that emphasize the significant role of CEFR in education. One of them is the crucial role of a frame for the policy-making in language education.

The author comments on the illustrative scale descriptors of the Common European Framework of Reference (CFR). He claims that the illustrative scale descriptors of the CFR have a good degree of validity despite the fact that their used formulation are not based on the second language acquisition research. However, he says that more users are complaining about these descriptors due to the absence of sociocultural and reading literature aspects.

The article presents the author's analysis on the word "unAustralian." He notes that the term is more than just a vehicle for abuse and interprets it as a form of self-reference. He stresses that its real function is to credential the speaker. Moreover, he suggests that the term, precisely by dint of being so tautological in reference, has an additional, phatic function. It points an end to the possibility of intelligent discourse within the particular speech situation in which it is uttered. Arguments of the author relative to its meaning are provided.

This paper presents data on the Azoyú Tlapanec reference tracking system. The system is analyzed according to a procedure where default rules for how the system works are formulated and deviations are interpreted as being licensed by different levels of grammar organization along the lines of the local-global parameter proposed by Comrie (1989). The system is compared to its closest common typological congeners, obviation and switch-reference. Although it bears more resemblances to obviation, the system is neither clearly one of switch-reference, nor, indeed, of obviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of debate about what constitutes applied linguistics brings with it an uncritical acceptance of views that deserve to be contested. Moreover, it leads to an ignorance of the historical influence of such views, which directly affects the basis of applied linguistics research and the training of professionals in the field. Since attempts to use more inclusive and desirable terms have been unsuccessful, Young (2005: 43) has now suggested that we revisit the idea of characterising applied linguistics as a discipline of design (Weideman, 1983; 1987; 1999; 2003). This characterisation of applied linguistics is itself not wholly uncontroversial, however, and calls up valid points of critique. The paper will discuss the reasons why such criticism is valid with reference to the various traditional (modernist) definitions of applied linguistics, and the variety of postmodemist definitions that have emerged. The paper will argue, finally, that, while modernist definitions of the field have emphasised the theoretical, scientific basis of the discipline, and postmodernist definitions identify (social and political) accountability as the critical feature of the endeavour, the discipline of applied linguistics finds its characteristic feature in the moment of design. The paper concludes with how one might give a systematic explanation of this characterisation, in terms of a foundational, philosophical perspective. It finds that the contributions of both modernist and postmodernist approaches to applied linguistics can be honoured, and that this will allow us both to train professional applied linguists responsibly, and to do research that takes each of the various emphases into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two eye-tracking studies assessed effects of grammatical and conceptual gender cues in generic role name processing in German. Participants read passages about a social or occupational group introduced by way of a generic role name (e.g., Soldaten/soldiers, Künstler/artists). Later in the passage the gender of this group was specified by the anaphoric expression diese Männer/these men or diese Frauen/these women. Testing masculine generic role names of male, female or neutral conceptual gender (Exp. 1) showed that a gender mismatch between the role name’s conceptual gender and the anaphor significantly slowed reading immediately before and after the anaphoric noun. A mismatch between the antecedent’s grammatical gender and the anaphor slowed down the reading of the anaphoric noun itself. Testing grammatically gender-unmarked role names (Exp. 2) revealed a general male bias in participants’ understanding, irrespective of grammatical or conceptual gender. The experiments extend previous findings on gender effects to non-referential role names and generic contexts. Theoretical aspects of gender and plural reference as well as gender information in mental models are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a model of narrative reference by showing that the organization of meaning in narrative is congruent with the structure of space and time. In making this connection, the article's principal methodological tool is mathematical catastrophe theory. Specifically, it is shown that narratives like Hesiod's Homeric Hymn to Demeter can be construed as hypersurfaces