A system of quantitative techniques for describing the English language from a number of perspectives, intended for the language analyst, is presented. The grammar combines an emerging knowledge of semantics with existing detailed knowledge of syntax. The primary unit of analysis is the predication, a group of related concepts expressed as a…

The corpus of the study is presented and discussed, problems of Spanish suffix analysis are presented, and then noun usage--suffixed versus unsuffixed nouns, the gender marker in the corpus, the most frequently used suffixes, and general characteristics and trends of usage-are discussed. (SCC)

This article discusses the semantics of the notion of focus, insofar as it relates to Filipino languages. The evolution of this notion is reviewed, and an alternative explanation of it is given, stressing the fact that grammar and semantics should be kept separate in a discussion of focus. (CLK)

Research is reported in which subjects were required to perceive sentences in noise. A series of sentences having the same syntax and rhythm was presented. On a final sentence either rhythm alone or rhythm plus syntax were changed. The results stress the importance of rhythm in speech perception. (Author/RM)

This bibliography lists 31 citations of research reports, books, journal articles, and other publications concerning Karakalpak, one of the smaller languages of the Soviet Union which has an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The citations are also indexed by reverse chronological order, country of origin, and subject. (MSE)

The extent to which Basque displays ergative characteristics (an ergative language treats the underlying subject of intransitive clauses alike in some manner and differently from the underlying subject of transitive clauses) in its syntax is examined. The amount of evidence needed to conclude that Basque or any other language is ergative is…

A group of syntactic studies, primarily concerning English and German, within the framework of generalized phrase structure grammar include: "English Adverb Placement in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar" (Belinda L. Brodie), concerning the placement of modal, evaluative, temporal, and verb phrase adverbs; "Syntactic Conditions on Two Types of…

Two fundamental assumptions guide this survey of recent research on anaphora. The first is that anaphoric expressions do not refer to segments in a text or discourse, but to entities that are assumed to be in the language receiver's mind. The second assumption is that a text serves to suggest the referents for anaphora, as does the nonlinguistic…

Donnellan's distinction between attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions is extended to include Lewis' basic categories. The distinction as applied to sentences is brought out by investigating the consequences of the failure of presupposed sentences. Stalnaker uses Donnellan's distinction to support his theory of creating an…

It is contended that there are such things as discourse blocs, and that they are composed of discourse units glued together into a contextuated whole by bloc signals. There are three kinds of structures with which it is necessary to deal in order to discuss coherent discourse: the discourse bloc, the discourse unit, and the bloc signal.…

The nature of grammatical relations such as subject and object are examined. The ways in which subjects differ from language to language are described and the way in which a language can do without a subject relation is revealed. Three primitive functional properties of sentences which underlie the syntactic relations of subject and topic are…

THE DIALECT UPON WHICH THIS CHRESTOMATHY IS BASED IS THE NORTHERN (SOSVA) DIALECT, SPOKEN BY THE MAJORITY OF THE VOGUL PEOPLE IN THE NORTHWESTERN PART OF SIBERIA. THE TEXTS, WHICH FURNISH A BASIS FOR THE GRAMMAR AND SOUND SYSTEM OF THIS BOOK, ARE TAKEN FROM TRANSCRIPTIONS OF MATERIAL RECORDED BY THE AUTHOR IN 1957-58. A DESCRIPTION OF THE VOWELS,…

THE EFFECT OF KNOWLEDGE OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR UPON COMPOSITION SKILLS WAS INVESTIGATED. GENERATIVE GRAMMAR DESCRIBES THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS OF PRODUCING SENTENCES. IN THIS STUDY, GENERATIVE GRAMMAR WAS TAUGHT TO NINTH- AND TENTH-GRADE STUDENTS. SEVERAL SPECIFIC QUESTIONS GUIDED THE STUDY--CAN HIGH SCHOOL PUPILS LEARN TO APPLY THE RULES OF A…

This study addressed four questions raised in syntactic acquisition studies conducted by Carol Chomsky and others. Specifically, questions concerned the nature of syntactic structures in children's language repertoires, the uniformity and rate of acquisition of particular structures, the generalizability of the minimal-distance principle, and the…

This paper suggests that some features of the syntactic and semantic structure of sentences sometimes influence the phonemic analyses assigned to stretches of speech by the perceptual system. It is argued that the role of higher-order levels of linguistic analysis in speech perception can be productively studied. Theoretical issues appropriate for…