By offering solutions to long-standing problems like quantification, relativization, topicalization, and negation in Korean syntax, the present dissertation aims to show the limitations of any approach which concentrates on the sentence as a linguistic unit or which takes semantics to be interpretative. One possible solution suggested here is a…

A description of the linguistic characteristics of casual conversations of Los Angeles Negro K-3 school children was recorded outside the classroom in small groups with two to five participants. Analysis of phonological, syntactic, and lexical characteristics discloses considerable variation in the children's speech, exhibiting both a significant…

A detailed view of the various uses in Russian of the conjunction "poka" is developed in this article. Frequent examples illustrate clausal relationships, negative constructions, aspect, and tense in typical "poka" constructions. The principal function of "poka" is related to the linguistic concept of simultaneity, and the standard dictionary…

It is possible to apply the concept of surface-structure constraint to a particular area of Hungarian syntax. A surface-structure constraint, according to David Perlmutter, can be seen as a template which serves as a filter at some level after the transformational component. In the case of Hungarian cooccurrence of noun phrases and verbs in a…

A model for helping classroom teachers understand and evaluate the growth of children in oral and written compositions is presented. The recommended procedure is centered around T-unit analysis. The following sequence is one possible way the T-unit analysis procedure might be used by an elementary school teacher: (1) Divide all the sentences of a…

The spoken language of Toura, a language spoken by nearly 20,000 inhabitants of a mountainous region situated in the north of Man, the administrative center of the West Ivory Coast, is systematically analyzed in this linguistic study. Sixteen major chapters include: (1) grammatical generalizations, (2) phonemic unities, (3) classification of…

This report deals with advances in linguistic analysis and programing. The theoretical theses for this work were presented in the first annual report. This second report concentrates on progress in the descriptive analysis of German and English, and on computer programs which have been developed during the year. Linguistic work during the period…

This document provides a description of the Foochow dialect of Chinese. Introductory remarks concern the geographical area of the dialect and previous analysis. The phonological description includes statements on syllable structure, initial consonants, finals, tones, changed tones, combinations of initials, finals, and tones, and syllables in…

This document provides a description of the Tai-shan dialect of Chinese. Maps illustrate the area where the dialect is spoken, and introductory remarks concern previous study of the dialect, sources of current information, and relationship to other dialects. The phonological description provides information on syllable structure, initials, finals,…

A definition of bilingualism can include speakers of different languages as well as those who speak several dialects or several sub-varieties of dialects in the same language. Most speakers are able to practice code-switching, whether it is from language to language or dialect to dialect, and the processes involved in such a capability may be the…

This collection of working papers contains four papers on varied topics in lintuistic theory. The first paper, "Some Grammatical Correlates of Felicity Conditions and Presuppositions," attempts to show that there is a systematic relationship between what a speaker of a language does in uttering sentences of that language and the syntactic form of…

Fifty-six third graders were randomly assigned to two treatment groups, in a study of the relationship between clause structure and the readability of written texts. The treatment groups read sets of passages which were identical except for certain word-order modifications. The dependent variables were silent- and oral-reading comprehension, rate…

Writing samples representing argumentation, exposition, narration, and description were gathered from 51 fifth-grade pupils. Significant differences were found among the four modes of writing and among high-, medium-, and low-ability groups for T-unit length, clauses per T-unit, and clause length. Argumentation produced the most complex writing,…

This paper reports on a study of the acquisition of subject and object relative clauses by monolingual French speaking children aged 4-10 years, in Rimouski, Quebec. The children were tested for their comprehension of six types of relative sentences. A coordinate sentence control test was administered. An adult control group was also tested on the…

This paper discusses the term "ergative" and traces the history of this and related terms and concepts in descriptive linguistics. Early attempts at defining the ergative illustrate the preoccupation with its supposedly passive nature. Other questions include the simple identification of the ergative, co-occurring cases, supposed…