In analyzing utterances whose singular property is to become true simply by being uttered, this article discusses the theory of explicit performatives and proposes an alternative explanation which focuses on meaning rather than on the fact of these utterances are speech acts. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

A comparison is made of two different approaches to the treatment of modals in the framework of a transformational grammar--that of Seuren, who analyzes modals as "operators," and that of the generative semanticists who take them to be "higher verbs." Implications for language teaching are discussed. (Author/RM)

Argues that discontinuities between sentences can often be explained in terms of syntactic relationships within individual sentences. (AA)

Describes a means of characterizing one of many semantic aspects of young children's comprehension ("necessity for linking"). This semantic aspect is then used to experimentally clarify sentence processing results that are ambiguous at the syntactic level. (HOD)

Examines the distribution of the French "ne" in order to determine the difference between the expletive "ne" and the negative "ne." (AM)

Verifying simple sentences generally involves a process wherein the meanings of individual words are combined to form the meaning of the entire sentence. Three experiments are described in which the combination process was investigated by asking subjects to decide whether S-V-Adj-O sentences were true or false. (Author/RM)

Discusses the nuances in meaning represented by the French adjective with relation to its position in a noun phrase, and by the use of the French subjunctive. (AM)

A summary of problems in the study of structural complexity. Within the framework of a "morphology of utterances," the following topics are addressed: the criteria of intuition and common sense; the relationship of complexity of language and thought; and the possibility of a purely linguistic measure of complexity. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A study of linguistic theories as they apply to translation, which is understood as a translation of ideas, not of words. Topics covered are: lexical structure and polysemy; meaning; structure and polysemy; meaning and "related ideas"; structural linguistics; semantic fields and context. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

An investigation of the relationship between a speaker's decision to treat portions of the information in a sentence as given or new and the syntactic form of the sentence produced. A tendency of English speakers to use alternative surface structure rules to present given information before new information is demonstrated. (AMH)

This paper formulates a semantic distinction between predicates in Japanese which take indirect questions and those which cannot, and advances a hypothesis that the former crucially involve in their semantics the absence, acquisition, presence, and loss of information relevant in certain ways. (Author)

Critically examines the foci of four prevalent explanations for reading failure in children: visual perception, intersensory integration, temporal-order perception, and verbal functioning. Applying findings from his own laboratory investigations and other selected research to each of the four hypotheses, author argues that the verbal-deficit…

Telegraphic conciseness is possible because of three processes: simplification of utterences by eliminating modal and functional words; recourse to semantics outside of any syntactic context; and recourse to a shared context. Telegraphic syntax is simply a slightly different usage of language rules. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Discusses experiments that investigated the sources of knowledge that are employed in spoken word identification. The interactive assumption that normal spoken word identification processes require the presence of semantic and syntactic context and the special status given to word-initial acoustic-phonetic information in cohort theory were…

Describes how traditional rules that explain the position of adverbs in English are not always adequate due to unconsidered criteria. More precise position rules need to be formulated, including a clearer approach to distinguishing when adverbials modify subjects or verbs. More accurate adverbial position rules are presented and discussed in…