Religious Claims in Public: Lutheran Resources

Abstract : A cacophony of religious voices seeking to influence public culture, opinion, and policy pervades the public discourse in the United States today. Some publicly‐oriented religious claims are appropriate while others are not. Sorely needed are criteria for making that distinction. This essay asks: What are criteria for appropriate and valid use of religious claims, language, and symbols in deliberation about public policy? What particular gifts do Lutheran traditions bring to shaping those criteria? The essay then draws upon Lutheran theological resources to propose theologically grounded criteria for appropriate and valid use of religious language, claims, and symbols in public discourse.     

Effects of receptive language training on receptive and expressive language development

The effects of a six-month training program in receptive language on receptive and expressive language development were investigated. Developmentally retarded preschoolers were pretested and posttested on one standardized test of receptive language and two tests of expressive language. Both the training and control groups participated in a preschool program. In addition, the training group received a two-sequence training program: (1) reinforcement for matching responses to modeling cues and accompanying verbal requests, and (2) reinforcement for appropriate responses to verbal requests alone. The training group demonstrated a significant increase in appropriate responses to verbal request over base-rate performance after the training and also demonstrated a significantly improved posttest performance on one test of expressive language as compared to the control group.The authors wish to thank Mrs. Helen Huggins and the staff of the Aid to Retarded Children's Preschool Training Center, San Francisco, California, for their assistance in this study. A modified version of this paper was presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Mental Retardation, March, 1974, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.     

Children use canonical sentence schemas: A crosslinguistic study of word order and inflections

We propose that children construct a canonical sentence schema as a preliminary organizing structure for language behavior. The canonical sentence embodies the typical features of complete clauses in the input language, and serves as a framework for the application of productive and perceptual strategies. The canonical sentence schema offers a functional explanation of word-order and inflectional strategies based on the child's attempts to quickly master basic communication skills in his or her language. The present research explores sensitivity to the canonical sentence form and to word-order and inflectional perceptual strategies for comprehending simple transitive sentences in monolingual children aged 2;0 to 4;4 in four languages: English (ordered, uninflectional), Italian (weakly ordered, weakly inflectional), Serbo-Croatian (weakly ordered, inflectional), Turkish (minimally ordered, inflectional). The results show that children fail to respond systematically to sequences that violate the canonical sentence form of their particular language. They develop distinct word-order and inflectional strategies appropriate to the regularities of their language. The early behavioral emergence of linguistically appropriate canonical sentences and processing strategies suggests a behavioral foundation for linguistic constraints on the surface form of sentences.     

Language knowledge and event knowledge in language use

This paper examines how semantic knowledge is used in language comprehension and in making judgments about events in the world. We contrast knowledge gleaned from prior language experience (“language knowledge”) and knowledge coming from prior experience with the world (“world knowledge”). In two corpus analyses, we show that previous research linking verb aspect and event representations have confounded language and world knowledge. Then, using carefully chosen stimuli that remove this confound, we performed four experiments that manipulated the degree to which language knowledge or world knowledge should be salient and relevant to performing a task, finding in each case that participants use the type of knowledge most appropriate to the task. These results provide evidence for a highly context-sensitive and interactionist perspective on how semantic knowledge is represented and used during language processing.     

ORAL LANGUAGE CRITERIA FOR SELECTING LISTENABLE MATERIALS: AN UPDATE FOR READING TEACHERS AND SPECIALISTS

Materials for Instruction and assessment of listening skills ought to exhibit appropriate levels of listenability. One factor contributing to listenability is the degree to which passages contain features of oral (as opposed to written) language. Oral language represents one end of a spectrum which ranges from planned autonomous (written) to spontaneous (oral) language; it is features of oral language are: 1) syntax that is characteristic of oral composition and suited for aural processing, 2) elements of text structure which ease the burdens of oral production and aural reception, and 3) expressions which tend to evoke a sense of immediate, face‐to‐face interaction. Since oral reading predominates in early reading instruction, it is suggested that these criteria may also be used in selecting listenable materials.     

