Academic literature on the topic 'Encodage verbal'

Abstract It is a well-known fact that in Chadic languages the notion of verbal plurality falls into two categories: agreement plurality, where a plural subject requires a plural verbal form, and pluractionality, a form used to encode the iterativity (i.e. repetitiveness) or multiplicity (i.e. multiple effects on arguments) of an action. Kushi, a West Chadic language spoken in north-eastern Nigeria, presents both types of plural. In this article, I will illustrate the derivational strategies employed to encode verbal plurality in Kushi—suffixation, infixation, and gemination—showing the existing correlation between plural form and root shape (i.e. verb class). Interesting features of Kushi plurals are the existence of two plurality morphemes (one for non-subjunctive TAM paradigms and one for the subjunctive) and the quality of the final vowel in subjunctive plural verbal forms. All the data used in this paper have been collected in the framework of an on-going project of documentation and description of Kushi.

Abstract Kurtöp (Tibeto-Burman; Bhutan) has a rich set of finite verbal suffixes which encode evidentiality, mirativity, and egophoricity. This article examines the origins of these suffixes in a typological context, showing how many of them have developed via recent grammaticalizations. Synchronic processes of nominalization and clause-chaining have provided the ideal syntactic contexts for these grammaticalizations to take place. Many of the grammaticalization pathways found here are shown to be typologically common, such as ‘give’ becoming an applicative. We find one suffix, the egophoric, which is an obvious borrowing. Based on the data presented here, this article puts forth the tentative hypothesis that due to principles of iconicity, miratives will tend to be recent grammaticalizations. Similarly, the fact that the Kurtöp egophoric has been borrowed is also, arguably, iconic.

Abstract Linguistic relativity is the influence of language on other realms of cognition. For instance, the way movement is expressed in a person’s native language may influence how they perceive movement. Motion event encoding (MEE) is usually framed as a typological dichotomy. Path-in-verb languages tend to encode path information within the verb (e.g., ‘leave’), whereas manner-in-verb languages encode manner (e.g., ‘jump’). The results of MEE-based linguistic relativity experiments range from no effect to effects on verbal and nonverbal cognition. Seeking a more definitive conclusion, we propose linguistic and experimental enhancements. First, we examine state-of-the-art typology, suggesting how a recent MEE classification across twenty languages (Verkerk, 2014) may enable more powerful analyses. Second, we review procedural challenges such as the influence of verbal thought and second-guessing in experiments. To tackle these challenges, we propose distinguishing verbal and nonverbal subgroups, and having enough filler items. Finally we exemplify this in an experimental design.

As a special type of multimodal text, picture books for children are highly valued in the creation of meaning by the integrative use of verbal and visual semiotic resources. Informed by Painter and Martin’s framework of visual narratives, this paper primarily deals with the interpersonal meanings encoded and expressed by the two semiotics (image and verbiage) within the Chinese picture books. It aims to analyse the visual and verbal choices available for writers to establish engagement between various participants. In the hope of investigating the collaboration and interplay of verbal and visual semiotics to construe interpersonal meanings, it examines the attitudinal meanings inscribed or invoked in picture books, exploring the ways in which visual and verbal resources are co-instantiated to encode attitudinal convergence and also divergence.

Although verb forms encoding focus were recorded in various Bantu languages during the twentieth century it was not until the late 1970's that they became the centre of serious attention, starting with the work of Hyman and Watters. In the last decade this attention has grown. While focus can be expressed variously, this paper concentrates largely on its morphological, partly on its tonal expression. On the basis of morphological and tonal behaviour, it identifies four blocks of languages, representing less than a third of all Bantu languages: those with metatony, those with a binary constituent contrast between verb ("disjunctive") and post-verbal ("conjunctive") focus, those with a three-way contrast, and those with verb initial /ni-/. Following Güldemann's lead, it is shown there is a fairly widespread grammaticalisation path whereby focus markers may come to encode progressive aspect, then present tense. Many Bantu languages today have a pre-stem morpheme /a/ 'non-past' and it is hypothesized that many of these /a/, which are otherwise hard to explain historically, may derive from an older focus marker.

