This paper discusses different approaches to language acquisition in relation to children's acquisition of word order in "wh"-questions in English and Norwegian. While generative models assert that children set major word order parameters and thus acquire a rule of subject-auxiliary inversion or generalized verb second (V2) at an early stage, some…

Languages can differ in fundamental ways with respect to the syntax of sentences with a "missing" direct object. Whereas Japanese and Korean permit null direct objects that are licensed under general discourse conditions (the recoverability of the referent from context) without regard for choice of verb, object ellipsis in English obeys lexical…

The grammaticalization of "liao" as a main verb in tenth-century vernacular texts to "le" as an aspectual particle in modern Chinese is investigated. The change is attributed to the resultative construction coming into existence in the language and to instances where the verb took sentential subjects or occurred in temporal clauses only. (17…

The Japanese sentence-final particle "no" is analyzed as a marker of evidentiality, signaling that the speaker shares a commitment to the knowledge in question with a group of which he is part. In contrast, bare verb forms (BVs) (i.e., the absence of "no") indicate that the speaker, as an individual, is committed to the…

Examines Modern Greek verbs which seem to be negative-raisers, including consideration of data that offer syntactic justification for negative-raisers and an examination of the semantics and pragmatics of the negative-raisers. (CB)

Paper written at a field workshop conducted by Joseph E. Grimes; research conducted under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, July 1968-January 1971, and partially supported by the National Science Foundation. (DD)

Compares the use of the English verbs "say" and "tell" and the Hebrew verbs "amar" and "siper" and then examines the degree of correspondence between "say" and "amar" and between "tell" and "siper." (CB)

States the differences between the classes of structures that admit a progressive interpretation in English and Japanese and discusses progressive aspect in these two languages on the basis of proposed universally valid definitions. It is concluded that the contrastive behavior of the English "be-ing" construction and the Japanese…

Examines the distribution of clause types in ancient Greek during the Homeric (pre-800 B.C.) and Hellenistic (ca. 100 A.D.) periods, as well as an intermediate period (ca. 450 B.C.), delineating the evolution from a subject-object-verb (SOV) to a subject-verb-object (SVO) structure. (49 references) (MDM)

Attempts to use a construct of literary theory to solve a linguistic problem: the notion of narrative perspective to explain tense variation in Bulgarian narrative. The specific phenomenon of variation is between the past indefinite and the indirect tenses in passages where all the verb forms should be indirect. (24 references) (Author/CK)

This volume presents a compilation and translation of folktales and other forms of oral literature in the Kupia, Kotia Oriya, and Parengi Languages of India. Kupia and Kotia Oriya are Indo-Aryan languages, while Parengi is a Munda language. Language family differences are particularly obvious in the vocabulary and syntax of the different groups of…

Examines the Brazilian Portuguese use of verb tenses in oral narrative episodes as a device to mark certain utterances that have a cohesive function in relating the episode to the overall purpose of the narrative, facilitating the listener's interpretation of the discourse in a global fashion. (CB)

An analysis of the compound verb system of Persian marks constructions euphemistically by producing an indirect order effect and by alternating different compound and simple forms that bear the same denotation but are governed by a rigorous code of ethics. What really carries the semantic reference in these cases is the process of construing…

Detailed analysis of frequencies of the primary auxiliary verb "be" in Scots dramatic texts leads to consideration of the typological relationship said to exist between different varieties of Scots and between them and standard English. (Author/CB)

Argues that where Spanish is in contact with Quechua, the Spanish present perfect, preterite, and pluperfect are in contrast on the basis of a spatio-temporal parameter derived from the notion of present relevance. These innovative uses come from interaction between semantic systems of Quechua and Spanish and are consistent with universals of the…