that permit a number of critical transformations between stable regions of thematic value. It is argued that this approach is superior to cognitivist theories of reference because it avoids the vicious circle of displacing the referential function of narrative on to psychic schemas that have themselves a narrative structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed theoretical extensions of Huttenlocher, Hedges, and Duncan's (1991) category-adjustment model of human spatial memory to incorporate the use of fuzzy boundaries and cue-determined prototypes. In two experiments, people reproduced locations of dots in a circle, while the number of external reference cues varied. In Experiment 1, the task field was stable and results were consistent with the use of fixed categories unaffected by number of cues. In Experiment 2, the task field was made dynamic by rotation on most trials, with results evaluated for nonrotation trials. The large cue effects observed for angular bias were consistent with the proposed cue-based fuzzy-boundary model. Large cue effects were also observed for absolute error, consistent with a model in which proximity to cues predicts stability of memory. Results point to the key role of orientation to the task environment in determining whether categorical encoding is based on cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Temporal nouns such as week, month, and year have two meanings: “even units,” e.g. from January to December, and “arbitrary periods,” e.g. any 12 months. The disambiguates the meanings of these temporal nouns preceded by last/next: Ønext week means “from Sunday to Saturday,” e.g. Next week will be fun, and the next week “the next seven days,” e.g. The next week will be fun. Decade and century also have two meanings; however, they do not usually combine with Ølast/next. Consequently, the last decade, for example, refers to either “the 1990s” or “the past 10 years.” Based on the analyses of tokens from the 1996 LA Times and New York Times corpora, this paper argues that the following five factors are involved in interpreting the last/next + decade/century: prepositions, tense, other lexical clues, pragmatic world knowledge, and relevance to the utterance time. Furthermore, two questionnaires containing authentic sentences from the two corpora were used to supplement these corpus findings. Thirty educated native speakers of American English living on the West Coast answered the questionnaires, the analyses of which support the aforementioned findings and also reveal that native speakers do not agree on what preposition to use for which interpretation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The description of referential processes -- semantic, pragmatic and cognitive -- is provided. Descriptions defined by the definite article interpret the definiteness in the textual and discursive reference. A theoretical and analytic apparatus is thus constructed that accounts for the designative nature of definite descriptions with regard to their concrete/abstract qualities; with referentiating operations, or rather, referential retrieval, remission and construction; with cognitive and pragmatic and discursive sources that establish the bases of definiteness interpreted by a definite description. The referential description of a corpus of 207 definite descriptions taken from a text in rhetorical literature is provided. The main premise, based on quantitative data with 140 definite descriptions (67.6%) from the active archive, is that the definiteness of a definite expression is not a priori established, but is built within the inner core of discursiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the feature inheritance model of phase theory that was proposed by Chomsky (2005) and offers a revision that would remove a potential conceptual flaw in the theory. An edge-to-nonedge feature inheritance mechanism--related to basic premises of cyclic/phasal spell-out in conformance with Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT)--leads to the realization of a distinction in A-positions created by movement for the Agree and edge features. The argument is based on the idea that phase heads cannot drive operations unless there is mediation by a nonphase head, which synchronizes valuation and transfer.

The article discusses the implication of semantic position, which is an evaluative stance with respect to how someone's reasoning ought to be appraised and what criterion of argument-goodness ought to be applied. It cites a case of a boy who was confused of the two ants and mistakenly recognizes that the two ants are the same. Thus, the error of which a confused person is guilty is not the error of believing something false de re. However, philosopher Hartry Field's theory change and the indeterminancy of reference recommends a supervaluational approach to the problem of confusion. However, the author believes that the confused sentences of a confused person can be usefully evaluated as True of False because such sentences do not fit the world tightly enough to be evaluated.

