A discussion of Bolanci (also Bole or Bolewa), a West Chadic language spoken in northeastern Nigeria, focuses on one component of the system of complementation, the form "na." This form has an inherent semantic capable of influencing the meaning of sentences in which it is embedded, specifically, when present in a complex sentence,…

The level of mastery of selected language forms among English as a second language students in Botswana was investigated. Eighty-four pupils in the third to the sixth year of formal education provided oral English samples in unstructured formats involving language experience stories. The oral language of the pupils was analyzed to establish the…

This article discusses the nominalizer /-qa/ in Hopi, looking specifically at nominalizations in /-qa/ without head nouns, sentential complements in /-qa/, and relative clauses in /-qa/. (CLK)

An analysis of indirect object passives in English and their development from Late Old English and Early Middle English suggests that their existence is related to the development of double object constructions. As long as the dative and accusative cases had not merged, neither pronominal nor nominal indirect objects required a preposition;…

Points of similarity and contrast between English and Modern Standard Arabic in relativization are examined. It is concluded that while the relativization process is essentially the same in both languages, they differ with respect to the relative pronoun, the agreement of the relative pronoun with its antecedent, and the appearance of the…

An analysis of indirect objects in San Jeronimo Mazatec describes the superficial characteristics of indirect objects and the constructions in which indirect objects occur. It is argued that they occur as prepositional phrases that are obligatorily incorporated into the verb in a specific way. The constructions containing indirect objects are…

A study of children's egocentrism in their use of person and case examined whether 7-year-olds would tend to cast themselves as subjects in sentences using the verbs "give, show, say, tell, and lend," and what role they might assign the hearer. In 85 utterances, the children (N=17), with an average age of 7.8 years, showed the expected…

A discussion of the sources of certain language universals argues that adjective/noun constructions pattern similarly to genitive/noun and relative-noun constructions because they are typical diachronic sources for adjectivals, and that relatives and genitives have the same diachronic source and thus the same set of synchronic behavior. It is also…

To determine how frequently various forms of anaphora appear in materials written for children, 1,000-word excerpts were analyzed from the second, fourth, and sixth grade texts of four basal reader series. The basal programs consisted of the "Ginn Reading Program," the "Houghton Mifflin Reading Program,""Scott, Foresman…

The earlier composition is introduced in language instruction, the sooner students see it as a means for self-expression. However, beginning students have not learned enough grammar to produce intelligible compositions and intermediate students frequently have difficulty in synthesizing what they have learned. Thus the teacher must try to correct…

A device of emphasis in French syntax is defined as a construction of syntactic paraphrase whose function is to make certain parts of a sentence stand out for purposes of contrast, clarification, differentiation, or because a given element is considered important. These devices exist in French because of the lack of a phonemic stress system, and…

This article deals with teaching vocabulary to advanced students of English through collocation, i.e., teaching a word in meaningful contexts. Ten collocation exercises are provided. (AM)

This study investigates plural noun forms in Modern Hebrew to show that the pattern of regularization differs for specific words, rather than for classes of words. Early regularization, in which the children add a plural suffix with no stem change, applies unconditionally. Subsequently, the pattern changes and while some words are still…

"Grammar Graphics" is a technique for teaching English grammar to children in grades three through five using symbols to represent each part of speech. In this way children can graphically perceive and understand the function of words in a sentence. Basically the students learn symbols for all parts of speech except the preposition and conjunction…