The studies of the neural correlates of verbal working memory in schizophrenia are somewhat inconsistent. This could be related to experimental paradigms that engage differentially working memory components or methodological limitations in terms of characterization of brain activity. Magnetoencephalographic recordings were obtained on 10 schizophrenia patients and 11 healthy controls while performing a modified Sternberg paradigm to investigate subprocesses of verbal working memory. A new method for temporospatial characterization of brain oscillations was applied to whole head recordings and a 1–48 Hz frequency range. Patients differed from controls in event-related synchronization/desynchronization (ERS/ERD) patterns during the encode phase, the mid-maintain phase, and the end of the maintain phase. During the encode phase, patients did not show 1–4 Hz ERS in the left anterior frontal and left parietal lobes. In the mid-maintain phase, the left anterior frontal and left parietal lobes 1–4 Hz ERS, and the bilateral occipital lobes 8–32 Hz ERS were not observed in patients. At the end of the maintain phase, patients did not exhibit 12–48 Hz ERD in the left frontal and parietal lobes. The behavioral data showed reduced primacy effect In schizophrenia, the encode and maintain subprocesses were associated with less ERS and less ERD, respectively. These ERS/ERD abnormalities had specificity in terms of frequency and spatial location. Less ERD reflects reduced complexity of the neural activity, while reduced ERS reflects failure of the neural systems to resume idle state. The impaired primacy effect appears related to specific ERS/ERD patterns in the encode and maintain phases.

The study of children's spontaneous talk about the past is critical to understanding narrative and autobiographical memory development. Mothers of 59 New Zealand children recorded their spontaneous talk about past events. In Study 1, mothers recorded children's verbal memories at 25 and 32 months. Study 2 consisted of one child's verbal memories from 14.5 to 19.5 months of age. The results from both studies revealed that children progressed from talking about absent objects and locations to mentioning more complex aspects of events. At first, children's verbal memories were largely cued by the environment, but children were capable of internally cued memories from a very young age. Children's verbal memory development was not completely dependent on their language skill. Children's spontaneous memories focused on much more mundane events than those adults chose to discuss with their young children. The shift in what children find interesting to encode and discuss, along with their skill in narrating events to others, may contribute to the beginning of autobiographical memory.

Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) argue that verbs fall into (at least) two classes: result verbs (e.g., break) and manner verbs (e.g., run). No verb encodes both manner and result simultaneously, a truth-conditional fact that Rappaport Hovav and Levin argue follows from how verb meanings are composed at the level of event structure. However, a key issue in verifying this claim is isolating truth-conditional diagnostics for manner and result. We develop and review a number of such diagnostics and show that there are verbs that encode both meanings together, counterexemplifying their truth-conditional complementarity. However, using evidence from scopal adverbs, we argue that when the meanings occur together, they are encoded in a single, undecomposable manner+result root at event structure. This fact validates complementarity as a fact about how many and what types of roots may occur in an event structure, though it also argues for a richer typology of roots than is typically assumed, including those encoding manner and result simultaneously.

Cet article traite des verbes de parole en cri de l’Est. S’inspirant du cadre théorique développé par Fillmore (1977, 1982) et par Johnson et Fillmore (2000), les auteurs analysent ici les éléments sémantiques du cadre de communication verbale qui sont représentés dans les verbes de parole de cette langue et montrent que la morphologie grammaticale encode le Locuteur et l’Interlocuteur de même que le Message et le Topique. Dans les verbes complexes, un suffixe lexical (appelé finale concrète) réfère à l’événement de communication tandis que la racine verbale encode le Code, l’état de l’Interlocuteur, le Message et la Manière.

