Presents evidence from artificial language experiments in support of the "marker hypothesis," i.e., that natural languages contain elements that signal the presence of syntactic constructions and that the absence of such markers would render a language virtually unusable. (Author/AM)

Reports results of a longitudinal study testing the acquisition of restrictions of the use of pronouns in children, first as 9 year olds and later as 11 year olds. (AM)

Discusses an analysis of grammar that systematizes knowledge about language according to new parameters but continues to view traditional grammar as the backbone of language structure. (NCR)

Measurement (using Carol Chomsky's methodology) of the acquisition of five complex English structures by adult Israeli and Egyptian learners reveals that first and second language learners of English encounter similar difficulties. The creative construction hypothesis can be applied to second as well as first language acquisition. (PMJ)

Explores two questions: What is the nature of older children's syntactic knowledge, and how is that knowledge used in an everyday speech situation? Subjects were 96 children at each of three grade levels: 6, 8, and 10. (MP)

Tests the hypothesis that there is a relationship between children's comprehension of a syntactic form and the effectiveness of modeling in promoting imitation of that form. Subjects were 71 four- and five-year-old children. (Author/MP)

Thirty children with a mean length of utterance ranging from 1.00 to 4 and an age range of 1.7 to 5.5 were tested for comprehension of two-noun possessive phrases. Three types of possessive relationships were used to uncover children's knowledge of the semantics and syntax of English possession. (Author/AM)

Discusses the need for both a "rule of thumb" grammar and more thorough grammatical rules in second language teaching. (AM)

Discusses the history of the metaphor, its various forms, and the problems involved in an analysis of the metaphor. Analyzes the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of the metaphor. (AM)

Discusses appositions in Spanish and states that there is no general rule to follow to determine the plurals. (NCR)

The article examines the available means of determining the readability of written materials and reviews the empirical evidence that indicates consideration of syntactic complexity in determining readability. Problems with readability formulas are pointed out. Guidelines for using readability formulas that take syntactic complexity into account…

Discusses the problems involved in teaching Italian students the English equivalents of the verb "dovere." (CFM)

Describes a study which found that generative rhetoric instruction produced a quantitative and qualitative increase in college students' syntactic maturity. (DD)

Investigates how performance on syntactic structures is affected by the complexity of the surrounding sentence. To investigate possible relationships, two classifications of syntactic structures were tested in both simple and complex sentences. (RC)

An analysis of the syntax particular to newspaper writing, with emphasis on the use of the nominalization of verbs. The possible pedagogical uses of such an analysis are discussed. (Text is in French.) (TL)