Following a review of the attempts of researchers like Walter Loban, Kellogg Hunt, Roy O'Donnell, Raymond Norris, and William Griffin to measure the syntactic complexity of the language of school-age children, several inferences are made in this study about the assumptions these investigators have made about the nature of language and of the…

Active and passive sentences were presented with probable and improbable semantic content to 100 first graders and 100 kindergartners. "Irreversible" sentences were considered improbable. In a design employing syntax, probability, grade, and sex as factors, probability and syntax were found significant both as main effects and in their…

The purpose of these studies was to test the hypothesis that thematization affects the probability that a probe word will produce meaning-preserving recall of a sentence that is part of a discourse. Sentences were constructed along the lines of subject-verb-object and were presented in three experiments: free recall of isolated sentences, prompted…

This study attempted to explore the possibility of increasing sensitivity to syntactic structure by exposing subjects representing a range of ability to a programed sentence structure module. Students in three ninth grade classes who had completed four weeks of supplementary work with "English Sentence Structure: Programed Exercises" and scored 70…

It has been generally understood that Japanese has two grammatical tenses, past and non-past. However, there are statements about future events which use the "past tense." Furthermore, for certain verbs, the "past tense" is not confined to describing strictly a past event. This paper seeks to clarify the meaning of tense in Japanese and to show…

The formulas presented in this paper provide the means for showing the ease with which scientific information can be passed from one language into another. The formulas are based on several factors. The linguistic barrier can be measured to illustrate the relative degree of difference between two languages based on a comparison of vocabulary,…

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children aged 2;0 to 13;11 and elicited passives from 262 college students were analyzed. Full passives were classified as reversible (The dog was chased by the girl), instrumental non-reversible (The lamp was broken by [or with] the ball), or agentive non-reversible (The lamp was broken…

In this article, syntactic evidence is presented to show that the two functions of place adverbials in Chinese cannot be reduced to one, and that both functions must be considered as semantic primes in the semantic structure of Chinese. (CLK)

This article shows what features of Chicano Spanish are seen by typical Latin Americans as being most unlike their own speech. (NCR)

In this study the inadequacies of rules governing the present perfect in isolated sentences are discussed and then two contextual factors thought to be connected with current relevance and the use of the present perfect are described. These factors are experimentally shown to influence use of the present perfect significantly. (CHK)

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.…

Discusses H. Zobl's paper, "Configurationality and the Subset Principle: The Acquisition of V' by Japanese Learners of English," and asserts that the subset principle, with certain adaptations, can apply to second language learning. In the context of Universal Grammar theory, first and second language acquisition are clearly different.…

Crib-talk between identical twin girls and diary records of their speech were examined. It was found that the subjects developed conventional syntax and vocabulary but adapted them in ways which appropriately expressed their twin status. (Author/SED)

Assesses the interrelations among the functional properties of maternal speech, the structural properties of maternal speech, and child language growth for a period of six months for 22 two-year-old children and their mothers. (HOD)

Investigates the hypothesis that letters to lower-status recipients would consist of a greater number of more familiar modes than letters to higher-status recipients and that letters to recipients of high solidarity with the writer would consist of a greater number of more familiar modes than letters to recipients of low solidarity with the…