This paper discusses the morphosyntactic strategies used in Tocharian to encode argument functions in simple clauses, with focus on experience predicates. This may be relevant to fill a lacuna in the literature on experience predicates, which have not been investigated in Tocharian. We shall see that experience predicates in Tocharian typically require a nominative experiencer, rather than an oblique experiencer, and that the low transitivity of the predicate is expressed by the middle voice. All this may also be of more general relevance to illustrate the interaction between case marking and verbal voice to express argument functions in languages. Cet article analyse les stratégies morphosyntaxiques employées en tokharien pour codifier les prédicats dits d’« expérience », par le biais de parallèles issus d’autres langues indo-européennes. Cela peut être important pour remplir un vide dans la littérature concernant ce type de verbes, qui jusqu’ici n’ont pas été analysés par rapport au tokharien. On montrera que ces prédicats demandent le cas nominatif pour le sujet qui réalise l’expérience, au lieu d’un cas oblique, et que la faible transitivité de ces prédicats est exprimée par la diathèse moyenne. De manière plus générale, tout cela pourra aussi mettre en lumière l’interaction entre les cas de la déclinaison et la diathèse verbale dans l’expression de fonctions argumentales dans les langues.

Si de nombreux travaux ont été consacrés aux représentations spatiales chez le jeune adulte, la nature des modèles spatiaux, les processus qui président à leur construction et la façon dont ils se développent sont encore loin d'être compris. L'originalité de cette thèse tient au fait d'étudier conjointement les composantes cognitives et langagières dans l'acquisition des représentations d'itinéraires virtuels par des enfants (de 5 à 11 ans) et des adultes, ainsi que les différences individuelles liées à des capacités générales variées. Dans une première partie, la thèse présente les principaux concepts de la cognition spatiale issus des travaux menés chez l'adulte ainsi que l'état des connaissances théoriques et empiriques actuelles sur le développement des représentations spatiales chez l'enfant. Un chapitre s'intéresse ensuite au rôle du langage dans la construction des représentations spatiales et un autre à celui de la mémoire de travail. Afin de mieux comprendre le type de représentation qu'un enfant élabore au cours de son développement, une deuxième partie de la thèse présente trois expériences étudiant le développement des connaissances sur les repères et la route. Les deux premières études ont permis d'observer une augmentation qualitative et quantitative de la connaissance des repères, c'est-à-dire des entités spécifiques qui jalonnent un itinéraire, mais également de la connaissance de la succession de ces repères et des directions empruntées. Le rôle particulier des repères situés à un changement de direction est attesté chez l'adulte comme chez l'enfant. L'augmentation de ces connaissances avec l'âge est observée avec des tâches de production et de reconnaissance, aussi bien verbales que non-verbales. Ces résultats suggèrent l'existence d'une seule représentation commune ou de deux formats de représentations fortement reliés. Le lien important entre les informations verbales et non-verbales dans les représentations est attesté par l'observation d'un biais de type sémantique dans la reconnaissance visuelle de repères. Cependant, l'analyse des différences interindividuelles a mis en évidence le rôle de capacités visuo-spatiales telles que la perception des directions, mais pas d'influence des capacités langagières sur la capacité de représentation d'itinéraire. Une troisième étude explore le rôle des composantes verbales et visuo-spatiales de la mémoire de travail dans le développement des représentations spatiales au moyen d'un paradigme de double tâche lors de la mémorisation d'itinéraires. L'implication, notamment de la composante spatiale de la mémoire de travail au cours de la mémorisation d'itinéraire, est mise en évidence chez l'enfant. Ce résultat renforce l'idée de la dominance d'une forme de codage visuo-spatial dans le développement de la représentation qui évoluerait au profit de codages plus verbaux ou mixtes. En conclusion, cette thèse montre le développement de la capacité à se représenter un itinéraire au cours de l'enfance, attesté par des tâches de nature et de format variés. Si cette représentation semble impliquer à la fois des composantes verbales et non-verbales, ces dernières semblent être plus importantes chez l'enfant. La dernière partie de la thèse propose une discussion des implications de ces résultats pour le développement de la cognition spatiale chez l'enfant, ainsi que des perspectives pour les recherches futures<br>Although many studies have investigated spatial representation in young adults, little is still known about the processes underlying how they construct spatial models, the nature of these models, and how they develop in children. The originality of this thesis is two-fold: it studies both cognitive and linguistic processes involved in how children (5 to 11 years) and adults construct representation of virtual routes; it also examines individual differences in these processes. The first part of this thesis begins with a chapter that presents the main concepts underlying spatial cognition, as well as some experimental evidence concerning adults' spatial knowledge and the development of this knowledge during childhood. A second chapter then focuses on the role of language and a third one on the role of working memory in the construction of spatial representations. In order to understand how children construct spatial representation during development, a second part of the thesis presents three experiments investigating the development of landmark and route knowledge. The first two studies show developments in the quality and quantity of knowledge concerning both landmarks (i.e. specific entities encountered along the route) and the route (i.e. the sequential order of actions and landmarks). They also provide evidence supporting the specific role of landmarks associated with changes of direction ("decisional" landmarks) in children and adults. Developmental changes in spatial knowledge were assessed by both verbal and non-verbal measures, suggesting the existence of a unique representation or of two representations that are strongly related. The relation between verbal and non-verbal information in participants' representations is evidenced by their bias toward choosing a related landmark of the same semantic category, regardless of its visual characteristics. Nevertheless, analyses show that visuo-spatial abilities such as the perception of directions, but not verbal abilities, play a main role in accounting for individual differences. The third study, investigates verbal and visuo-spatial components of working memory, using a dual task paradigm in which participants performed a verbal or spatial interference task while memorizing routes. The results support the idea that representing itineraries mostly involves a spatial mode of encoding in children and a more verbal or mixed encoding in adults. To conclude, this thesis shows a development in children's capacity to build spatial representations of virtual routes. Although their representation seems to integrate both verbal and non-verbal components, non-verbal abilities appear to be most essential for children. The last part of the thesis discusses the implications of our results for our understanding of the development of spatial cognition in children, as well as future perspectives and conclusions

