Reports research at the University of Saskatchewan in which experiments with variously rearranged English and French sentences showed grammatical acceptability decreasing as the disruption of the sentence producing field of subject, verb, object, qualifier increased. (RM)

Examines the relationship between language acquisition and current linguistic theory, with specific reference to Chomsky's work. Linguistic areas that should be explored in relation to acquisition are suggested, including regional dialect studies, the place of sociolinguistic factors in acquisition, and syntax. Suggestions as to how to analyze…

This article argues that QUE-deletion in Montreal French is a syntactic rule, rather than a phonological one, as earlier treatments had claimed. It is divided into five sections: (1) a discussion of why the rule accounting for the alternation of QUE with zero is a deletion, not an insertion rule, (2) a critique of the best known earlier…

An analysis of the causative verb construction in French as studied by Harris. Some questions raised are: Can a causative verb be considered an auxiliary? Which verbs can be causative? Might the notion of auxiliary include "auxiliary nouns"? Syntactic and lexical-semantic distinctions are made. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

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…

Proposes a reexamination of the ellipsis within the framework of discourse grammar, as opposed to a grammar of sentence structure. (AM)

Challenges the idea that grammatical representations in second-language development are parametric values that are transferred from the learner's native language, offering learner data incompatible with this view. Advocates a weak transfer model in which lexical and functional projections transfer, but morphology-driven values of features like the…

It is proposed that the notion of "address" is neither meaning nor form but that it designates the form which designates meaning. It is therefore in a position underlying both form and meaning. (AMH)

This work reports on an initial study of the possibility of providing a suitable framework for the teaching of a foreign language grammar through string analysis, using French as the target language. Analysis of a string word list (word-class sequences) yields an overall view of the grammar. Details are furnished in a set of restrictions which…