The article examines the objections of Howard Wettstein to the traditional views of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell to language that sees the application of words, proper names for example, as supervening on the mind’s grasp of the referent. A brief discussion of Wettstein's own Wittgensteinean approach to reference. According to the author, Wettstein is suspicious not only of the Frege/Russell approach to understanding reference, but the uncomfortably close aspects of direct reference theories ‘‘borrowed’’ from Frege or Russell

The article discusses the Kaplan-Perry approach to cognition and theory of reference in the book "The Magic Prism," by Howard Wettstein. According to the author, the Kaplan-Perry picture of reference and cognition is not overtly Fregean, but it is compatible with a subtler and deeper form of Fregeanism. Kaplan’s approach to indexicals rejects the overtly Fregean view that propositions expressed by utterances of sentences contain the semantic mechanisms from the point of view of weak direct reference. The author reflects on the role that Wettstein's criticism of the "Kaplan-Perry" approach has in opening the door to such considerations.

Abstract: Two story-telling experiments examine the process of choosing between pronouns and proper names in speaking. Such choices are traditionally attributed to speakers striving to make referring expressions maximally interpretable to addressees. The experiments revealed a novel effect: even when a pronoun would not be ambiguous, the presence of another character in the discourse decreased pronoun use and increased latencies to refer to the most prominent character in the discourse. In other words, speakers were more likely to call Minnie Minnie than she when Donald was also present. Even when the referent character appeared alone in the stimulus picture, the presence of another character in the preceding discourse reduced pronouns. Furthermore, pronoun use varied with features associated with the speaker’s degree of focus on the preceding discourse (e.g., narrative style and disfluency). We attribute this effect to competition for attentional resources in the speaker’s representation of the discourse. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Laryngeal realism (Honeybone 2005) holds that thoroughly voiced stops in a language like Dutch will be represented phonologically with the feature [voice], leaving the voiceless unaspirated stops laryngeally neutral, whereas the typically aspirated stops of a language like German are marked with the feature [spread glottis], rendering the passively voiced stops in this language neutral. These two languages also merge laryngeal oppositions in final environments, Dutch undergoing final devoicing but German final fortition. We apply the findings of Evolutionary Phonology (Blevins 2004, 2006b) to these distinctions in final laryngeal neutralisation, underscoring that the evolutionary approach to phonological alternation allows for non-assimilatory feature addition as well as loss. We examine in particular the known history of final fortition in German and find that the reference standard form of the language has evolved an alignment condition to the effect that a fortified syllable edge must match up with the morpheme edge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of categorical person reference terms such as 'woman', 'gentleman', 'lady', etc. (sometimes referred to as 'membership categorisation devices') has seemed to offer a solution to the problem of when gender is relevant in talk, since it is widely taken for granted that a speaker who refers to herself (or another) as - for example - a 'woman' is showing herself to be oriented to gender, thereby warranting the analyst's treatment of her as such. Based on conversation analysis of a single recorded interaction, this paper shows that 'woman' is not necessarily relevantly gendered for participants, and that - even when it is - it is not only gender, and in fact not most saliently gender, that is always achieved through its use. It suggests that an exclusive preoccupation with the production of the category term 'woman' and its associated attributes as the main focus of analysis obscures the actions in which participants are also, or otherwise, engaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Almor's (1999) cost-function analysis of referential processing, we hypothesized that reading times of metaphoric anaphors are affected by readers' working memory ability and reflect a balance between discourse function and processing cost. The results from 2 self-paced reading experiments supported this hypothesis. Low-span participants always read sentences with metaphoric anaphors slower than sentences with literal anaphors. In contrast, high-span participants did not take longer to read sentences with metaphoric anaphors than those with literal anaphors when the preceding context activated enough information to facilitate reference resolution. However, when the context activated so much information that the metaphor's function was obviated, high-span readers suffered and again read sentences with metaphoric anaphors more slowly than sentences with literal anaphors. These results show that, as with other types of anaphors, processing metaphoric anaphors is affected by working memory performance, and that the balance between processing cost and discourse function varies with working memory ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar that accounts for anaphors that occupy an exempt position. A discussion is presented about noncomplementary positions of anaphors and situations where both reflexive nouns and nonreflexive nouns could be used. Details related to subject anaphora in Thai and Chinese languages are presented, along with analysis of specific anaphors that occupy an exempt or noncomplementary position and local anaphors that take a clause-internal antecedent.

