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…

In perceiving speech, a hearer may divide the utterance into predictable units. In the present investigation of these units, an alleged phenomenon (the resistance of the hearer to perceive extraneous auditory stimuli) was employed. It was argued that this resistance caused the hearer to perceive the irrelevant stimulus, if at all, primarily at the…

This paper proposes that some but not all "I" causatives in Korean are analyzable, and argues that case markers in Korean are not merely surface phenomena, but are semantically and syntactically significant. The types of Korean causatives are introduced, as well as the major problems involved in their analysis. Previous generative works…

To determine the principal differences in syntactic structure between spoken and written American English, a corpus of the spoken (800 sentences) and written (280 sentences) utterances of six graduate students was described in terms of a transformational generative grammar. These utterances were used as a basis for a two-part grammar: (1) a source…

A review of traditional and transformational studies on the phenomenon of sentential complementation (noun clauses) reveals many areas of agreement. Although some adherents of generative grammar may have occasionally obscured this aspect because of the offensive nature of their criticism of other modes of analysis, it is seen that, in several…

Outlines how the current work in linguistics and psychology can be joined with rhetoric in the study of cohesion and suggests the ways in which this synthesis leads to both a literary and philosophical sense of form and a practical pedagogy for teachers. (MM)

Argues that the nature of mental representation contributes little to the specification of synchronic syntactic competence. Psycholinguists, syntacticians, and morphologists can benefit from a collaborative approach to the construction of an integrative model of language and mind, covering competence, representation, processing, and acquisition.…

Both English and Finnish make use of a category called the passive voice. In most cases these passives correspond to each other, but both are subject to restrictions. This paper attempts to determine how English passives overlap with the semantic area covered by the Finnish passive and what the choices are which face a speaker of Finnish in…

The chapters in this volume represent a type of current psycholinguistic research that focuses both on the nature of human information processing and the coding of linguistic structure. The chapters and authors are as follows: (1) "The Wherefores and Therefores of the Competence-Performance Distinction," by V. Valian; (2) "Levels of Processing and…

This paper addresses itself to the way in which K'ekchi speakers identify the subject and the object in simple sentences. An attempt is made to determine: (1) whether K'ekchi has a basic word order, (2) the possible functions of any derived word order, and (3) whether there are any constraints on the logically possible word orders in K'ekchi. A…

This book attempts to bring linguists and language teachers up to date on the latest developments in semantics. A survey of the role of semantics in linguistics and other academic areas is followed by a historical perspective of semantics in American linguistics. Various semantic models are discussed. Anomaly, ambiguity, and discourse are…

This paper describes predicate adjective usage in modern standard Russian using a corpus of written Russian derived from "Pravda" (neutral literary style) and "Krokodil" (conversational material). The short, long nominative, and instrumental forms are examined in relation to the type of adjective, copulative verb, sentence subject, and other…

The "direct discourse analysis" introduced by Susumu Kuno is examined and found to be inadequate. To account for the data Kuno discusses, as well as for related data, a new approach to transformations is suggested. By determining the function, rather than the form, of a transformation, certain predictions are possible. Primary is the…

Within the realm of psycholinguistics there is a need to investigate linguistic performance based on the generative transformational concept of linguistic competence, i.e., based on the speaker-listener's knowledge of his language. Psycholinguistics must determine how underlying knowledge is related to overt performance. The nominalization and…

This study of hierarchy and universality in the languages of New Guinea seeks to describe and place the run-on surface structures found in those languages. In the process, traditional stereotypes of "sentence" and "paragraph" are questioned and revised, while hierarchy -- a fundamental characteristic of language -- is shown to…