This book examines how the underlying linguistic competence of second language (L2) learners is constrained by the same universal principals governing natural language. It is assumed that there is an innately given universal grammar (UG) which constrains L1 grammars, limiting the kinds of hypotheses that L1 acquirers entertain about the nature of…

This book examines children's acquisition of a first language, the stages they go through, and how they use language as they learn. There are 16 chapters in 4 parts. After chapter 1, "Acquiring Languages: Issues and Questions," Part 1, "Getting Started," offers (2) "In Conversation with Children," (3) "Starting…

Differences of language often mirror differences in values and worldviews. An examination of the languages of business and education shows that if people really want to run an educational institution "like a business," there is a serious semantic problem. This book illustrates the problems that arise when familiar words have different connotations…

Ethnoscience studies, and studies of color vocabulary in particular, have firmly established that to understand the full range of meaning of a word in any language, each new language must be approached on its own terms, without a priori theories of semantic universals. It has been shown that color words in fact encode a great deal of…

Articles included in this compilation represent functional approaches to literary analysis. Most of these papers were presented at the Sixteenth International Systemics Congress held in Helsinki, Finland, in 1989. The aim of the congress was to establish dialogue between various functional approaches to the theoretical study of language, to…

Filled with detail and trivia, this book is an informative, nonspecialized, and often humorous consideration of the vitality and variety of the English language. The book examines the origins of language and the history of English; the process of word formation and the origins of words; the problem of jargon; the prevalence of slang; synonyms,…

This manual discusses recent research in the field of semantics. It was prepared as part of a series of books to be used in connection with a course of advanced study for experienced philologists and teachers. The Introduction and Part One are based mainly on the 1971-1972 course of lectures on Meaning Equivalence by Akhmanova, and discuss the…

This paper reports on an experiment designed to collect data on children's perception and use of semantic attributes. Forty-five children ranging in age from 2 years 8 months to 6 years were given a picture test involving judgment of similarities between objects. The test consisted of 47 groups of pictures; each group contained a stimulus or a…

The study of speech errors, or "slips of the tongue," is a time-honored methodology which serves as a window to the representation and processing of language and has proven to be the most reliable source of data for building theories of speech production planning. However, until "Kids' Slips," there has never been a corpus of such errors from…

A revisionist account of the development of ideas about semantics in modern theories of language is presented, focusing on the rift between Noam Chomsky and Generative Semanticists about the concept of deep structure, or the role of meaning in grammar. The discussion re-appraises the paradigm that has dominated American linguistics since the…

A comparison of the syntactic characteristics of mathematical equations and Eskimo syntax is made, and a proposal that Eskimo has a level of structure similar to that of equations is described. P:t performative contrast is reanalyzed. Questions and speculations on the formal treatment of this type of structure in transformational grammar, and its…

This handbook (the last in a series of six) suggests many classroom activities that are interrelated with all the other areas of the language arts, particularly reading and writing, and that encourage the use of the library media center, mass media, textbooks, and audiovisual aids. The activities are designed to help pupils gain new insights into…

The 13 chapters in this book are based on papers presented at the 1974 Indiana Cognitive/Mathematical Psychology Conference, at which contributors were asked to emphasize the relatively broad theoretical significance of their work, to incorporate the work of others, and to speculate about future developments. Topics covered include the nature and…

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…

This innovative textbook, for first-year English and more advanced composition and critical thinking courses, addresses the need for college students to develop critical reading, writing, and thinking skills for self-defense in the contentious arena of American civic rhetoric. In a groundbreaking reconception of composition theory, it presents a…