Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the…

Provides a general overview of two books--"The Second Time Around: Minimalism and Second Language Acquisition" and "Second Language Syntax: A Generative Introduction--and shows how the respond to key issues in second language acquisition, including the process of second language acquisition, access to universal grammar, the role of…

Treats the general linguistic aspect of Fillmore's theories. (RM)

Investigates a single linguistic universal that typifies the generative approach to grammar: morphological causativization. The study offers a predictive lexical analysis of causativization within the framework of Government/Binding theory, discusses syntactic and lexical analyses, and examines transitive verbs. Discussions concerning periphrastic…

A critical review of the development of case theory as put forth by N. Chomsky, C. J. Fillmore, J. M. Anderson, J. J. Robinson, and S. Starosta. (Text is in French.) (AM)

A discussion of the child's language acquisition including examples of syntactic development. This analysis is introduced by references to various language theories, particularly the generative and psycholinguistic theories, and to various systems of syntactic description. The examples given raise questions on the theoretic and ideological levels.…

Revised version of a paper supported by a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship. The universal base hypothesis states that all natural languages utilize the same base component in their transformational grammars. (DD)

"THE SOUND PATTERN OF ENGLISH" PRESENTS A THEORY OF SOUND STRUCTURE AND A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE SOUND STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR. IN THE PREFACE TO THIS BOOK THE AUTHORS STATE THAT THEIR "WORK IN THIS AREA HAS REACHED A POINT WHERE THE GENERAL OUTLINES AND MAJOR THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES ARE FAIRLY CLEAR" AND…

In the past, linguistic descriptions of the relationships common to passive sentences have not been universally applicable. Junction grammar, a type of generative grammar, is a model that may provide a means of describing universal passive relationships. Junction grammar differs from transformational grammar in that its rules (1) claim other…

This first volume of a three-part language research study states and illustrates that the point of departure for comparative analysis of two languages rests on a comprehensive typology in each of a number of areas of grammar. The report suggests that a limited set of functions can be isolated, and that the range of grammatical possibilities open…

This paper discusses the validity and role of linguistic theory in terms of philosophy and logic and considers the relationship among these fields of human knowledge. The main objective of linguistic science is to discover the composition laws actually used by speech communities at any given moment in history. Linguistics is therefore not…

There is a set of difficult Spanish grammar questions (ser-estar, preterite-imperfect, subjunctive-indicative, word order, and prepositions) in which the description of the semantic component is essential. Even though generative formulations treat them in differing ways, these questions possess the common characteristic of associating a form…

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…