I consider two interpretive properties of long-distance anaphors: (a) they have only a pure-reflexive reading, in the sense that they fail to refer to portrayals of their antecedent, and (b) whenever possible, they must be interpreted as de se, or to put it better, as first-personal. Long-distance anaphors seem to be interpretively parallel to local reflexive construals such as those seen with inherent reflexivity and constructions of inalienable possession. Moreover, in some languages, such as Chinese and Italian, long-distance anaphors can also be locally bound, and in such cases, they pattern with self anaphors rather than with inherent reflexives. To account for this pattern, I propose that long-distance anaphors, together with the local construals mentioned above, are the spell-out of an unsaturated position, saturated in the course of the derivation via θ-identification with the antecedent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the aid of some results from current linguistic theory, I examine a recent anti-Fregean line with respect to hybrid talk of numbers and ordinary things, such as ‘The number of moons of Jupiter is four’. I conclude that the anti-Fregean line with respect to these sentences is indefensible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reference to properties is normally achieved by the use of nominalizations of predicative expressions. I examine the relation between different kinds of these: while, traditionally, the terms ‘wisdom’ and ‘the property of being wise’ were thought to be co-referential, in certain contexts they do not seem to be interchangeable salva veritate. Observing this, Friederike Moltmann claims that abstract nouns such as ‘wisdom’ do not refer to properties. I argue that her theory is flawed and that the existence of the problematic contexts should be explained in non-referential terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It makes sense that the more information people share, the better they communicate. To evaluate the effect of knowledge overlap on the effectiveness of communication, participants played a communication game where the "director" identified objects to the "addressee". Pairs either shared information about most objects' names (high overlap), or about the minority of objects' names (low overlap). We found that high-overlap directors tended to use more names than low overlap directors. High overlap directors also used more names with objects whose names only they knew, thereby confusing their addressees more often than low-overlap directors.We conclude that while sharing more knowledge can be beneficial to communication overall, it can cause communication to be locally ineffective. Sharing more information reduces communication effectiveness precisely when there is an opportunity to inform—when people communicate information only they themselves know. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This methodological intervention proposes that the typical conversation sets up or modifies Micro Knowledge Profiles by using (partly anaphoric) discourse devices of Thick Cross-referencing; and that a certain type of translation procedure maps from such knowledge on to Macro Acquaintance Profiles. In a typical conversation, partners already acquainted with each other and with various matters renew their acquaintance. This renewal has consequences modifying their knowledge profiles and their action plans. The details that make the conversation flow have to be set aside for the translation procedure to see the consequences of a conversation. The widespread desire to accurately profile the involvement of persons in conversations and the impossibility of telling any conversation-detached truth has been bringing about a mutation in the way we officially share and transmit knowledge; this mutation can be usefully called the Conversational Turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aprimary goal of behavioural interventions aimed at teaching skills is to establish generative responding. Recombinative generalization, which has been defined as the demonstration of novel arrangements of previously established linguistic units, is a process involved in generative responding. Successful recombinations contribute to the development of a functional, not rote, language repertoire that often generalizes across stimuli, responses, and time. Although research on recombinative generalization began some 80 years ago, understanding of this process is still not complete. Furthermore, programming for successful recombinations when teaching language and reading to typically and not‐typically developing children is still minimal. The