A pragmatic approach to the problem of teaching the uses of the definite article in English to students of English as a foreign language is presented. The discussion deals with--(1) the situational context as a determining factor for the definite article; (2) the role of the linguistic context; (3) the determining role of restrictive phrases and…

Special issue on translation. (VM)

The problem of determining the grammatical correctness, as opposed to semantic correctness, of the output of a generative system is discussed. (RM)

The verb "take" as presented by Langendoen and McCawley is examined in order to prove to the reader that transformational generative grammar suffers from a disregard of empirical fact. (Author/LG)

Presents an heuristic procedure, based on cooccurrence of forms, for identifying the closed systems of a language and to show how the systems interlock, differ in meaning, and manifest themselves. (AM)

Although Japanese word order is considered flexible and can often be changed without causing semantic change, there is consistent regidity in the language, as explained here. (CHK)

This article discusses the use of the image in audiovisual structural exercises, on the lexical and on the grammatical level. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Contradicts Pablo Jordan's theory that certain "se" constructions in Spanish are neither passive nor reflexive. It is claimed that syntactic evidence reveals two types of impersonal structures, the impersonal active and the passive reflexive. (Text is in Spanish.) (CK)

A procedure, designated "MORPH," has been developed for the automatic morphological analysis of complex English words. Each word is reduced to a stem in canonical or dictionary form, plus affixes, inflectional and derivational, represented as morphemes or as syntactic features of the stem. The procedure includes the task of analyzing as…

This is an outline of the major characteristics of sentences like "Ali alikuwa mwalimu" (Ali was a teacher), "Ali ni mwalimu" (Ali is a teacher), and the numerous pattern variations demonstrated by such sentences. Constructions of this kind are traditionally called copula constructions, and have been classified in terms of (1)…

The question of whether word meanings have internal structure identical in kind to the syntax of sentences is examined. Evidence is sought for the structural aspects of word meaning and the issue of whether judgements of similarity between words is based on meaning content or on meaning structure is raised. Four hypotheses were tested: (1)…

Despite the similarity in the surface structure, sentences containing a semi-auxiliary (e.g., "avoid,""bother,""happen,""seem,""begin,""tend," etc.) followed by a "to" infinitive or a gerund show a number of differences among themselves in respect to the co-occurrence…

Syntactic rules with structural descriptions which apply on several linguistic levels are called global derivational constraints. (DD)

Weakening and deletion of syllable-final and word-final phonemes, a phenomenon prevalant in Puerto Rican Spanish, was studied. Two of these phonemes, /s#/ and /n#/ were examined for their capacity as plural markers. Data were collected during a one-year ethnographically-oriented study of a single block in the Puerto Rican community in north…