Language Project Research Articles

Language Policy across the Curriculum

Part 1 Language policy across the curriculum: the diverse social and cultural contexts of modern schools. Part 2 Language planning in education: two directions in the sociology of language language planning. Part 3 Fact gathering for language policies across the curriculum: larger scale LPAC research large scale research methods teacher attitudes and stereotypes small scale LPAC fact gathering. Part 4 Policy making at school level: school policy, organizational theory and the ethics of school management teacher's personal realities, participation and commitment school policy making as a language activity a policy about policy making applying the stages of a social epistemology to school policy development stages in policy making. Part 5 Language across the curriculum (LAC): the meaning and place of language across the curriculum LAC's focus - the role of language in learning the teacher's role in language across the curriculum working with the below average and with mainstreamed children changing teacher attitudes - professional development and LAC assessing competence and mother tongue testing the development of reading - of writing watching and moving - improvisation and role play shaping and viewing - the media and other creative arts oral language across the curriculum extending language awareness. Part 6 National language policies, language projects and LPACs: language minorities language problems and policy in a pluralist society - Australia a policy for multiculturalism and language - Canada a successful indigenous language struggle - New Zealand language policy in a multinational/multilingual state - the USSR the majority language in a national policy the role of the schools. Part 7 Bilingualism and second language teaching (SLT) across the curriculum: bilingualism and bilingual education approaches to bilingual schooling - majority first language speakers - minority first language speakers variable factors in bilingual programmes for minority children bilingualism and minority first language maintenance - policy issues second language teaching and learning school organization for SLT the cultural characteristic of SL minority groups approaches to teaching an SL - assessing SL proficiency resources and materials for SLT. Part 8 FLT FLT policy items communicative competence and FLT cultural studies across the curriculum. Part 9 Social justice issues and language policy: language, education and power critical language awareness bilingualism and social justice gender, language and education differential treatment. Part 10 Concluding summary - what an LPAC might contain.

Narrative Style and Witness Testimony

Abstract This article is concerned with the relationship between a witness' narrative style and judgments of jurors based on that style. It takes as its starting point the Duke University Law and Language Project results that a witness using a narrative style is judged more credible than a witness using a fragmented style. The main argument of this article is that it is not the use of narrative per se, but rather a particular narrative style that is valued in the courtroom. Data from a day of testimony in a murder trial is used to demonstrate two opposing narrative styles in testimony: that of the law enforcement officer and that of some nonexpert witnesses. It is shown first that the style of the law enforcement officers differs from ordinary conversation in its extreme explicitness. It is hypothesized that jurors will associate this style of delivery with credibility. It is further hypothe-sized that witnesses will lose credibility to the extent that they deviate from this style. After demonstrating the differences in the styles, the article draws on experimental work of other researchers to suggest that trial outcomes can be affected by the narrative style of the witness. (Linguistics)

A report on the sisal language project

Abstract Sisal (Streams and Iterations in Single Assignment Language) is a general-purpose applicative language intended for use on both conventional and novel multiprocessor systems. In this report we discuss the project's objectives, philosophy, and accomplishments and state our future plans. Four significant results of the Sisal project are compilation techniques for high-performance parallel applicative computation, a microtasking environment that supports dataflow on conventional shared-memory architectures, execution times comparable to those of Fortran, and cost-effective speedup on shared-memory multiprocessors.

