Descriptive vocabulary is needed for communication and mental processing of science observations. Elementary preservice teachers in a science methods class at a mid-sized public college in central New York State increased their descriptive vocabularies through a course assignment of making a descriptive adjective object box. This teaching material…

This article synthesizes research by applied linguists and mathematics educators to highlight the linguistic challenges of mathematics and suggest pedagogical practices to help learners in mathematics classrooms. The linguistic challenges include the multi-semiotic formations of mathematics, its dense noun phrases that participate in relational…

We investigate whether children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI) are also phonologically impaired and, if so, what the nature of that impairment is. We focus on the prosodic complexity of words, based on their syllabic and metrical (stress) structure, and investigate this using a novel non-word repetition procedure, the Test…

Corpus-based research has shown that the frequency of use of particular grammatical structures and lexis in English is not always congruent with the content or ordering of explicit rules in pedagogical materials. The present study provides an additional example from French, focusing on word-order rules related to adjective position and the…

The second language acquisition (SLA) literature reports numerous studies of proficient second language (L2) speakers who diverge significantly from native speakers despite the evidence offered by the L2 input. Recent SLA theories have attempted to account for native speaker/non-native speaker (NS/NNS) divergence by arguing for the dissociation…

A study investigated the use of qualifiers, words and phrases used to indicate the level of approximation of propositional content or of speaker commitment to the proposition, in an atypical form of medical interview: conversations between physicians and patients on a radio talk show. Qualifiers used were classified as hedges (suggesting…

A study explored the acquisition of "se" by Spanish-speaking children in Madrid, Spain, looking at: (1) acquisition of multifunctional forms; and (2) the course of acquisition for a linguistic expression that has both anaphoric and non-anaphoric functions, and its relevance to Binding Theory approaches to the acquisition of reflexives.…

Inexact uses of adverbs by students of Russian which are believed to be caused in part by native language interference are discussed. (RM)

A number of syntactic constructions in Mandarin Chinese are analyzed which, synchronically, are unrelated and highly irregular. However, all reflect a diachronic drift which has been operating in Mandarin Chinese, in the light of which the syntactic constructions can be viewed as structures in transition. (Author/RM)

This article discusses the problems that arise with the formation of plural forms of surnames in Spanish, problems both with morphology and with ambiguity. Suggestions as to how to lessen problems are made. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

Rejects a too-general classification of modality; would omit emotionality, affirmations and negations. Particles should not be indiscriminately classed as modals. Modality is divided into three aspects, which are then explained, with numerous comparative examples in Czech and German. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

The movements of such higher predicates as time, locative, and complementation verbs are studied, and Tai's Predicate Placement Constraint is rejected as an incorrect account of predicate movements in Chinese. It is proposed, on the other hand, that there is only leftward movement involving predicates in Chinese. (Author)

The subject of a semantic sentence-forming process is discussed. It is suggested that the concept of agency should not be treated on a par with the concept of the objective. The hypothesis is confined to simple intransitive and transitive sentences. (Available from: See FL 508 214). (Author/RM)

Examines structural properties of Romanian participle types in order to explain their descriptive relationship to the infinitive. (RM)

The concept of the verb phrase in natural and programming languages is discussed. (RM)