The disadvantaged girl child in Bihar: study of health care practices and selected nutritional indices.

PIP: 1983-90 data were used from the Patna Medical College Hospital's Department of Pediatrics and door-to-door field-based surveys from the Bihta and Bikram Blocks of Patna District to explore the sex differentials in health care practices and nutritional practices in the state of Bihar. The data point to the existence of considerable gender bias in health care practices and selected nutritional indices, albeit with a reduction in such discrimination over the years. Boys were preferentially hospitalized or shown in the outpatient department. The bias was more evident for hospitalizations, especially during 1983-87. However, there was a distinct downtrend in the male preferences for hospitalizations, especially from 1989, with the male to female ratio being 60:40 after 1989. The trends in sex differentials of immunization with DPT, OPV, and DT vaccines yield essentially similar information. Urgent efforts are justified to sustain the uplifting of female children.^ieng

Conceptual knowledge in the interpretation of idioms.

The authors examined how people determine the contextual appropriateness of idioms. In Experiment 1, idioms referring to the same temporal stage of a conceptual prototype were judged to be more similar in meaning than idioms referring to different temporal stages. In Experiment 2, idioms in a prototypical temporal sequence were more meaningful than idioms in sentences that violated the temporal sequence. In Experiment 3, idioms referring to the same stage of a conceptual prototype were differentiable on the basis of conceptual information. The conceptual coherence between idioms and contexts facilitated the processing speed of idioms in Experiment 4. Experiment 5 showed that speakers can recover the underlying conceptual metaphors that link an idiom to its figurative meaning. Experiment 6 showed that the metaphoric information reflected in the lexical makeup of idioms also determined the metaphoric appropriateness of idioms in certain contexts.

Psycholinguistic studies on the syntactic behavior of idioms.

Six experiments examined why some idioms can be syntactically changed and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John laid down the law can be passivized as The law was laid down by John), while other idioms cannot be syntactically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket cannot be passivized into The bucket was kicked by John). Our thesis was that the syntactic behavior of idioms is determined, to a large extent, but speakers' assumptions about the way in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole. The results of our studies indicated that idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., go out on a limb) were judged as more syntactically flexible or productive than nondecomposable phrases (e.g., kick the bucket). These findings suggested that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items (e.g., as "dead" metaphors), but can share many of the same compositional properties normally associated with more "literal" language. The implications of these data for theories of syntactic productivity of idioms and for models of idiom comprehension are discussed.

Speakers' assumptions about the lexical flexibility of idioms.

In three experiments, we examined why some idioms can be lexically altered and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John buttoned his lips about Mary can be changed into John fastened his lips about Mary and still mean "John didn't say anything about Mary"), whereas other idioms cannot be lexically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket, meaning "John died," loses its idiomatic meaning when changed into John kicked the pail). Our hypothesis was that the lexical flexibility of idioms is determined by speakers' assumptions about the ways in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole. The results of the three experiments indicated that idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., go out on a limb) were judged as less disrupted by changes in their lexical items (e.g., go out on a branch) than were nondecomposable idioms (e.g., kick the bucket) when their individual words were altered (e.g., punt the pail). These findings lend support to the idea that both the syntactic productivity and the lexical makeup of idioms are matters of degree, depending on the idioms' compositional properties. This conclusion suggests that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items, but share many of the properties of more literal language.