This study examined and compared the comprehension of Mandarin ditransitive constructions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with autism spectrum disorder plus language impairment (ALI). Eighteen children with DLD, 17 children with ALI, and 27 age-matched typically developing (TDA) children, participated in a…

The syntactic complexities of English sentence structures induced the Indonesian students' sentence-level accuracies blurred. Reciprocally, the meanings conveyed are left hanging. The readers are increasingly at sixes and sevens. The Sentence Crimes were, therefore, the major essences of diagnosing the students' sentence-level inaccuracies in this…

Deaf Learners' Acquisition of fundamental lexical properties of high-frequency English verbs related to transitivity and intransitivity was examined, including the subtle distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs. A 140-item sentence acceptability rating scale was used to assess this lexical knowledge in deaf college students at two…

Children in grades one to four completed two sentence construction tasks: (a) Write one complete sentence about a topic prompt (sentence integrity, Study 1); and (b) Integrate two sentences into one complete sentence without changing meaning (sentence combining, Study 2). Most, but not all, children in first through fourth grade could write just…

Generalized recognition of the kernel, passive, negative, and passive-negative transformations of a number of sentences was investigated. A significant amount of generalization was obtained within a transformationally-defined sentence family relative to the generalization obtained between sentence families when subjects were requested to register…

This test was designed to measure awareness of the relationship existing between sentences that are similar in specific semantic content but different in syntactic structure. The test consists of twenty-five items of the three-option multiple-response type, with the stem of each item being a "pattern" sentence to be matched with one of the three…

Arguments for the introduction of an adverbial node label (ADV) in transformational grammar are examined and rejected. The following question is raised: Is a node label ADV necessary, or can the phenomena associated with adverbials be explained in terms of the set of node labels used to explain other areas of grammar? The author argues that a new…

An account of the phenomena that transformational syntax handled by means of "raising" is formulated in the context of cognitive grammar. Raising is analyzed as a special case of the metonymy that relational expressions exhibit in regard to their choice of overtly coded arguments. The transparency of these constructions is explained. (83…

In this article a method to improve sentence writing ability called sentence combining is explained. The potential effects of sentence combining are related and relevant research summarized. In addition, how to introduce sentence combining practice to a class, key instructional components including oral practice and peer assistance, sources of…

This progress report describes a Swedish project which is seeking to develop and test materials for writing practice. Experimental materials focus on the sentence, giving students practice in the formation of more advanced constructions. Emphasis in the control program is on a variety of types of written composition (e.g., narratives,…

The relationships between a child's perceptual space and the acquisition of language are discussed in light of the work of Clark, Fillmore, and Chafe. Early language is analyzed as a semantic structure where linguistic ties are established between semantic features and inherent and relational perceptual features. Of these, it is the relational…

Investigates the pragmatic functions of topicalizing subject (S) and object (O) in Standard Arabic and attempts to find a functional explanation for the occasional preposing/topicalization of S and/or O over the verb (V) to yield a construction in the form of SVO order or any other order sanctioned by the rules of Arabic grammar. (22 references)…

This paper is a tentative description of several processes of complex sentence building in Bahasa Malaysia. Several types of embedding and conjoining are described, and some transformational rules are proposed whereby these are accomplished. Two informants, one from Selangor State and the other from Malacca State, were used for the study.…

The Agnate Sentences Test was designed to measure awareness of the relationship between sentences that are similar in semantic content but different in syntactic structure. In this study, developmental differences in the ability to decode written syntax are observed by means of this test which was administered to 63 4th graders, 65 8th graders,…

This study reflects the author's efforts to synthesize ideas drawn from various linguistic theorists, especially Schlesinger, Chomsky, and Fillmore. The first section gives the theoretical background for the study. The second section discusses roles, relations, and constructs. The final section discusses the applications of the study to teaching…