Examines the relationship between language acquisition and current linguistic theory, with specific reference to Chomsky's work. Linguistic areas that should be explored in relation to acquisition are suggested, including regional dialect studies, the place of sociolinguistic factors in acquisition, and syntax. Suggestions as to how to analyze…

Mainly concerned with where negative questions in Chinese originate.An abstract treatment allows the derviation of all questions from a general underlying structure with disjunctive pattern and accounts for the discordance between the answer to a negative question and its answer particle. (Author/RM)

Attempts to show that the comparison of language structures may be relevant to diachronic linguistics, and in particular to areal linguistics. The article is based on an ongoing comparative study aimed at devising a typology of African languages. (Author/RM)

This article examines child acquisition of syntax through a chronological distributional analysis. The main point is that the development of syntactic relations is neither behaviorist nor pre-programmed but dynamic, and that therefore child linguistic development cannot be described in terms of an innate adult language ideal. (Text is in French.)…

The first half of a survey of inflectional elements required for modally unmarked verb forms (non-TA verbs) of Parry Island Ojibwa. Besides markers (the participants) and theme signs (rolls), meanings of the inflected forms are described and represented as a specific semological structure made up of grammatical and semological units. (SC)

Some composition teachers believe that students may write more competently in subject matter courses than in writing courses. That is, the constraints of writing for a class or assignment in which the composition skills will be evaluated may prevent students from writing their best. With this in mind, a study was conducted to determine whether…

Relational Grammar, which has evolved from transformational grammar, relies on a "universal grammar" approach. By closely studying this approach, linguists will be able to understand Relational Grammar (RG) well enough to be able to participate in its further development. The basic assumptions of RG are that…

The generic use of masculine terms may be viewed as a grammatical device that carries the non-specific meaning of gender without confusion with the specific meaning, or as a practice in which the masculine terms retain their gender-specific meaning in neutral contexts and bias the perceiver toward the interpretations of male references. In three…

The acquisition of reading fluency crucially involves the beginning reader's tacit recognition that he or she must learn to compensate for the absence of graphic signals corresponding to certain prosodic cues by making better use of the morphological and syntactic cues that are preserved. The success of the method of repeated readings and similar…

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO SELECED ASPECTS OF THE LINGUISTICS ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH IS PRESENTED IN THIS MONOGRAPH. FOLLOWING A DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE AND AN EXPLANATION OF THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS, THE PEDAGOGICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE INADEQUACIES OF TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR ARE EXAMINED. THE CONSIDERATION OF STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH CENTERS ON PHONOLOGY…

THIS REFERENCE GRAMMAR WAS WRITTEN TO FILL THE NEED FOR AN UP-TO-DATE ANALYSIS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE SUITABLE FOR LANGUAGE LEARNERS AS WELL AS LINGUISTS. THE AUTHOR LISTS IN THE INTRODUCTION THOSE STUDIES PREVIOUS TO THIS ONE WHICH MAY BE OF INTEREST TO THE READER. INCLUDED IN HIS ANALYSIS OF THE LANGUAGE ARE MAJOR CHAPTERS ON--(1) PHONOLOGY, (2)…

ONE APPROACH TO CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IS THAT OF TRANSFORMATIONAL, GENERATIVE GRAMMAR WHICH EMPHASIZES MAN'S ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND AND PRODUCE AN UNLIMITED VARIETY OF SENTENCES THROUGH CONTROL OF A LIMITED NUMBER OF LANGUAGE RULES. THUS, A CHILD LEARNS TO SPEAK BY DEVELOPING HIS OWN THEORIES OF THE STRUCTURE OF HIS LANGUAGE. STUDIES OF…