Le présent travail a pour objectif principal l'étude du rôle fonctionnel de la syllabe en production verbale orale et écrite de mots isolés.<br />Suite à une tentative de définition de « ce qu'est exactement une syllabe » dans une Introduction, nous avons rapporté des arguments en faveur d'un rôle fonctionnel de cette unité en perception visuelle et auditive.<br />Le Chapitre I présente une revue de la littérature portant sur la production verbale orale et écrite conceptuellement dirigée (Caramazza & Miceli, 1990 ; Dell, 1986 ; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). Les différents niveaux de traitement (conceptuel, syntaxique, lexical et moteur) et les propositions concernant les mécanismes de traitement impliqués à chacune de ces étapes sont présentés. Une attention particulière a été portée aux propositions des principaux modèles concernant le rôle de la syllabe dans les processus d'accès lexical et de planification motrice.<br />Le Chapitre II est consacré à un effet qui est à l'origine d'un vif débat : l'effet d'amorçage syllabique. Ferrand, Segui et Grainger (1996) ont montré que la présentation d'un groupe de segments correspondant à la première syllabe d'un mot (e.g., ba-baleine ; balbalcon) facilite plus la dénomination qu'un groupe de segments plus court (e.g., ba-balcon) ou plus long (bal-baleine). Nous avons essayé de répliquer ce résultat en dénomination orale d'images (Expériences 2a, 2b et 3). Nous avons rapporté des données en faveur de l'hypothèse du recouvrement segmental (Sciller, 1998, 1999, 2000). Nous avons ensuite testé si le temps de présentation de l'amorce (Expérience 4) et le moment de présentation du groupe de segments (Expérience 5) pouvaient expliquer l'absence d'effet d'amorçage syllabique. Là encore, les données sont en accord avec l'hypothèse du recouvrement segmental (Schiller, 1998, 1999, 2000). Nous avons aussi exploré la possibilité d'obtenir cet effet en production verbale écrite (Expériences 1a et 1b).<br />Dans le Chapitre III, nous avons testé l'hypothèse selon laquelle les latences d'initialisation de mots monosyllabiques devraient être plus courts que celles de mots bisyllabiques, si la syllabe joue un rôle fonctionnel en production verbale orale et écrite. Des études pour les deux modalités ont répondu par la négative (Bachoud-Levi et al., 1998 ; Lambert, 1999 ; Lambert et al., sous presse ; Roelofs, 2002b). Toutefois, Meyer, Roelofs et Levelt, (2003) ont proposé qu'un critère temporel de réponse (Lupker et al., 1997) influence l'instant d'initialisation de la réponse. En conséquence, un effet du nombre de syllabes peut apparaître. Nous avons essayé de répliquer ce résultat en production verbale orale (Expérience 6) et de l'étendre à la production verbale écrite (Expérience 7). Toutefois, nous n'avons pas rapporté de données en faveur de l'hypothèse de Meyer et collaborateurs (2003) pour les deux modalités.<br />Le Chapitre IV a pour objectif de faire une synthèse des résultats que nous avons obtenus et de proposer des perspectives de recherches.