Restoration and Repression: The Language Projects of the Royal Society

Restoration and Repression: The Language Projects of the Royal Society JOEL REED Historians studying the eighteenth century need not look to V. N. Voloshinov to realize that “the word is the most sensitive index of social changes”; writings of the early 1700s show an awareness of language’s social context two hundred years before Voloshinov made his observa­ tion, even if those doing the work would find themselves opposed to Voloshinov’s motivations.1 At the close of the seventeenth century mem­ bers of the Royal Society were doing the most important work on the English language, Thomas Sprat and Bishop John Wilkins in particular. We might in retrospect call their work socio-linguistics and, in Sprat’s case, a kind of discourse analysis, for they were especially concerned with the social context of language usage, with the two-way relationship between language and the society which speaks it. Of course, an impor­ tant distinction between Voloshinov and his predecessors in socio­ linguistics is that while Voloshinov’s project was linked with one of the most important revolutions of our century, we can link the Royal Socie­ ty’s linguistics to the most significant counter-revolutionary movement of theirs: the Restoration.2 Paralleling the restoration of the monarchy were Sprat and Wilkins’s efforts to restore language to an earlier, mythic purity, a double return of the repressed that is by no means coincidental. The politics of Royal Society linguistics is at least as significant as the Society’s scientific con­ 399 400 / REED tributions to the study of language for what it reveals about the political and ideological shifts at the turn of the century. In their work we see an important conjunction of the beginnings of scientific discourse, the epi­ steme of rational experimentalism that Timothy Reiss investigates, and a much older theological discourse which in the context of the Restoration could only be called a politico-theology.3 Royal Society discourse analy­ sis was particularly concerned with the relation between a fallen language and a fallen state, and with the proposition that a language saved from the fall, a language redeemed, could play a part in saving from corrup­ tion the state which speaks that language. This linguistic politico-theology was developed in two closely linked texts. Sprat’s History of the Royal Society (1667) and Wilkins’s Essay Towards A Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668) were printed for the Royal Society only a year apart, though the chronology of the texts must be complicated by the fact that Wilkins had completed his Essay in 1665, and it was nearly completely in print in 1666 when it was destroyed by the London fire.4 Thus, deciding which came first, Sprat or Wilkins, and which text is the primary or original one in the politicotheological linguistics, is more complex than it might seem from publica­ tion dates; the matter is complicated still further when we realize that Wilkins acted as a supervisor and ghost writer of Sprat’s History.5 Of course, this conjunction does not suggest that we regard these texts as identical; Wilkins’s invention of a universal language is precisely an example of the kind of research that Sprat refers to as the Royal Society’s principal work, while Sprat’s text, rather than being a particular scien­ tific study, has other functions. His history was written only five years after the Society received its charter from Charles II, but Sprat takes advantage of his project to work in a statement of intentions —a mani­ festo of sorts —as well as a “Defence and Recommendation of Experi­ mental Knowledge.”6 But an investigation of the development of a new discourse that relies heavily on the older theological forms allows us to see their work, at least on language and language history, in a close and even complementary relation. The Restoration plays an important role in their linguistic projects, both as a political and ideological ground, for what motivates Royal Society linguistics is precisely the restoration of an Adamic language and a return to an earlier time and social order that can be used to push forward new national projects. In a passage often...

Impact assessment on electronic publishing in the Federal Republic of Germany: part one

The impact assessment on electronic publishing (EP) is a project conducted jointly by the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Centre and the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing (GMD), Darmstadt. The project is partly subsidised by the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology which has installed a project board, in that respect following the model of OTA. It can be seen in the broader context of the two German EP projects (in the publishing and patent fields), which were part of the DOCDEL programme of the EEC and were cofunded by the Ministry for Research and Technology. The publishers' project experimented with a markup language for the establishment of full text databases, thus having some resemblance with the standard generalised markup language (SGML) project of the Association of American Publishers.

A. Aksu-Koç & D. Slobin, The acquisition of Turkish. Reviewed by M. Rispoli, Juniper Gardens Language Project, Kansas City KS, USA.

A. Aksu-Koç & D. Slobin, The acquisition of Turkish. Reviewed by M. Rispoli, Juniper Gardens Language Project, Kansas City KS, USA.

P. Clancy, The acquisition of Japanese. Reviewed by M. Rispoli, Juniper Gardens Language Project, Kansas City KS, USA.

P. Clancy, The acquisition of Japanese. Reviewed by M. Rispoli, Juniper Gardens Language Project, Kansas City KS, USA.

A humanistic approach to systems development

This article offers a humanistic approach to the development of computer‐based information systems. A theoretical framework for conceiving innovative processes as a whole is outlined. This approach interprets technology in relation to work, knowledge, and basic values. Within this framework, a methodology of systems development is sketched. This methodology is based on experience obtained through developing knowledge‐based systems for use in language research and teaching. Systems development processes are conceived as thought processes, epistemic processes, communicative processes, and learning processes. It is argued that the experience gained from the language project could be applied to other areas of work.

