This Minnesota Curriculum Center report recounts the development of teaching materials on the nature and uses of language for grades 7-12 and presents the first of five seventh-grade units. A description of the origins, purposes, and personnel of the Center is followed by brief discussions of (1) the Center's underlying assumption that a study of…

Intended for people with little or no training in linguistics, this book initially deals with such basic concepts as the definition of linguistics, the nature of language, and the linguistic variations within a society. The discussion then moves to a more detailed, non-historical analysis of language structure, focusing on lexical items,…

This book describes for parents the effects that recent developments in language study have had on the English curriculum. The discussion covers (1) literacy (language development in small children, spelling, reading, writing, and bilingualism); (2) grammar (structural linguistics, transformational grammar, and the new textbooks); (3) usage…

This critique of three Piaget-based curricula presents the argument that it is essential for early childhood educators to distinguish between the actual contributions of Piaget in regard to specific epistemological questions and the way these contributions have been reinterpreted to provide a basis for early childhood curriculum reform. The…

The complex nature of grammar and its relevance to teaching today are explored in the light of modern linguistics. Reviewing the development and fundamental theory of transformational generative grammar, the author points out its substantial merit and also its failure to be understood as exemplary grammatical analysis of language rather than…

Activities of the East-West Culture Learning Institute, founded on the premise that patterns of a particular culture may be learned, are reported in Volume I of an annual publication. Papers written by the members of the Institute's staff and former Fellows describe research in progress in four major areas of concern. A paper in the area of…

There is a need for a new kind of linguistic theory which, while being concerned with both generation and analysis, must include the roles of memory, non-linguistic knowledge, and inference. The role of logic is diminished according to such a theory because inference has no real logical content. Meaning must be studied with respect to the actual…

This volume includes 12 of the 24 papers presented at the Third Annual California Linguistics Conference. Selections are drawn from each of the four sessions, covering semantic and lexical structure, phonology, syntax, and language in context. Each of the papers includes a bibliography, as well as diagrams, charts, and appendixes when necessary.…

While agreeing with psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic theories that suggest that innate language-related cognitive structures are the basis of language development, the author seeks to establish what it is that is innate and what is meant by innateness in the first place. The author considers the claims of psychological relevance made on behalf…

This volume, the second in a series of four on the languages of Nepal, contains the following papers: "Clause Patterns in Nepaili,""Clause Patterns in Tamang," and "A Survey of Clause Patterns." For other volumes in the series, see FL 004 896, FL 004 897, and FL 004 898. (DD)

This paper describes a system for the computer understanding of English. The system answers questions, executes commands, and accepts information in normal English dialogue. It uses semantic information and context to understand discourse and to disambiguate sentences. It combines a complete syntactic analysis of each sentence with a heuristic…

It is possible to examine the development of English wh-questions in first and second language learners and to detect regularities in the order of emergence of certain linguistic structures. It is also possible to speculate whether the stages in language acquisition correspond to the transformational derivation in transformational grammar. The…

In line with current thinking in transformational grammar, syntax as a system can and should be studied before a study is made of the use of that system. Chomsky's lexical redundancy rule is an area for further study, possibly to come closer to defining and achieving explanatory adequacy. If it is observed that English nouns come in two types,…

The transformational-generative concept of language learning as constructing a theory about language inspired this experiment. Language performance developed by a method of language learning designed to help the student study about a second language through manipulative exercises was compared to language performance developed by a method not…

This discussion of verbal communication seeks to bring a new "unity" and order into the study of linguistics, to make linguistics truly an interdisciplinary science, and to communicate more effectively with the outside world, peopled by those who do not speak linguistic jargon. The particular linguistic problem here is an exploratory…