Jusqu'à récemment, les patients souffrant d'épilepsie réfractaire aux traitements médicamenteux étaient destinés à un avenir incertain. Le recours à la chirurgie comme traitement alternatif offre l'espoir de mener un jour une vie normale. Pour déterminer si un patient peut bénéficier d’une intervention chirurgicale, une évaluation complète est cruciale. Les méthodes d’évaluation préchirurgicale ont connu des progrès importants au cours des dernières décennies avec le perfectionnement des techniques d’imagerie cérébrale. Parmi ces techniques, la spectroscopie proche infrarouge (SPIR), aussi connue sous le nom d’imagerie optique, présente de nombreux avantages (coût, mobilité du participant, résolution spatiale et temporelle, etc.). L’objectif principal de cette étude est de développer un protocole d'évaluation préchirurgicale de la mémoire. Une tâche de mémoire verbale incluant l’encodage, le rappel immédiat et le rappel différé de listes de mots a été administrée à dix adultes sains lors d’un enregistrement en imagerie optique. Les résultats obtenus suggèrent l’activation bilatérale des aires préfrontales antérieures et dorsolatérales ainsi que des aires temporales antérieures et moyennes. Les aires préfrontales et temporales antérieures semblent modulées par les différents processus mnésiques et la position du rappel dans le temps. La première fois qu’une liste est rappelée, l’activité hémodynamique est plus élevée que lors des rappels subséquents, et ce, davantage dans l’hémisphère gauche que dans l’hémisphère droit. Cette étude constitue la première étape dans le processus de validation du protocole à des fins cliniques auprès de patients épileptiques.<br>Until recently, patients with epilepsy refractory to drug treatments were intended to an uncertain future. Surgery as an alternative treatment offers hope to, one day, lead a normal life. In order to determine if a patient may benefit from a surgical intervention, a complete evaluation is essential. With the advancements in brain imagery techniques over the last few decades, preoperative evaluation methods have seen important progress. Among these techniques, near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), also known as optical imaging, presents numerous advantages (cost, participant mobility, spatial and temporal resolution, etc.). The purpose of this study is to develop a preoperative evaluation protocol for memory assessment. During a NIRS recording, a verbal memory task including encoding, immediate and delayed free-recall of a list of words was administered to ten healthy adults. The results obtained revealed bilateral activation of anterior and dorsolateral prefrontal areas as well as anterior and median temporal areas. Prefrontal and anterior temporal areas seemed to be regulated by different memory processes and the recall location in time. The first time that a list is recalled, increased hemodynamic activity is observed in comparison to subsequent recalls, with a greater activity in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere. This study constitutes the first step in the validation process of the protocol for clinical needs among epileptic patients.

This chapter proposes that Greek exhibits systematic verbalizing morphology so that the vast majority of Greek verbs contain the morphophonological exponence of v in their stem, either as an overt formative via derivational suffixation (first conjugation) or as an empty vocalic element ̃V (second conjugation). Thus, Greek provides a case for a robust morphophonological manifestation of a verbalizing v head as a simple categorizer, which combines with a category-specific or an a-categorial root to derive a verb and, crucially, is not related to transitivity, agentivity, or to argument/event structure. Finally, the chapter shows that the verbalizing exponent itself does not encode Aktionsart, causativity, transitivity, Voice, or Aspect and that the choice of the allomorph expressing the v head lexically depends on the root.