Design of a master lexicon: Susanna Cumming Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rev, February 1986

Abstract : This document describes the design for a 'Master Lexicon' which is intended to serve all the lexical needs of the two grammars (RUS, an ATN parser, and Nigel, a systemic production grammar) of the JANUS natural language project. Each grammar had previously been using its own lexicon, and these two lexicons were significantly different, both in terms of content and in terms of design. The Master Lexicon incorporates features of each of the previous lexicons, significantly Nigel's feature hierarchy and RUS's treatment of morphology and cross-indexing; plus it includes several novel features, most notably a new lexical acquisition interface which allows the non-specialist user to add lexical items. Nigel is able to access the Master Lexicon directly, while a set of translation rules (given in the appendix) transform ML lexical entries to lexical entries of the style used by RUS. Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Computational linguistics, Dictionary, English, Functional grammar, Grammar, Janus, LapltUp, Lexical acquisition, Lexical features, Lexicon, Master Lexicon, Natural language, Nigel, Penman, RUS, Syntax, Systemic Linguistics, Text generation, Vocabulary, Word acquisition, Wordclass hierarchy, Wordclasses.

Everton/feeder schools’ reading and language project. An exercise in co‐operation

Following concern about the language problems experienced by many children in Everton, a working party was set up to investigate the situation. This consisted of the Language Co‐ordinators from five local primary schools along with English and Special Needs staff from the secondary school, chaired by the Head of the District Reading and Language Service. After three successful years the working party has achieved a high level of co‐operation. For example, a joint Resource Room has been established at the secondary school, containing over £5000 worth of materials; we are now using a ‘Transfer Pack’ consisting of a common test, an agreed information pro forma and examples of the children's work. These projects are looked on as only the start; many others are in the pipeline.

VERBAL BEHAVIOR AT A PROCEDURAL LEVEL IN THE CHIMPANZEE

Ape language research has typically employed cognitive descriptions of ape competencies. Recently, Epstein, Lanza, and Skinner (1980) attempted to simulate some of the ape findings with pigeons. They also used cognitive terms to describe their results, but with "tongue-in-cheek." In the hope of bringing about a better understanding of the ape research, this paper describes the main aspects of one ape language project, using a behavior-analytic framework. It then briefly compares and contrasts, from that perspective, the training programs used with pigeons and with apes. It is concluded that the behavior-analytic framework, and the procedures devised to produce language skills in apes, provide strong support for several of the major positions set forth in Skinner's (1957) Verbal Behavior.

Technologische Innovatie

Within the Dutch software house BSO, a 14-months study for the European Commission has been performed on the feasibility of DLT: Distributed Language Translation, a semi-automatic, multilingual translation system. This project, in cooperation with a number of experts from universities in several EC-counties, resulted in a report that found its way to science and industry. DLT is an interlingual system, as opposed to the transfer system EUROTRA. Whereas the interface of the latter, apart from a one-to-one lexical substitution as its transfer, heavily leans on semantic information in the form of abstract formatives such as 'agent','patient', DLT's Intermediate Language (IL), having the form of natural language, gives the advantage of an IL-dictionary at both sides of the dividing-line between Source Language (SL) and Target Language (TL): the translation can profit intensively from valency information. As a compromise between the ambiguous character of natural language and the need of an effective IL to be sufficiently similar to natural languages, DLT has adopted as its IL a modified subset of an artificial language that is less ambiguous than natural languages, especially on the syntactical level: a good starting point to further reduction of this problem. As opposed to e.g. the batch-oriented system SYSTRAN, DLT's networked correspondence of SL/IL/TL with its outside operational environment links up with hardware developments. This is also true of the computer-initiated interactive disambiguation dialogue during source text entry instead of traditional post-editing. The graduates' unemployment of Faculties of Arts is relatively high. Nevertheless, a report, published by the Arts Section of the Dutch Academic Council by the end of 1983, suggests employment possibilities in sectors other than education, e.g.: language projects in the software industry and information technology. As the actual machine translation market in the USA shows, there may be some hope for these graduates. Perhaps a more flexible way of study programming in Faculties of Arts may help to find these ways.

