Questions the usefulness of E-Prime (a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be"), particularly the claim that E-Prime provides a simple discipline by which dishonesty and prejudice can be eliminated from communication. Claims that restructuring verbal communication treats the symptoms of dishonesty without curing the…

Discusses some of the historical background of the movement to do away with the verb "to be" and employ E-Prime (a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be"). (HB)

Discusses the beneficial aspects of "E-Prime" (a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be") and shows how it can be used to alert students to the pitfalls of that verb. Provides examples of how one form of the verb can be greatly overused and abused. (HB)

Argues that a complete alteration of English to the form called "E-Prime" (a form of English that eliminates all forms of the verb "to be") is not possible and would result in losing important speech patterns, such as identities and identification. Lists patterns of identification. Concludes by advocating "E-Choice"…

Studies intertextuality in teachers' peer dialog journal exchanges. Findings show that the meaning of intertextual links between entries has much to do with partners' shared stances toward gender roles (for the exchange between two women) and their roles as teachers within the school (for the exchange between two men). (Author)

Reports on linguistic features and patterns of coherence in mild and advanced levels of discourse of Alzheimer's patients. Argues and demonstrates that, as the disease progresses, patients' discourse becomes "pregrammatical"--vocabulary-driven and reliant on meaning-based discourse features rather than grammatically based features.…

Offers a detailed analysis of the English suffix "-ee" (employee, refugee, etc.) based on 1,500 naturally occurring tokens of 500 word types. Argues that certain semantic constraints, taken together, amount to a special-purpose thematic role that actively constrains productive use of derivational morphology. (Author/MSE)

Argues that a 1997 study of WH-movement in American Sign Language (ASL) proposing leftward syntactic movement uses incorrect interpretations of the data and can not account for the facts of the language. A previously-proposed position that ASL WH-phrases move rightward, and that universal grammar must allow the option of rightward movement, is…

Researchers have claimed that recasts might be ambiguous as feedback. Because recasts serve a dual function, as both feedback and conversational response, learners might not always interpret them as feedback (e.g., Lyster & Ranta, 1997). This study explores how learners interpret recasts they notice (as responses to content, negative evidence,…

A study investigated the nature of clear and dark sounds (resonance) in English, focusing on the features associated with the lateral consonant /l/. Subjects were three male undergraduate students and one male university faculty member, all native speakers of different English varieties. Each subject read aloud 27 short phrases or sentences. Using…

The book, designed as a textbook for introductory study of semantics within college-level linguistics, focuses on the study of meaning as it is systematically encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages. The term "semantics" is presumed here to include pragmatics. An introductory section explains fundamental theoretical and…

A sociolinguistic study of Ocracoke, an island community in North Carolina's Outer Banks, investigated the social dynamics of language change and variation. Data were gathered in interviews with 43 island residents aged 12-82, most of whose families have been on the island for several generations. Several major sociolinguistic issues were…

The history of Slavic prosody gives an account of Slavic languages at the time of their differentiation and relates these developments to issues in phonological theory. It is first argued that the syllable structure of Slavic changes before the fall of the jers and suggests that intra- and intersyllabic reorganization in Late Common Slavic was far…

Inalienable possession (iposs) in Mandarin Chinese has traditionally been thought restricted to associative (genitive) phrases where the possessor is juxtaposed to the possessum. In addition to such phrases, this analysis looks at five other possibilities where intrinsically relational nouns arise: zero anaphora; double subjects; passive of bodily…

An analysis of correlative constructions in Chinese that: (1) gives a principled account of the distribution of correlative markers; and (2) offers an explanation for some puzzling facts about distribution of anaphoric pronouns is presented. It is suggested that previous research has misidentified instances of verb phrase coordination as…