To account for coercive force in questions posed by counsel to defendants and witnesses, several levels of speech must be addressed. Forensic linguistics literature discusses the scale of coerciveness as reflected in the syntactic form of the questions. It is argued that this type of analysis fails to account for the inferences made by hearers…

In an anniversary tribute to Paul Diderichsen, this report suggests that the theories and analyses put forth by Diderichsen in 1935 are central to both the general and empirical research on the Germanic languages. Particular emphasis is placed on the proposal to analyze the "verb-second-analysis" phenomenon in Germanic languages.…

A study tested the validity of a theory of count/mass syntax in word learning. The theory proposes that children infer one of two procedures, depending on whether the referent is an object or a non-solid substance. Subjects were 36 2-year-olds, divided according to three experimental conditions. All were taught a novel word with reference to…

Two hypotheses related to the emergence of multiword speech were explored: (1) that multiword speech follows developments in children's ability to map communicative intents to single-word expressions; and (2) that the acquisition of these mapping principles paves the way for the emergence of syntax. The developments consist of an increase in the…

A system of quantitative techniques for describing the English language from a number of perspectives, intended for the language analyst, is presented. The grammar combines an emerging knowledge of semantics with existing detailed knowledge of syntax. The primary unit of analysis is the predication, a group of related concepts expressed as a…

The development of English syntactic maturity was investigated among Chinese secondary school students learning English as a second language. Narrative and expository compositions written by 60 students at three grade levels were analyzed for increases in T-unit length, clause length, number of clauses per T-unit, and the use of nominals,…

A generative theory of language and dialect is described. Selected features of Southern American morphosyntax, and their relationship to the phrase structure rules of other American English systems, are investigated. Southern and other systems can be classified on structural criteria as dialects of one language. (SCC)

The corpus of the study is presented and discussed, problems of Spanish suffix analysis are presented, and then noun usage--suffixed versus unsuffixed nouns, the gender marker in the corpus, the most frequently used suffixes, and general characteristics and trends of usage-are discussed. (SCC)

This article discusses the semantics of the notion of focus, insofar as it relates to Filipino languages. The evolution of this notion is reviewed, and an alternative explanation of it is given, stressing the fact that grammar and semantics should be kept separate in a discussion of focus. (CLK)

Spanish-speaking children of Northern New Mexico exhibit varying degrees of interference and integration of English in their speech. (CK)

Sentences containing "estar" + participle are analyzed in order to highlight their semantic characteristics. (RM)

Methods of analyzing literary translations are described, and some violations which normally occur in verse translations in the realm of semantics, vocabulary and syntax are discussed. (RM)

Research is reported in which subjects were required to perceive sentences in noise. A series of sentences having the same syntax and rhythm was presented. On a final sentence either rhythm alone or rhythm plus syntax were changed. The results stress the importance of rhythm in speech perception. (Author/RM)

Two claims about early stages of language development--that of a limitation on length of utterance and that of reduction rules which delete major constituents from simple sentences--are questioned. Supporting arguments are reviewed, and alternative explanations offered. (RM)