Discusses the relationship between subject and predicate, using examples from various languages; demonstrates the inadequacy of a universal view of the notion of "subject"; and presents a diachronic hypothesis concerning the subject-theme dialectic. (AM)

A study of the syntactic organization of discourse and an attempt to show that in all languages organization is necessary for meaningful utterances. Topics covered are: the necessity of regular predication in French; a definition of the subject-verb unity; and the non-verbal predicate. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Examination of a range of cross-linguistic generalizations leads to the view that grammar is primarily shaped by the entire range of cognitive, social, and interactional factors involved in language use. Specific grammatical phenomena are discussed that support the view that grammatical regularities arise because of certain strategies people use…

Examines the role of redundancy, as a universal linguistic feature, in language learning and teaching. (Author/AM)

Every sentence conveys a temporal point of view through its aspectual meaning. This viewpoint arises through presenting a situation from a certain temporal perspective and indirectly classifying the situation as an exemplar of an idealized situation type. The information is conveyed by the aspectual categories of a language. This paper presents a…

Suggests that cognitive semantics is governed by principles similar to prosodies in phonology. Illustrates this claim by words referring to negative states, events, and properties in English and in Polish, arguing that they carry 'negative prosodies' that spread over other lexical items. It is suggested that the semantic prosodies of some triggers…

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…

A discussion of semantic interpretation argues that contradictions such as "Sue's both right and wrong" are assigned consistent propositional interpretations such as "Sue's partly right and partly wrong" by universal semantic principles, which obviates analysis via conversational maxims and implicatures. First, it is shown from investigation of…

Four conference papers on discourse are included. In "How Context Contributes to the Interpretation of Temporal Expressions," Carlota S. Smith provides a summary analysis of the temporal interpretation of English sentences. Many sentences are shown to be semantically incomplete; it is argued that information from neighboring sentences is…

A collection of 21 papers, most presented at the Fifth International Conference on Contrastive Projects in June 1982 in Finland, includes: "Searching for Linguistic Universals through Contrastive Analysis,""Oral Discourse and Contrastive Analysis: Towards a French vs. Finno-Scandinavian Model,""Cultural Effect on the Comprehensibility of Reading…