THE ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE IS CONSIDERED AS A QUESTION OF SPECIFYING HOW CHILDREN'S CAPACITY FOR LANGUAGE INTERACTS WITH THEIR LINGUISTIC EXPERIENCE--THE INTERACTION TAKING THE FORM OF RELATING THE UNIVERSAL ASPECTS OF THE DEEP STRUCTURE TO THE IDIOSYNCRATIC ASPECTS OF THE SURFACE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE. THIS INTERACTION OCCURS IN THE ACQUISITION…

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 argues that the hypothesis that all languages have a definitization process is empirically refutable, and that use of the terminology "definite" and "indefinite" is justified in that it reflects intuitions of grammarians and linguists. The following statements are tested against evidence from samples of different languages: (1) all noun…

In viewing the approach to English and other grammars in the light of linguistic universals, the author feels that the principal justification for deep structure analysis of English is that "deep structure analyses of all the languages of our multilingual world in combination can serve as a genuinely scientific basis of a defensible universal…

This paper explores the syntactic properties, in Romanian, of one kind of subordination, namely Sentential Predicate Complementation. Some generalizations are offered concerning the relationship between the meaning and the syntactic properties of these constructions. The complement structures are isolated into groups according to verb selection:…

This paper presents evidence from Philippine languages which suggests a number of modifications in the theory of case grammar. Philippine languages and adjacent related languages mark the case relationship between the verb and one noun phrase in the sentence by a particle on the noun phrase and an affix on the verb, a phenomenon which in recent…

In order to make linguistically significant generalizations in formulating transformational rules, a limited number of variables must be used. Such a limitation rule is the Complex Noun Phrase (NP) Constraint, active in English and, according to claims, universal. The fact that Korean synta, which is greatly different from English, also requires…

In the past, linguistic descriptions of the relationships common to passive sentences have not been universally applicable. Junction grammar, a type of generative grammar, is a model that may provide a means of describing universal passive relationships. Junction grammar differs from transformational grammar in that its rules (1) claim other…

This first volume of a three-part language research study states and illustrates that the point of departure for comparative analysis of two languages rests on a comprehensive typology in each of a number of areas of grammar. The report suggests that a limited set of functions can be isolated, and that the range of grammatical possibilities open…

This study of the acquisition of kinship terms in English is a test of the hypothesis that lexical items are learned in their order of complexity and of the validity of relational analysis in predicting the order of the acquisition of kinship terms. Earlier studies of kinship terms, Piaget's in particular, are first discussed, as well as the…

This paper discusses the validity and role of linguistic theory in terms of philosophy and logic and considers the relationship among these fields of human knowledge. The main objective of linguistic science is to discover the composition laws actually used by speech communities at any given moment in history. Linguistics is therefore not…

This discussion considers the process of subject raising, which takes the constituent subject out of the complement clause and makes it a constituent of the matrix clause and the occurrence of this process in Japanese and in other subject-object-verb (SOV) languages. The first part of the paper demonstrates why subject raising is not a common…

This general bibliography on discourse and related topics lists over 350 books, articles, and papers, written between 1912 and 1971, covering a great variety of linguistic problems and issues. The subjects range from general topics such as "Nouns and Noun Phrases" and "Language as Symbolization" to such specialized articles as "Samoan…

The source of syntactic ambiguity and facts concerning the resolution of such ambiguity are discussed in this paper. The attitude of qenerative linguists towards ambiguity is examined, and a working distinction is drawn between vaqueness and ambiguity. The consequences of this distinction are then examined for syntactic ambiguity and an ordering…