The study analyzes, for readability and difficulty, the language of 50 commonly used application forms. The forms were compared with respect to length, readability, t-unit density, and word-length variables. Forms were also compared against two word-frequency lists. Results show that many of the words appearing often on forms do not appear on the…

The class of English words traditionally called adverbs is examined and redefined in this paper. The following three subclasses of adverbs are identified: limiters, which are words that modify noun phrases; intensifiers, which are words that modify adjectives; and "true" adverbs, which modify verb phrases and sentences. Examples of these…

It has been demonstrated (in the research described here) that people hearing sentences on a tape recording process underdetermined sentences differently than people hearing them in a conversation. It has been shown that this difference is caused by the presence of underdetermined elements but not ordinary transformations. The effect of ordinary…

This study attempts to bring together most of the information about the transformational analysis of the grammar of English that was available up through the summer of 1968, and to integrate it into a single coherent format. The format chosen is that of C. Fillmore (the "Deep Case" hypothesis) combined with the "Lexicalist" hypothesis of N.…

In discussing the views of leading linguistics on the specific features of Slavic negation, the author reviews mainly Czech material and compares it with Russian and English works. This paper is part of a larger work on negation in which it is argued that a language system is a dynamic system based on oppositions (with predominant binary…

Six passages were used in this study to investigate the recoding behavior of eighth and ninth grade students for both increase and decrease in syntactic complexity and thus gain a more accurate picture of their grammar. Each of the two selections used was written in kernel sentences at the eighth grade level of writing and the skilled adult level…

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a rewriting instrument in French that would be a valid indicator of the level of syntactic development of American students in French. Vocabulary is limited to those words found in the first level of "Ecouter et Parler;" only the present tense was used in the tests. The theory on which the tests…

This study identified structural units of language as they appeared in the speech of two- to five-year-old preschool white children in Brisbane. Electronic equipment was used to record the speech samples, which were transformed into three separate language concordances by computer analysis. These structural units of language were then compared…

This study examines the basic question about the position of dicursivity with respect to language, arising from the axiomatic statements concerning linguistic sign, form and meaning as definition components of the structural conception of language. The book is divided into two sections: I. Axiomatics of Structural Linguistics, and II. Linguistics…

The individual components of language -- on the semantic, syntactic, and phonological levels -- mean little or nothing as individual constructs. Language research must proceed according to a concept of linguistic structure which reflects the correlation of elements within and between levels of structure. (VM)

This article discusses the notion of the proposition in the philosophy of language. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This article discusses the various types of expression of emphasis used for nominals in a variety of languages: raising or alteration of the voice, word order, use of a morpheme for an emphatic function, and nominalization of a part of the sentence not being emphasized. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

The purpose of the paper was to map the language development of children at infant school and examine spontaneous corrections made by the children of their speech. (Author/NCR)

The author accepts some of the technical comments in Dresher and Hornstein's article on artificial intelligence (AI), (EJ 161 384, Cognition, December 1976), but disagrees with several other comments. Although Dresher and Hornstein unquestioningly adopt Noam Chomsky's paradigm for the study of language, their real point is that AI researchers are…

The article looks at idiomaticity from the semantic and syntactic angles. After a summary of the problems arising from a semantic definition, some recent proposals regarding the syntactic behavior of idioms are reviewed briefly and evaluated. There is a sizable bibliography. (AMH)