The use of default agreement plays a key role in morphological theories from diverse perspectives, as well as in many analyses of child language acquisition. In this paper, the development of ergative and dative agreement and case in 20 bilingual and 11 monolingual Basque-speaking children between 2;00-3;06 years old is examined. I propose that the most commonly-produced errors in child Basque involve the substitution of unmarked absolutive forms for ergative and dative case and dative verbal morphemes; for independent reasons, the absolutive is considered to be unmarked inflection in adult Basque (Arregi and Nevins, 2012). These errors suggest that in early stages of morphological acquisition, children learning Basque use default forms which encode a subset of the morphemes as a “best match” to support their developing language when they are unable to produce or retrieve target forms.

This chapter provides a combined overview of theoretical and psycholinguistic approaches to causality in language. The chapter’s main phenomenological focus is on causal relations as expressed intra-clausally by verbs (e.g., break, open) and between sentences by discourse markers (e.g., because, therefore). Special attention is given to implicit causality verbs that are argued to trigger expectations of explanations to occur in subsequent discourse. The chapter also discusses linguistic expressions that do not encode causation as such, but that seem to be dependent on a causal model for their adequate evaluation, such as counterfactual conditionals. The discussion of the phenomena is complemented by an overview of important aspects of their cognitive processing as revealed by psycholinguistic experimentation.

Nivkh (Paleosiberian group), spoken on the lower reaches of the Amur River and on Sakhalin island in Siberia by a few hundred speakers in four main varieties, but rapidly dying out, is a polysynthetic head-marking but configurational SOV language, with defective polypersonalism, noun incorporation, verb root serialization, and complex noun forms. Its dominant structural principle and characteristic design is dependent-head-synthesis, with dependents lexically head-marked and still referentially active. Nivkh displays compositional polysynthesis with a mixed internal structure, as the suffixal domain of a word-form may be described by a template, whereas the pre-root domain is scope-ordered due to dependent chaining. The evolutionary path of complex forms is best conceived of as coalescence of formerly adjacent words. Morphophonemic processes at the word-internal morpheme boundaries, especially consonant dissimilation and assimilation, and bound allomorphs prove the wordhood of the complexes. Non-root bound morphemes encode modalities, degree, scalar, and focus operators and phase of action.

AbstractIn recent years, assistive technology and digital accessibility for blind and visually impaired people (BVIP) has been significantly improved. Yet, group discussions, especially in a business context, are still challenging as non-verbal communication (NVC) is often depicted on digital whiteboards, including deictic gestures paired with visual artifacts. However, as NVC heavily relies on the visual perception, whichrepresents a large amount of detail, an adaptive approach is required that identifies the most relevant information for BVIP. Additionally, visual artifacts usually rely on spatial properties such as position, orientation, and dimensions to convey essential information such as hierarchy, cohesion, and importance that is often not accessible to the BVIP. In this paper, we investigate the requirements of BVIP during brainstorming sessions and, based on our findings, provide an accessible multimodal tool that uses non-verbal and spatial cues as an additional layer of information. Further, we contribute by presenting a set of input and output modalities that encode and decode information with respect to the individual demands of BVIP and the requirements of different use cases.

This chapter analyzes compound verb constructions in the Dravidian language family. Drawing on data from all four subgroups, two broad constructions emerge: auxiliary compound verbs and lexical compound verbs. The former provide complex morphosyntactic vehicles for verbal categories or combinations of categories not found in the simple verb inflections of a language; the latter provide similar vehicles to encode lexical meanings not found in simple lexemes of the language. A third construction, reduplicated compounds, is also analyzed. A brief comparison in made between the pattern of these verb + verb sequences in Dravidian and patterns found in other language families.