Relationship between expressive language ability and rhythm perception, pitch perception, vocal range, and vocal midpoint among mentally retarded adults

This study investigated the relationship between expressive language ability and rhythm perception, pitch perception, vocal range, and vocal midpoint for 28 mentally retarded adults. A standardized speech test determined language scores, a standardized music test assessed rhythm and pitch perception, and vocalization determined vocal range and midpoint. Multiple correlation and multiple linear regression analyses indicated a significant correlation between expressive language ability and rhythm perception. Further research with music tests more appropriate for mentally retarded adults is recommended.     

Psychometric evaluation of the Basic Traits Inventory in the multilingual South African environment

The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the BTI for all the official language groups in South Africa. Item bias analysis was performed by means of Rasch analysis for a sample of 105 342 respondents with representation of each of the 11 language groups. Reliability values were good for all the language groups and bias was revealed in only 12 of the 193 items (6.2%) through item response modelling. Based on these results, the BTI may be an appropriate measure of personality for all the different language groups in South Africa.     

The Implications of Childhood Bacterial Meningitis for Language Development

Bacterial meningitis is a life threatening infection of the central nervous system. This illness is most prevalent early in life when the healthy child is rapidly acquiring language. This study investigated whether children with a history of bacterial meningitis were at risk for language difficulties post illness. Thirty post-meningitic children, aged between 9 years 0 months and 11 years 0 months, participated in this study. Each subject was administered a measure of non-verbal cognitive ability and a range of language tasks. These children performed poorly on applied language tasks, which tap skills used in effective discourse. These deficits occurred despite age appropriate performances on measures of linguistic/grammatical knowledge. These findings clearly illustrate that bacterial meningitis has implications for ongoing language development, which emphasises the importance of long term follow up. In developmental terms, this discrepancy between verbal knowledge and problem solving represents a dissociation between language skills which develop early in life and those which emerge later. This pattern of results suggests that bacterial meningitis may result in a delay in language development. A young age at illness was identified as an additional risk factor for adverse outcome. This study highlights the need to inform parents/guardians that post-meningitic children are at risk for experiencing language difficulties throughout childhood.     

The implications of childhood bacterial meningitis for language development.

Bacterial meningitis is a life threatening infection of the central nervous system. This illness is most prevalent early in life when the healthy child is rapidly acquiring language. This study investigated whether children with a history of bacterial meningitis were at risk for language difficulties post illness. Thirty post-meningitic children, aged between 9 years 0 months and 11 years 0 months, participated in this study. Each subject was administered a measure of non-verbal cognitive ability and a range of language tasks. These children performed poorly on applied language tasks, which tap skills used in effective discourse. These deficits occurred despite age appropriate performances on measures of linguistic/grammatical knowledge. These findings clearly illustrate that bacterial meningitis has implications for ongoing language development, which emphasises the importance of long term follow up. In developmental terms, this discrepancy between verbal knowledge and problem solving represents a dissociation between language skills which develop early in life and those which emerge later. This pattern of results suggests that bacterial meningitis may result in a delay in language development. A young age at illness was identified as an additional risk factor for adverse outcome. This study highlights the need to inform parents/guardians that post-meningitic children are at risk for experiencing language difficulties throughout childhood.     

Aphasia in Turkish: speech production in Broca's and Wernicke's patients

Turkish speech production was studied in 7 Broca's and 10 Wernicke's aphasics. Turkish is an agglutinative language, with few free-standing closed-class morphemes. The speech of Broca's patients was not telegraphic; although nonfluent, noun and verb suffixes were used appropriately. The speech of Wernicke's aphasics was fluent, using a wide range of often inappropriate forms. Both groups used appropriate nominal morphology. Broca's patients used a limited set of verb forms in contextually appropriate fashion. Wernicke's patients used a wide range of verb forms, all morphosyntactically correct, but often semantically anomalous. Both groups retained canonical subject-object-verb word order and controlled various types of pragmatically appropriate word order variation. It is proposed that aphasic speech patterns reflect retrieval problems rather than impairment of a portion of the language system.     

