"Deletion is posited as a universal process in language, and "identity and "indefiniteness are suggested as universal conditions under which deletion takes place. Usefulness of exploiting language similarities in language teaching is stressed. This paper was presented at the TESOL Convention, Chicago, March 1969. (FWB)

The usefulness of classifications within and comparisons among languages as a means of discovering the commonalities of human language is discussed. Metalinguistics offers not only the potential for analyzing the specifics of each language, but also the tools for teaching across languages. (MSE)

Studies of second language acquisition often employ analytical concepts defined relative to the target language. This practice can be a serious obstacle to investigation of crucial questions about the nature of the learners' languages. This comparative fallacy's drawbacks are illustrated through a framework designed to study interlanguage…

Reports a preliminary investigation into the pitch correlates of politeness formulae produced by English and Japanese informants of both sexes. Because of differences in sociosemiotic function of pitch, Japanese females' pitch is more differentiated from the Japanese male pitch than is that of the English female from the English male. (Author/PJM)

Presents a method for fostering an understanding of and teaching certain time expressions in French to English-speaking students. (AM)

Reviews aspects of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar, emphasizing language functions, modality vs modulation, process types, transitivity, information distribution, and cohesion. Implications for language teaching are discussed. (AM)

Suggests that the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) be revised to incorporate a notion of degree of difficulty which corresponds to the notion of typological markedness. (Author/CFM)

Conducted a series of experiments in German, Dutch, French, Italian, and English to show that four factors systematically interact when people interpret spatial expressions: the reference object being intrinsically oriented or not; the preposition that is used; the social characteristics of the discourse situation; and the prepositional inventory…

Examines "it"-clefts and "wh"-clefts in English and their Chinese equivalents in a universal, functional perspective that consists of assigning "participant roles" in processing a clause. The analysis shows that a functionally-oriented and semantically-motivated approach to the focusing constructions provides greater insight into the discourse…

Presents a contrastive study of connectives such as "in case that,""provided that," and "unless" focusing on the semantic properties of these items and their semantic and pragmatic equivalence across English and Italian. The article emphasizes that in its approach, pragmatic equivalence is strictly related to semantic…

Compares request strategies in Dutch and English and attributes the differences to a different perception of the need for repair. The article concludes that the Dutch use lexical downgraders where the French use longer constructions, that is, supportive acts. Further research is recommended to verify the findings. (16 references) (Author/CK)

Presents a contrastive analysis of English and Japanese demonstratives based on the first- (L1) and second-language (L2) data of an earlier study. First, the traditional explanations and their alternative models for English and Japanese are presented, then, all models are tested with the L1 and L2 data, which leads to a discussion of the different…

Examines Japanese equivalents of the six mental predicates defined as semantic universals in Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, with special attention to syntax and semantics of complementation types. It is shown that each primitive predicate has a specific set of syntactic frames for expressing primitive meaning and that extended meanings that…