The children's language project

The children's language project

Natural Language for Database Queries: A Laboratory Study

Are natural language systems for database queries meeting their goals, and are these goals appropriate? The recently completed Advanced Language Project at New York University combined a field experiment with two laboratory studies to examine these issues by comparing performance between subjects using the formal database language SQL and subjects using the prototype natural language system, USL. This article describes the design and results of the larger laboratory experiment. The results presented offer some promise for the usability of natural language under certain conditions.

Videotape Applications in Pragmatic Intervention with Language-Impaired Children

In this article, problems in developing pragmatic-based language intervention programs are discussed, and some theoretical applications of client-directed, context-bound video playback are described. Specifically, it is suggested that the use of video systems to record children's behaviors in natural settings and to play back these recordings to children themselves can enhance therapeutic acquisition and expansion of pragmatic, communication-oriented skills. Observations from an experimental language project are presented to support this hypothesis, and the need for further clinical research is identified.

Sin samtids kritiker - N.F.S. Grundtvig 1783-1872

Sin samtids kritiker - N.F.S. Grundtvig 1783-1872

Curriculum Development in Europe

Throughout the 20 years of its existence the Council for Cultural Co-operation of the Council of Europe has promoted language learning as a means to the freer movement of people and ideas. Stress has been laid on interpersonal communication and learner-centred educational structures and processes. Planning involves specification of objectives appropriate to learner needs and the realities of the educational situation. An account is given of the recent work of Modern Languages Project no. 4 and the prospects for the forthcoming Project no. 12, which will focus on teacher training in respect of attitudes, knowledge and skills, both linguistic and educational.

Dormitory language project.

Dormitory Language Project is now in its sixth year at the North Dakota School for the Deaf. This program is a vital part of our students' educational program at our school and was developed and implemented by our Superintendent, Allen J. Hayek and the three coordinators that this project has now had. This project was developed on these statements: (a) Language and vocabulary development is one of the greatest problems that face hearing-impaired students at our school; (b) Our students need a program that tries to remediate their language and vocabulary deficiencies in everyday practical situations that is supplemental to their school program; (c) This program tries to identify areas of weakness and areas of concern and interest that our students do not normally have in school; and (d) This program will help our students, and they will be better able to cope with the real world after graduation. Dormitory Language Project at the North Dakota School for the Deaf is working.

Ape Signing: Problems of Method and Interpretation

R E P O R T S I N T H E LAST DECADE that apes can learn to communicate with humans using a rudimentary form of sign lang~agel-~ have been received with great interest. For many anthropologists, linguists, philosophers, and psychologists, research with apes such as Washoe, Koko, and others appeared to provide decisive evidence bearing on several fundamental issues. For example, the belief that language is species-specific could not be sustained if apes acquired some linguistic facility, as these projects seemed to indicate. The apes’ performance also appeared to rescue learning-theoretic views of language acquisition from critical analyses such as Chomsky’s.6 The methods used in the ape sign language projects were derived from such theories, and some researchers were self-consciously behavioristic in orientation.’ Whatever the logical merit of such criticism of empiricist theories of language acquisition, it might be waived aside if the apes acquired linguistic skills through shaping and differential reinforcement of responses. This would at the same time undermine strongly nativist positions. This research has gained renown outside the academic community through accounts in the print and broadcast media, documentary and educational films, and popularized texts. As might be expected, the mass media accepted the ape researchers’ claims uncritically, focusing instead on speculation. If apes can talk, what will they say? Will they be

Contemporary Cybernetics

ADA DEVELOPMENTS The ADA programming language project, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Defence, will have far reaching effects on both the programming and the design of future computers. Its original objects were to cater for the production of reliable, readable programs for communicating with computer systems. There was to be a formality of language definition and even simplicity in its concept. Whether these aims have been achieved at the design level is, as discussed in Kybernetes (10(3), 156, 1981), still the subject of controversy. Certainly Prof. C. A. R. Hoare (Oxford University, U.K.) has reservations.