“Proactive” in many ways: Developmental evidence for a dynamic pluralistic approach to prediction

The anticipation of the forthcoming behaviour of social interaction partners is a useful ability supporting interaction and communication between social partners. Associations and prediction based on the production system (in line with views that listeners use the production system covertly to anticipate what the other person might be likely to say) are two potential factors, which have been proposed to be involved in anticipatory language processing. We examined the influence of both factors on the degree to which listeners predict upcoming linguistic input. Are listeners more likely to predict book as an appropriate continuation of the sentence “The boy reads a”, based on the strength of the association between the words read and book (strong association) and read and letter (weak association)? Do more proficient producers predict more? What is the interplay of these two influences on prediction? The results suggest that associations influence language-mediated anticipatory eye gaze in two-year-olds and adults only when two thematically appropriate target objects compete for overt attention but not when these objects are presented separately. Furthermore, children's prediction abilities are strongly related to their language production skills when appropriate target objects are presented separately but not when presented together. Both influences on prediction in language processing thus appear to be context dependent. We conclude that multiple factors simultaneously influence listeners’ anticipation of upcoming linguistic input and that only such a dynamic approach to prediction can capture listeners’ prowess at predictive language processing.     

Rhetoric and the Unconscious

This paper develops the ideas of rhetorical psychology by applying them to some basic Freudian concepts. In so doing, the paper considers whether there might be a Dialogic Unconscious. So far rhetorical psychology has tended to concentrate upon conscious thought rather than on the unconscious. It has suggested that thinking is modelled on argument and dialogue, and that rhetoric provides the means of opening up matters for thought and discussion. However, rhetoric may also provide the means for closing down topics and, thereby, provide the means of repression. It will be suggested that language is not merely expressive but it is also repressive. Moreover, the repressive aspects of language are built into the very practices of dialogue. In learning language, we learn the codes for socially appropriate ways of speaking. These must be acquired as habits, so that we learn to repress routinely the desire to transgress the codes of appropriate speech. Thus, the routine use of language provides the resources for repression. If language is repressive, then this applies equally to the language of psycho-analysis itself. Freud's famous case histories, such as that of Dora, can be re-examined, in order to see what Freud's own theory of repression was itself repressing.     

La percepción del habla durante el primer año de vida

Language acquisition involves a number of complex skills that evolve in correlation with each other, thus making it possible for learners of their first spoken language —or sign language— to achieve the best results with minimal effort, as long as they do so within the appropriate period of time. In this regard, it is proposed that early speech perception has a primary role in language acquisition. In order to provide an overview of the current scientific knowledge as to the capabilities of children under the age of one to perceive spoken language, this paper presents the results of the most relevant research on discrimination of classes and types of words, interidiomatic and prosodic discrimination, phonological and phonotactic discrimination, as well as recognition of distributional regularities amongst the elements of the speech signal.     

On the puzzle of language, pragmatics, and schizophrenia

The nature of circularity in thinking about language in schizophrenia is described, and initial observations by Byrne, et al. appropriate for breaking that circularity identified.     

The evolution of frequency distributions: Relating regularization to inductive biases through iterated learning

The regularization of linguistic structures by learners has played a key role in arguments for strong innate constraints on language acquisition, and has important implications for language evolution. However, relating the inductive biases of learners to regularization behavior in laboratory tasks can be challenging without a formal model. In this paper we explore how regular linguistic structures can emerge from language evolution by iterated learning, in which one person’s linguistic output is used to generate the linguistic input provided to the next person. We use a model of iterated learning with Bayesian agents to show that this process can result in regularization when learners have the appropriate inductive biases. We then present three experiments demonstrating that simulating the process of language evolution in the laboratory can reveal biases towards regularization that might not otherwise be obvious, allowing weak biases to have strong effects. The results of these experiments suggest that people tend to regularize inconsistent word-meaning mappings, and that even a weak bias towards regularization can allow regular languages to be produced via language evolution by iterated learning.     