In Visit 6, survivors are introduced to their first combined internal and external strategies: active listening and verbal rehearsal for socializing. Active listening is a compensatory strategy used in MAAT to help reduce social avoidance due to cognitive difficulties. Active listening involves using basic interviewing methods, such as summarizing and clarifying what one heard, so that survivors can compensate for parts of conversation they may miss. It presents an opportunity to clarify and “verbally rehearse” the conversational point to register and encode that point. Verbal rehearsal also provides a strategy to help become re-engaged in previously avoided social activity. Three steps can be taken to aid with active listening skills: (1) review nonverbal behaviors and paralinguistic tone; (2) review summarization (when the listener repeats back a summary of what it is they believed they heard, thus rehearsing the message); and (3) review clarification to seek assurance that what was heard was the intended message. Further, fatigue management and sleep improvement are highlighted if relevant to the survivor, with the rationale of using simple behavior change to minimize the potential impact of sleep problems and fatigue on cognitive function.

This paper deals with the deictic components in the meaning of verbs of motion (idti-prijti vs andare-venire) in Russian and Italian. In Italian these verbs encode deictic information and in Russian their use relies on non-deictic factors. This contrast yields different patterns of thinking for speaking, which influence L2 acquisition. It will be shown how this approach, completely absent in the manuals, can be used for the teaching Russian as L2.

Japanese has two different formal types of complex predicates involving two verbs: V-te V complex predicates and V-V compound verbs. This chapter discusses the nature of the former in comparison to the latter. The examination reveals that the two kinds of multiverbal complexes similarly have two subtypes, one monoclausal and the other biclausal, but that they are different morphologically, syntactically, and semantically. The most interesting finding is that the two crucially differ in whether deictic and honorific verbs, which encode perspectival and interactional meanings, can participate in the complexes. Morphologically tighter V-V compounds require a same-subject relation between the two verbs and exclude perspectival or interactional meanings (except V1 in syntactic compounds). Loosely concatenated V-te V complexes allow different subjects, typically have perfective/resultative V1, and have V2 as a preferred slot for perspectival/interactional meanings. These observations suggest that Japanese does not have these two options meaninglessly; the different multiverbal complexes serve different purposes.

The authors present three investigations into pre-teen children’s text message language and measures of their standard literacy abilities. The children translated sentences, from standard English into text, and from text into standard English , and wrote text messages appropriate to a set of scenarios. They categorised text abbreviations used and calculated the proportion of abbreviations to total words. The children completed a questionnaire about their mobile phone use. Text messaging facility was positively associated with verbal reasoning, vocabulary, school achievement in English, and reading ability across the three studies. Texting provides opportunity for children to communicate in writing without the constraints of standard English, and we propose that the playful variants on words that they use in texting, and their ability to encode spoken slang graphically, show not a lack of knowledge of English, but a light hearted use of phonological and alphabetic decoding principles that also underpin standard English.

Vanessa was first seen at the clinic one year ago, at the age of eight years. Her teacher had reported that she seemed ‘slower’ than the other children in the class. She observed that Vanessa often did not understand what was going on in the class, and was easily upset by changes in routine. She also had difficulties expressing her ideas and relating her experiences. Her reading, spelling, and writing were all behind those of the rest of the class. A psychologist’s assessment showed Vanessa’s non-verbal intelligence to be in the average range, but with difficulties in comprehension. Her reading, spelling, and writing all showed more than two years’ delay. A doctor could find no abnormalities to account for her problem. Her hearing was tested and found to be normal. Vanessa was referred to a speech therapist. She found that Vanessa’s comprehension was at a level more than two years below her age and that she had many difficulties in her understanding of language. For example, although she understood common prepositions such as ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘under’, she misinterpreted others such as ‘beside’, ‘behind’, ‘through’, and ‘around’. She also confused past and present tenses. The speech therapist spoke to the parents and the teacher about ways of helping Vanessa. She also started seeing her regularly, once a week, for speech therapy sessions. Now, after 10 months of such help, Vanessa has shown great improvement in her language comprehension and her academic skills. Language plays a central role in specific learning difficulties. Reading requires the ability to decode written language and spelling and writing require the ability to encode spoken language. Arithmetic requires language skills to understand the words used to state problems involving numbers. This chapter deals with the disorders of speech and language that often accompany specific learning difficulties. These may involve the understanding of language (which is referred to as receptive language) and the use of language (which is referred to as expressive language). There may also be involvement of speech (which relates to the clarity and fluency of the spoken word).