In response to a previous article attempting to bridge the gap between formalist and functionalist theories of language, it is argued that the theory's views of evolutionary theory, natural selection, and functionalism are naive. It is suggested that coming to these issues from a generative standpoint naturally subsumes the functionalist claims of…

The relations between the meanings of verbs and the syntactic structures in which they appear were investigated in 5 experiments involving approximately 156 college students (most attended the University of Pennsylvania). Findings support the view that the syntax of verbs is a regular, although complex, projection from their semantics. (SLD)

Uses a detailed analysis of a single grammatical problem to present the principal commitments and mechanisms of a grammatical theory that assigns a central role to the notion of grammatical construction. The grammatical phenomenon used to introduce construction grammar is the construction that licenses the surprising syntactic and semantic…

Examines parallelisms between surface structure and logical structure and why those parallelisms do not extend farther than they do. If syntactic deep structures are identified with logical structures, an appropriate cyclic principle guarantees that cyclic rules will apply so that large-scale parallelisms exist between surface syntactic structures…

Analyzes the word order characteristics of "hentai Kambun, the archaic Japanese writing styles employed for recording Japanese in a way that outwardly resembles Chinese. Proposes that hentai kambun word order can receive a systematic account by assuming that Japanese has underlying head-initial word-order, and that it is a representation of this…

Considers some obvious and some not so obvious syntax errors, and how to correct them, using numerous examples taken from material published or broadcast. (SR)

Examined use of word order and animacy for interpretation of sentences by typically-developing and language delayed children. Results indicate that typically-developing 2-year-olds use neither cue consistently to interpret sentences; typically-developing 2.5-year-olds used a coalition of word order and animacy cues; and language-delayed…

Describes the development of a prototype system to analyze the ambiguity and complexity of cataloging rules to aid the quality control of cataloging standards. Highlights include AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition) rules, syntactic structure of rules, rule parsing, rule templates, relationships between rules, examples, and further…

It has been observed that phonological phrasing in Shanghai Chinese distinguishes certain determiners from others and wh-quantifier phrases from non-wh-quantifier phrases. This article shows that such phonological phrasing distinctions are also found in Hokkien Chinese but in a more restricted environment. (Author/VWL)

Reports elicited production and grammaticality judgment data from three experiments on the status of resumptive pronouns in English. Participants were children and adults. Examined children's acquisition of syntax in light of development of linguistic processing systems. (Author/VWL)

Looks at two languages, one well known and the other less so, that have undergone changes in word order. Data for the two languages in question--English and Irish--are compared. Parallels in the internal mechanisms suggested for the attested word order changes in both Old English and Old Irish are examined critically. (Author/VWL)

Discusses syntactic optionality, the coexistence within an individual grammar of two or more variants of a given construction that make use of the same lexical resources and express the same meaning. Focus is on syntactic optionality in second language grammars. (Author/VWL)

Discussion of data repositories available in global information systems focuses on facilitating access by providing semantic views. Highlights include the mapping relation; syntax and semantics of the mapping; query formulation and processing; terminological systems for semantic views; and relational algebraic expressions. (LRW)

Describes Glean, a system which is based on the idea that coherent text contains significant latent information, such as syntactic structure and patterns of language use, which can be used to enhance the performance of information retrieval systems. Proposes an approach to increase the precision of information-retrieval using a supertagger.…

Presents exploratory research evaluating a conceptual structure for the description of visual content of images. The structure classifies visual attributes into a "Pyramid" containing four syntactic levels and six semantic levels. Experiments performed suggest the Pyramid is conceptually robust and can be used to: organize visual content…