early recombinative generalization studies worked on a “miniature linguistic system”; the referential stimuli (words) were arranged in a pattern that included all possible combinations of the dimensions of interest. Matrix training approaches to recombinative generalization showed how to produce functional language. In the present paper, I will (1) review research on recombinative generalization, (2) discuss conditions necessary for successful recombinations, and (3) make suggestions for practice relating to recombinative generalization. The discrimination required for successful recombinations fits well in the definition of “abstraction”: a discrimination based on a single property of a stimulus, independent of other properties; thus, generalization to other stimuli with that property. Abstraction is demonstrated when an individual correctly identifies untrained stimuli based on property of interest. Recombinative generalization contributes to achieving functional language. Further research on recombinative generalization will broaden the understanding of basic processes and their application to teaching language and early literacy skills.L'objectif primaire des interventions comportementales qui visent à enseigner des compétences est d'établir une génération de réponse. La généralisation recombinante, définie comme étant une démonstration de nouveaux arrangements des unités linguistiques établies préalablement, est un processus qui implique la génération de réponse. Les recombinaisons réussies contribuent au développement d'un répertoire de langage fonctionnel, pas mécanique, qui se généralise souvent à travers les stimuli et le temps. Même si la recherche sur la généralisation recombinante a débuté quelque 80 ans plus tôt, la compréhension de ce processus est toujours incomplète. De plus, la programmation pour des recombinaisons réussies est encore minimale pendant l'enseignement d'une langue ainsi que de la lecture à des enfants qui se développent typiquement et des enfants atypiques. Les premières études portant sur la généralisation recombinante ont porté sur le «système linguistique miniature»; les stimuli référentiels (les mots) étaient arrangés selon un patron qui a inclus toutes les combinaisons possibles des dimensions d'intérêt. Les approches fondées sur une matrice d'entraînement pour la généralisation recombinante ont montré une production de langage fonctionnel. Dans le présent article, l'auteur: (1) révisera la recherche sur la généralisation recombinante, (2) discutera les conditions nécessaires pour la réussite des recombinaisons, et (3) proposera des suggestions pour la pratique reliées à la généralisation recombinante. La discrimination requise pour la réussite des recombinaisons entre bien dans la définition de «l'abstraction»: une discrimination basée sur la propriété unique d'un stimulus, indépendamment des autres propriétés; d'où la généralisation à d'autres stimuli avec la même propriété. L'abstraction est démontrée lorsqu'un individu identifie correctement les stimuli sans entraînement en se basant sur la propriété d'intérêt. La généralisation recombinante contribue à parvenir au langage fonctionnel. La recherche future sur la généralisation recombinante élargira la compréhension des processus de base et de leur application à l'enseignement d'une langue et aux capacités précoces d'alphabétisation.Una meta fundamental de las intervenciones conductuales que buscan enseñar habilidades es establecer respuestas generativas. La generalización recombinatoria que se define como la demostración de arreglos novedosos de unidades lingüísticas previamente establecidas, es un proceso que toma parte en las respuestas generativas. Las recombinaciones exitosas contribuyen al desarrollo de un repertorio funcional del lenguaje, no mecánico, que con frecuencia se generaliza a través de los estímulos, las respuestas y del tiempo. Aunque la investigación acerca de la generalización recombinatoria comenzó hace aproximadamente 80 años, el proceso no se entiende completamente. Más aún, la programación de recombinaciones exitosas para enseñar lenguaje y lectura a niños con desarrollo típico y con desarrollo atípico, es todavía mínimo. Los estudios iniciales sobre generalización recombinatoria se referían a “sistemas lingüísticos en miniatura”; los estímulos de referencia (palabras) se organizaban en una pauta que incluía todas las posibles combinaciones de las dimensiones de interés. Los enfoques de matriz de entrenamiento para investigar la generalización recombinatoria mostraron que produce lenguaje funcional. En el presente artículo, la autora: (1) revisa la investigación sobre generalización recombinatoria, (2) discute