This paper examines nominalization and serial verb construction (SVC) in Dagaare, a West African language. It discusses nominalization theory and its relation to Germanic languages such as English, German, and Dutch, using insights gained from the study of these languages to help illuminate nominalization in Dagaare and other similar West African…

An investigation of two sentence types in English and Spanish contrasts the syntactic features of each and examines the implications for second language instruction. Existential-presentative (ex-pr) and non-existential-presentative (pr) sentences are seen as an important tool for communication because they introduce an element that is…

The verb in Classical Aztec is slowly moving from the end of the sentence to the beginning due to the attraction of sentence initial modal particles to the verb. Not only the function but also the position of elements should be examined to account for word-order change. (SCC)

In Spanish non-sentence constructions, beginning elements establish a datum of reference, while following elements narrow the possibilities of syntagmatic combination. Word order is examined in relation to paradigm contrast and syntagmatic complexity. (CK)

The reversal of subject and predicate terms in quantified, categorical expressions was studied as an operation that is potentially important in issues of representation and comprehension of quantified relations. In two experiments students were asked to evaluate the relation between two quantified expressions. The salience of reversal in the…

This paper examines aspects of variation in child language, and specifically how children express causal relations in complex sentences. Four particular types of variation were observed: (1) the order of clauses and the connectives used to link clauses; (2) mothers' causal statements; (3) interaction of language form and content, in the form of…

This study examined the factors influencing the choice of the conjunctions "and" or "but" in joining two clauses of a compound sentence. Subjects were students at first-, fourth-, seventh-, and tenth-grade and adult levels. (Author/ED)

An effective approach to minimizing the difficulties ESL learners have with the English verb phrase is to associate a clear function with each form. Three main contexts for teaching and lines of development are discussed. (Author/ND)

The linguistic literature contains many studies of the structure of the noun phrase. Syntactic structures that occupy NP position but which don't have the internal characteristics of a substantive (infinitives and THAT clauses, for example) are distinguished from lexical structures that occupy NP position and do have the internal characteristics…

A conservative analysis of simple declarative sentences in Lummi is given in order to clarify the role of the morpheme "ng" (a phonetic approximation of this morpheme) and the order and form of pronouns. In Lummi the combination of the transitivizer and "ng" acts as a passive marker on the verb. However, there are cases where…

In this paper, non-standard types of agreement are examined. Such agreement types are those in which two or more supposedly agreeing categories show discord rather than concord. For example, if a language has noun-adjective agreement, there may, under limited circumstances, be non-standard agreement where the subject is plural and the agreeing…

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of coordination reduction in various languages and to propose a universal set of rules that will account for all types of coordination reduction. In a brief discussion of some of the more recent proposals on coordination reduction it will be shown that these proposals fail to account for the…

The objectives of this study were (1) to analyze the linguistic structures and the linguistic deviations used by children in their written sentences, and (2) to compare the structures and deviations with the quality of the writing, as judged by three competent raters. Eighty fourth-grade and 80 sixth-grade children (8% black) from working-class…