An important feature of the sentence in any language is its thematic structure, new/given information organization. It has been found that in English, where word order is grammatically determined, the thematic structure is signalled by the place of the sentence stress. If an indefinite noun (new information) is present in the sentence, it bears…

A careful examination of the location of variation in the grammar is advocated as opposed to attempts to cover linguistic generalizations with a single rule. Such an examination may lead to non-deterministic solutions, since there may be two distinct possible derivations for a single surface structure. For instance, in Portuguese, the variation…

A mother's interactions with her young daughter were studied with special emphasis placed upon the frequencies of linguistically instructional input and the strategies employed to provide this information. The girl was between 18 and 28 months old and her mean length of utterance (MIU) was between 1.5 and 4.3 morphemes. Only maternal input was…

English-speaking children and adults who were learning Dutch at school and at work, without signigicant amounts of foreign language instruction, were tested at five-month intervals during their first year in Holland. The test battery included tests for active and passive control of phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary. Significant…

This contrastive analysis of Telugu and English covers the structure of sentences, clauses, and "groups" (phrases) from a pedagogical point of view. Areas of difficulty for Telugu-speaking students of English as a second language are listed, and a list of errors commonly made by these students is appended. (JB)

THIS GUIDE WAS PREPARED FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER WHO HAS HAD LITTLE OR NO TRAINING IN LINGUISTICS. OPPORTUNITIES FOR CALLING ATTENTION TO THE LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE OCCUR FREQUENTLY IN THE CLASSROOM, AND THIS GUIDE PROVIDES SUGGESTIONS FOR MAKING USE OF THEM. FOUR INITIAL CHAPTERS DISCUSS THE USAGE OF LINGUISTICS, PROVIDE A…

The purposes of this 11th-grade unit on language are to survey the most important grammatical elements of the English sentence and to synthesize grammatical principles previously learned in grades 7-10 of the curriculum. The unit moves from discussions of the simplest grammatical elements to the more complex: Bound and free morphemes are defined,…

THE IDEAL SITUATION IN THE TEACHING OF HINDI TO AMERICAN STUDENTS SHOULD BE SUCH THAT--(1) THE TEACHER OF HINDI IS AWARE OF ALL THE LIKELY PROBLEMS ENGLISH SPEAKERS MAY FACE IN LEARNING HINDI, (2) THE TEACHER HAS DEVISED WAYS OF OVERCOMING THESE PROBLEMS, (3) HE HAS A HINDI TEXT WHICH IS ORGANIZED AND BASED ON THE RESULTS OF A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS…

Selected research studies dealing with linguistics and reading are reviewed under the following headings: (1) claims by linguists, (2) research on phoneme-grapheme correspondences, (3) research comparing linguistic approaches with basal reader approaches, (4) modified alphabets, and (5) syntax studies. It is concluded that the missing dimension in…

This paper suggests that a change in mode of expression --narrative, descriptive, or expository--can influence the syntactic complexity of children's writing. The implications of the research studies reviewed here may offer direction for education in general. Instructional strategies which make use of variation in writing mode to encourage gains…

This paper argues for the legitimacy of a paragraph as a linguistic unit. The arguments are based on: (1) the rule of pronominalization that makes crucial use of the paragraph; (2) establishment of surface constituent structure of the paragraph as evidenced in an analysis of the structures of recipe and medical discourses; and (3) postulation of…

In order to study the complexity of sentence combining in college students, 32 students from five basic composition courses were asked to perform three writing tasks at three distinct times during the eight-week instructional period. Each student was asked to rewrite a passage of kernel sentences, to write a composition in the argumentative mode,…

Students' abilities in manipulation and control of syntax may be increased through a sequence of instruction involving the use of exercises termed "Non-Sentence Practice,""Nonsense-Sentences Practice," and "Syntactic Patterning Practice." The final step in the instruction sequence is to make the syntactic exercises pertinent to students' writing…

Numerous reasons can be cited by scholars concerning lexical problems that face anyone embarking upon such an enterprise as that of preparing a Basque-English dictionary. First, "euskera," a term given to this ancient tongue, is both written and spoken today as it was millennia ago. Second, Basque, as a result, has not been subjected to…

Three papers from this issue of the Working Papers are provided here. "The Nesting Constraint in Child Language," by Patrick Alan Brogan, discusses a child's ability to perform complex, internally embedded sentences. It is hypothesized that difficulty stems from a child's limited short-term memory. "A Framework for Studying Kin Term…