las condiciones necesarias para las recombinaciones exitosas, y (3) presenta sugerencias para la práctica relacionada con la generalización recombinatoria. La discriminación que se requiere para combinaciones exitosas encaja bien en la definición de “abstracción”: una discriminación basada en una sola propiedad de un estímulo independiente de las otras propiedades; en esta forma ocurre la generalización a otros estímulos que posean esa propiedad. La abstracción se demuestra cuando un individuo identifica correctamente sin entrenamiento estímulos basados en esta propiedad que nos interesa. La generalización recombinatoria contribuye al logro del lenguaje funcional. Investigaciones adicionales sobre la generalización recombinatoria aumentará nuestra comprensión de los procesos básicos y de su aplicación a la enseñanza del lenguaje y a las habilidades tempranas de lecto‐escritura. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polynesian and Micronesian languages inherited a decimal number system from Proto-Oceanic, and individually extended it on one or more dimensions: in length by adding terms for larger numbers, in breadth by specifying numeral classifiers for certain objects (prevailing in Micronesia), and in factor by introducing a larger counting unit (prevailing in Polynesia). Specific counting systems are characterized by a combination of these features: They are based on larger counting units (multiplication function) and apply to certain objects only (object specificity). This paper surveys the distribution of each extension type in Polynesian and Micronesian number systems, characterizes the features that they share, and analyzes the constitutive role that numeral classifiers play for specific counting systems. It is concluded that in most of these languages, number systems are composed according to similar principles, while the divergence in classifiers, objects of reference, and factors chosen results from cultural adaptations, some of which might have been responses to socioeconomic requirements and served purposes of cognitive facilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The languages of the small Nyulnyulan family of the far northwest of Western Australia all exhibit a grammatical category traditionally dubbed irrealis. In this paper we describe the grammatical expression of this category, and its range of meanings and uses. It is argued that these can be accounted for as contextual senses or pragmatic inferences based on a single encoded core meaning, that the referent situation is construed by the speaker as unrealized. This semantic component remains invariant across all uses of the category, and is not defeasible. Contra claims by some investigators, the realis-irrealis mood contrast is fundamental, and encapsulates a viable conceptual contrast between real and unreal events; epistemic and deontic notions of probability, necessity, desirability, and the like are secondary pragmatic inferences. The irrealis is thus a modal category that can grammaticalize in human languages; indeed, it is a communicatively useful category. We explicate the nature of the conceptual contrast between the construed real and unreal. It is further argued that the notion of scope is essential to an understanding of the irrealis, and its interaction with other mode-like categories. Finally, we situate the Nyulnyulan irrealis in the wider cross-linguistic context of irrealis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the state where complement clauses becomes self-referential. It states that misinterpretation could happen particularly when hypotheses and assumptions are applied by the speaker of a language who does not have the knowledge on truth conditions and syntactic structure. It emphasizes the need for content-matching in using complement clauses.

The article reports on the discussion of Scott Soames on the linguistic practice, descriptive reference-fixing, as applied to names. Soames emphasizes the need for the practice to be restricted in some point. It also presents the strategy suggested by Soames and Saul Kripke but the author raises the problems with the strategy and does not agree that the strategy provides reason for the illegitimacy of the unrestricted descriptive reference-fixing of names.

The article discusses the use of singular terms such as demonstratives, indexicals and names in semantics. It shows how singular terms are use to refer in semantics as singular terms seems to make reference of the things or words they designate. It also suggests different approaches for singular terms which are ambiguity approach, single semantics approach and no semantic approach.

