The author responds to W. Arndt's and M. Byrne's criticisms of the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test (NSST), a test for assessing receptive and expressive grammar in young children. (SBH)

A summary of a syntactic analysis of one hundred political slogans. Relatively few of them contain real verbs. This leads to the conclusion that aspect, not tense, is essential. Since political slogans use a mixed mode of communication, both situational and syntactic analyses are necessary. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A definition of the positive contributions of functionalism in the polemic against phonetics and traditional, generative and transformational grammars. Three themes are discussed: synchronic analysis, the dynamics of the development of linguistics, and the role of syntax in language facts. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

The comprehension ability of 36 children at three stages of telegraphic speech was assessed using active behavioral responses to declarative and imperative sentences. A significant increase in verbal and behavioral appropriateness with age was found for imperative and declarative forms. Results are compared with Shipley, Smith and Gleitman's…

For children in school whose fluency in English (as a second language) is minimal, reading instruction using the language experience approach has proved successful. (JM)

An elaboration of the official instruction on teaching French to native speakers in elementary school. The topics covered are: Methodological development of exercises; the linguistic ability and milieu of the students; operative criteria; and the question of a logical progression or spontaneous use of grammar exercises. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Zwicky's analysis of syntactic notions as possible candidates for "head," based on constituent-structure theory, is discussed in detail. This analysis is contrasted with the results gained form one provided in a dependency-based theory in which "head" is the name of a grammatical relation category. (Author/LMO)

In the frameword of generalized phrase-structure grammar, possessive clitics (POSS), bound words (BWs), and phrasal affixes (PAs) are analyzed. It is argued that English POSS should be treated as an edge-located inflectional affix, since POSS is suppressed in the presence of other Z affixes (plural, other possessives). (Author/LMO)

Discusses various definitions of markedness in terms of second language acquisition and describes a study testing one such definition which found that second language learners did not accept preposition stranding in the second language but did accept double object construction and suggested that transfer took place only with one of two marked…

Reports on a longitudinal study of young immigrants' spoken Danish during the first months of their stay, focusing on the Albanian-, Vietnamese-, and English-speaking adolescents' syntactic development from a functional perspective. Changes in early syntax are seen as being rooted in cognitive as well as interactional dimensions of language use.…

Describes how reformulation can be used as a strategy for teaching academic writing to non-native language users (especially in the research context) and applies the strategy to two examples of research written by non-natives. (Author/CB)

Outlines an approach to develop a computer program that can parse beginner-level English in BASIC through input processing, word matching, and phrase structure parsing. (CB)

Describes a set of criteria for selection of core vocabulary, with examples given from English. Suggests applications for such a vocabulary in grading reading materials and analyzing stylistics. (LMO)

Applies markedness theory to the area of error evaluation by native speakers' reactions to non-native speakers errors. The number of errors involving marked and unmarked pairs of forms and structures is tested. Errors reflecting the unmarked-to-marked direction (1st person/3rd person singular, for example) caused greater irritation in native…

In two studies involving seven developmentally disabled children aged 7-14, phonetic sounds and syntactic structures representing different levels of normal development were taught. Results showed that the children's sequence of learning language forms followed the normal developmental model (e.g., earlier emerging forms were acquired in fewer…