Linguistic factors and meaningfulness of personal constructs

Studied the effect of linguistic development and social appropriateness of a language upon the meaningfulness of personal constructs articulated in this language. Subjects were 60 bilingual pupils from a boys secondary school in Tanzania. Linguistic development was manipulated by choosing pupils who had either 1½ years or 3½ years experience of instruction in English. For each subject constructs were elicited and grids administered in both English and Swahili. Two types of elements were used, for one of which Swahili was the socially more appropriate language and for the other, English. Results from the study indicate that rating polarization is a function of both linguistic development and appropriateness of language for construing the domain in question. These results are therefore interpreted as indicating that meaningfulness of personal constructs, as indicated by rating polarization, can have linguistic determinants.     

Two languages, two personalities? Examining language effects on the expression of personality in a bilingual context

The issue of whether personality changes as a function of language is controversial. The present research tested the cultural accommodation hypothesis by examining the impact of language use on personality as perceived by the self and by others. In Study 1, Hong Kong Chinese-English bilinguals responded to personality inventories in Chinese or English on perceived traits for themselves, typical native speakers of Chinese, and typical native speakers of English. Study 2 adopted a repeated measures design and collected data at three time points from written measures and actual conversations to examine whether bilinguals exhibited different patterns of personality, each associated with one of their two languages and the ethnicity of their interlocutors. Self-reports and behavioral observations confirmed the effects of perceived cultural norms, language priming, and interlocutor ethnicity on various personality dimensions. It is suggested that use of a second language accesses the perceived cultural norms of the group most associated with that language, especially its prototypic trait profiles, thus activating behavioral expressions of personality that are appropriate in the corresponding linguistic-social context.     

“Surmising” pauses

In Experiment One, subjects were instructed to surmise the location of pauses in four unpunctuated texts, two written in their native language and two written in a nonnative language. Bilingual subjects with knowledge of both languages served as a control. The mean number of total, correct, and false positive surmises, as well as the mean number of correct sumises within three durational brackets were analyzed between and within subjects. Native and nonnative language proficiency is discussed. In Experiment Two, English-speaking subjects were instructed to surmise pause location within three poems, each of which was written in either the French, English, or German language. Half of these subjects received unpunctuated versions of the poems while the remaining subjects received punctuated versions of the text. The detection of pause location as it relates to the language genre under investigation is explored. The influence of overlearned habits of language use as means to localizing appropriate use of pauses is discussed.     

FROM KNOWLEDGE TO COMPETENCE: REFLECTIONS ON THEORETICAL WORK

In this paper, the author maintains that the language of the clinical situation is and should be that of common-sense psychology. The author argues that the languages of clinical theory and metapsychology are at a distinctive distance from clinical language. In fact, no theory could be produced, should this distance not be upheld. The function of clinical theory is to act as a corrective to the tendency of common-sense psychology to fall back into the banalities and prejudices of general ideology. In addition, the function of metapsychology is said to be that of scrutinising clinical theory and defining its range of operation. Due to the claimed distance between the common-sensical language of the clinical situation and the language of theory, the analyst must utilise specific 'techniques' to appropriate the theoretical material and make it part of his competence and capacity for psychoanalytic action. This aspect of theoretical work is given the name 'assimilation' and, in turn, relies upon a process where theoretical concepts are 'deconstructed' as to their knowledge content.     

Language About People with Disabilities

A decade of rehabilitation literature (a) calls attention to imprecise, stereotypical, and devaluing language that is often used to discuss people with disabilities and (b) offers more appropriate alternatives. Because professional counselors sometimes commit these language abuses, and counselors of all specialities can expect to see some clients who have disabilities, this article seeks to bring these issues to the attention of the counseling profession at large.