Developing academic, or school-based, literacy poses a significant challenge for many students, because the language through which academic subjects are presented is markedly different from the social language that students use in everyday ordinary life. This article focuses on one aspect of academic language, the functions of nouns and nominal structures in constructing knowledge in different subject areas and the challenges they present for comprehension of academic texts. Using a functional linguistics framework and analyzing written texts from language arts, science, and history, at elementary and secondary levels, we illustrate the ways nominal expressions expand the amount of information in a clause, establish and maintain reference, and enable information to be distilled and further expanded. We also show how the semantic features of the nominal elements vary in different academic registers, as texts introduce grammatical "participants" of different types according to the purposes of the text. We suggest that the notion of linguistic register offers a means of transcending debates about academic language, enabling a pedagogy that can raise students' consciousness about specific grammatical resources and how those resources function to construct knowledge in the language of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper identifies two basic dangers threatening linguistic analyses of potential barriers to communication. With the famous controversy over the Kuhnian concept of normal science as an example of academic discourse at cross-purposes, the author shows how taking for granted either of the two dominant models of signification can result in a petitio principii or else lead to a frustrating fight against communicational scepticism. In conclusion, there is a suggestion of a possibly helpful theoretical reorientation of thinking about signification and communication. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the past few decades, the social sciences have turned decidedly away from essentialist and reductionist ways of theorizing race and its articulations with nation and class. Though invaluable in advancing the social-scientific study and critique of race and racism, this turn has led many to conceptualize race increasingly as an empty signifier whose articulations with nation and class are wholly a matter of contingency This article suggests that we reengage the project of theorizing the insistent, historically recurrent articulations of race, nation, and class without falling into the old traps of essentialism, reductionism, and ahistoricism. Taking colonial Hawai'i as an example, this article analyzes how these categories articulated to racialize Japanese and Filipino migrant labor differentially in the age of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sentence describing a spatial relationship includes at least two objects: a located object and a reference object. The presence of an extra object in a scene that is recognized as neither a located nor a reference object, reduces the acceptability of spatial terms related to the spatial relationship between reference and located objects under given conditions (Carlson & Logan, 2001). However, it is still unclear how the overall acceptability distribution of a spatial term changes in a scene when an extra object is present in various locations. In this study, we examined this point, using the paired comparison method with Thurstone's law of judgment (Case V). The results showed that an extra object had both relative increase and reduction effects on the overall acceptability distribution of a spatial term. This suggests that our linguistic apprehension of the spatial relationship is biased intricately by the presence of extra objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to address the relation of materiality to structure and phenomena of signification or semiosis. It examines the logical consequences of several major lines of argument concerning the status of semiosis with regards to the human or broadly "organic" life-world and to the "zero degree" of base materiality — from Peirce to Lotman and Sebeok — and questions the classificatory rationale that delimits semiosis to the exclusion of a general treatment of dynamic systems. Recent investigations into neurosemiotics have provided salient arguments for the need to treat semiosis as a characteristic of systems in general, and to establish a more transverse understanding of signifiability upon the basis of what makes dynamic structures, as such, possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postal (1969) discusses words as anaphoric islands. So-called OUTBOUND ANAPHORA was further discussed in a series of papers published in the 1970s through the early 1990s, but INBOUND ANAPHORA, such as Postal's "himite" (beside "McCarthyite"), has received less attention. It is shown here that a wide variety of words in Georgian are based on pronouns, including fully referential personal pronouns, reflexive pronouns, question words, quantifiers, and negative pronouns. Thus, the nonoccuring combinations of English are a language-particular problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Menggwa Dla possesses a switch-reference (SR) system which traditionally functions like those in many other Papuan languages. However, in the speech of younger speakers, the proper reference-tracking function of the SR markers has only been retained when the person-number-gender features of the subject crossreference suffixes are incapable of disambiguating their referentiality. Otherwise, the coreferential (CR) chain verb forms have become the unmarked SR-neutral chain verb forms. While the disjoint-referential (DR) chain verb forms still indicate the disjoint-reference of the interclausal subjects, the DR chain verb forms are mainly used to indicate some sort of discourse discontinuity (e.g. temporal discontinuity, logic discontinuity) in addition to participant discontinuity. It will be demonstrated that the older speakers' traditional SR system in Menggwa Dla is a canonical SR system which primarily indicates participant continuity versus discontinuity, whereas the younger speakers' innovative SR system is more biased towards the function of reference-tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work