The difficulty of understanding embedded sentences is discussed in relation to Bever's hypothesis: if a sentence segment has a double function by means of the same processing strategy it is difficult to interpret the sentence. An alternative to this theory is proposed due to the author's experiments. (SCC)

Three colloquium papers are presented on two fields of linguistics, dialogism (the study of dialogue content) and polyphony (the representation of different sounds by the same letter or symbol). The first paper, by J. Moeschler, examines dialogism, dialogue, and polyphony from the perspective of the pragmatics of the utterance and the pragmatics…

An analysis of the nature of secondary predicates takes a comparative approach, using Italian and English. Distributional properties and extraction facts are accounted for, and an explanation for the fact that resultatives are not allowed in Romance languages is sought on the basis of Italian evidence. It is argued that the semantic distinction…

The development of relative clauses in child speech was investigated using an elicited production task instead of spontaneous speech samples. In an elicited production task, the context is manipulated so that a complex sentence must be used for communication. Thirty-six English speaking children from 3 to 5 years old were provided with contexts…

This study investigated kindergarten, first, and second grade children's ability to make linguistic judgments about sentneces that were either correct or disrupted along semantic or grammatical lines. Sentences on the judgment task were created according to clearly specified rules utilizing grammatical features that could be transformed into…

Kindergarten and first-grade children participated in a study of the role of reciprocal and inversion reversibility in language acquisition and cognitive development. Subjects completed cognitive tasks assessing conservation, seriation, and class inclusion, and language tasks assessing the active-passive transformation and the negative…

The syntax of adult expressive language is compared to that of child pre-language. This "syntactical regression" is considered part of the dynamic and evolutionary character of human language. (Text is in French.) (AM)

The article reports on an experimental study undertaken in a suburban Parisian kindergarten to determine the optimum environment for child language development. Adult-child interaction is underlined as essential in the acquisition process. Observation methods and specific examples of the effect of child-adult interaction are outlined. (Text is in…

Examines the relationship between language acquisition and current linguistic theory, with specific reference to Chomsky's work. Linguistic areas that should be explored in relation to acquisition are suggested, including regional dialect studies, the place of sociolinguistic factors in acquisition, and syntax. Suggestions as to how to analyze…

Attempts to show that the comparison of language structures may be relevant to diachronic linguistics, and in particular to areal linguistics. The article is based on an ongoing comparative study aimed at devising a typology of African languages. (Author/RM)

Relational Grammar, which has evolved from transformational grammar, relies on a "universal grammar" approach. By closely studying this approach, linguists will be able to understand Relational Grammar (RG) well enough to be able to participate in its further development. The basic assumptions of RG are that…

Twenty-four adults participated in an experiment to determine the difficulty of conditional sentences of the kinds frequently found in the instructions in government forms. The stimulus materials were 128 sentence frames of the form, "If you are X, press button Y," where X was replaced by sixteen different coordinate structures. These…

The use of "wh" forms in questions asked by four children was recorded from age 22 to 36 months, and analyzed. In the emergence of "wh" forms, the children first asked identifying questions with "what" and "who," followed in order by (1) "wh" pronominal questions which ask for major sentence…

The 2,459 entries in this bibliography on transformational grammar and related areas are written in, and deal with, a wide variety of languages. The listings, covering available publications up to early 1968, include texts, journal articles, papers and other works, and reviews of some of the more outstanding writings. (AMM)

This paper is part of a current dissertation project exploring the relationships between constructs in linguistic theory and pattern of language behavior in aphasic adults. The author feels that linguists have done little enough work in the area of speech pathology yet they have discussed at length the distinction between competence and…