This book had two goals: to provide an introduction to transformational-generative grammar, placing it into a historical and philosophical context with other earlier linguistic traditions, and to provide a survey of the elements of English grammar from a transformational point of view. The text is intended for anyone who wishes to know the basis…

This article attempts to refute D.M. Perlmutter's claim that the syntactic component in Spanish grammar can generate structures that are grammatical at the deep structure level but not at the surface structure level, and that it is necessary to impose a surface structure constraint (SSC) as a filter to reject the ungrammatical structures. The…

Use of "the language of observation" as a level of scientific discourse is exemplified. The formal properties of this language are characterized, and the derivability and feasibility of the axiomatic method as applied to it are considered. Also discussed are the theoretical and practical significance of this level with respect to various…

Two approaches to the problem of determining the illocutionary force(s) of a sentence are examined: Gordon and Lakoff's (1971) "Conversational Postulates," and Fraser's (1973) "On Accounting for Illocutionary Forces"; their relation to Searle's conditions is discussed. It is argued that Gordon and Lakoff's analysis can be…

A history of theories of transformational generative grammar is presented, and four theories are characterized as: Chomsky's initial theory, Chomsky's standard theory, the semantically-based theory, and finally Chomsky's nonstandard theory. The main issue appears to be the question of what determines sentence meaning. Specifically, it is stated…

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how languages express contrastive emphasis. It is argued that all contrastively emphasized constructions have underlying cleft sentences, independent of whether the surface structure is an equational or a nonequational one. It is furthermore argued that emphatic word orders are systematic and predictable…

The syntactic relationship between the quantifier and the noun phrase (NP) and the function of the quantifier in the sentence are studied. In the first part of the paper, the theories of several linguists concerning the structure of the NP that includes a quantifier are reviewed. In parts 2 and 3 a syntactic description of the quantifier is…

The first section of this paper deals with the attempts within the framework of transformational grammar to make semantics a systematic part of linguistic description, and outlines the characteristics of the generative semantics position. The second section takes a critical look at generative semantics in its later manifestations, and makes a case…

Intended as an introduction to psycholinguistics from the linguist's point of view, this book addresses itself to three main topics: the innateness of language, the relationship of linguistic knowledge to language usage, and the comprehension and production of speech. In 12 chapters, the book discusses the nature of language development, the…

This paper is concerned with the treatment of anaphoric phenomena in a semantically based transformation grammar. It is argued that account of anaphora in terms of coreference are no better than accounts in terms of identical NPs; instead, it is proposed that a unified account of anaphora, which covers both quantified and unquantified NPs, may be…

The paper begins with a discussion of several recently proposed analyses of nominal compounds in English. It is then suggested that the relations which may appropriately underlie nominal compounds of the type Noun + Noun can best be defined negatively, i.e. by listing those relations between two nouns which cannot underlie compounds rather than…

This paper raises questions about the significance of errors made by language learners. The discussion is divided into four parts: (1) definition of error analysis, (2) the present status of error analysis research, including an overview of the theories of Lado, Skinner, Chomsky, Corder, Nemser, and Selinker; (3) the subdivisions of error analysis…

This paper reviews the psychological theories and research which deal with the meaning of words in the course of human psychological development. The three major premises of the review are: (1) that word meaning is conducive to empirical study, (2) that rules can be produced that apply to most word meanings, and (3) that human development has…

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the sounds, ?, h, y, and w function as a natural class by investigating the following languages that have a metathesis rule affecting these sounds: Yagua, Zoque, classical Greek, Mandaic, Akkadian, Hanunoo, Tubatulabal, Twana, and Hungarian. The paper is divided into four parts. Section 1 briefly…

This book attempts to bring linguists and language teachers up to date on the latest developments in semantics. A survey of the role of semantics in linguistics and other academic areas is followed by a historical perspective of semantics in American linguistics. Various semantic models are discussed. Anomaly, ambiguity, and discourse are…