aims to explore children's abilities to resolve anaphoric expressions. Anaphors are linguistic devices used to refer to previously mentioned concepts. Most of the studies on this subject were conducted to understand how adult deal with anaphors. It was observed that several factors can influence the relative accessibility of antecedent information and the ease of anaphor resolution, among them the degree of explicitness (Gernsbacher, 1990) and the distance between the anaphors and its antecedents (Carreiras, Garnham, & Oakhill, 1996). Explicitness refers to the degree to which anaphors share features with the appropriate antecedent. Anaphors can take many forms ranging along a continuum in terms of this factor. In several experiments it was found that explicit anaphors are resolved more quickly and easily than less explicit anaphors. Within the framework of comprehension models it was postulated that the information of the anaphors, their explicitness, controls how rapidly and powerfully they trigger suppression and enhancement (Gernsbacher, 1990). With respect to distance, its influence may be due to the mechanisms of suppression triggered by other concepts introduced between the anaphor and its referent (O'Brien et al., 1997). The purpose of this study is to start exploring anaphor resolution in young Spanish speaking children considering the influence of explicitness and distance. It also aims to examine the differences, if any, on comprehension skills between children from middle-income homes and from low-income families since it has been shown that children raised in poverty often have limited exposure to books. The limited experience may have a negative effect on children's comprehension performance. Two groups of second and two groups of third grades children, one from low-income and one from middle-income families in each grade, participated in the study. Twenty one experimental texts were constructed, three texts for each anaphoric expression: repetition, noun phrase, synonym, gender-explicit pronoun, gender-ambiguous pronoun, semantic superordinate and zero anaphor. Three versions of each text were written to get three levels of distance between the potential anaphor and the antecedent. The versions were formed by two sentences, three sentences and four sentences being the antecedent in the first sentence and the anaphor in the last one. At the end of each text a question was presented about the referent of the action or state mentioned in the last sentence. Children were tested individually. The texts and the questions were read to them. Results showed that groups from middle-income families had a better performance than groups from low-income ones. This difference was statistically significant between the second grade groups in the responses to all the anaphoric expressions, except in the case of the repeat anaphor; between the third grade groups the difference was only significant in gender-ambiguous pronouns. The distance between the anaphor and its referent had no systematic effect on children's performance. These results may be due to the fact that the task was not very demanding and allowed sufficient computation time (Long, & Logan, 2000). On the contrary, the influence of explicitness was apparent in the responses of all groups of children; this factor especially affected the performance of second grade group from low-income homes. Gender-ambiguous pronouns were very difficult to resolve for all children. Overall results suggest that children had not developed enough processing abilities to use information from the various sources that contribute to the resolution of anaphoric expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare two ways of obtaining lexical knowledge for antecedent selection in other-anaphora and definite noun phrase coreference. Specifically, we compare an algorithm that relies on links encoded in the manually created lexical hierarchy WordNet and an algorithm that mines corpora by means of shallow lexico-semantic patterns. As corpora we use the British National Corpus (BNC), as well as the Web, which has not been previously used for this task. Our results show that (a) the knowledge encoded in WordNet is often insufficient, especially for anaphor-antecedent relations that exploit subjective or context-dependent knowledge; (b) for other-anaphora, the Web-based method outperforms the WordNet-based method; (c) for definite NP coreference, the Web-based method yields results comparable to those obtained using WordNet over the whole data set and outperforms the WordNet-based method on subsets of the data set; (d) in both case studies, the BNC-based method is worse than the other methods because of data sparseness. Thus, in our studies, the Web-based method alleviated the lexical knowledge gap often encountered in anaphora resolution and handled examples with context-dependent relations between anaphor and antecedent. Because it is inexpensive and needs no hand-modeling of lexical knowledge, it is a promising knowledge source to integrate into anaphora resolution systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present article is to present an empirical study carried out with a small group of Spanish university students of the English Studies degree programme on the reading of the short story ‘Quenby and Ola, Swede and Carl’, by Robert Coover. The objective of the study is to explore the way in which students assign reference to the personal pronouns you, she and he in key sections of the story. Reference assignment is crucial not only for the understanding of the characters who are present in given scenes of the story, but also for the understanding of the story as a whole. The empirical analysis is based on the theoretical assumption that reference is a cognitive-textual process which requires an analysis of the process of reading as changeable and dynamic. Thus, the present analysis focuses on the way in which different students modify their assumptions about the relations between characters in the story depending on how they have assigned reference to the personal pronouns. This reveals that the interpretation of the story itself arises as a dynamic, ongoing process, rather than as a finished product once the story is read as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]