The article comprises a table listing Esperanto words conveying international concepts, accompained by equivalents in English, French, German, Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew and Icelandic, representing various language groups. The comparison shows that although the world language would opt for international terms, a language making no claims on…

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…

Different languages code messages in different ways and use different channels for sending messages; thus there are many places for misinterpreting and mishearing messages in an intercultural context. To move from one language to another requires a description of the total language communication system, one that has its universals in social and…

This paper reports on the acquisition of the voicing contrast in Mexican-Spanish word-initial stops. In Study 1, three Spanish-speaking monolingual children were recorded every two weeks for seven months, beginning when the children were about 1;7. In Study 2, four monolingual children about 3;10 were recorded once or twice. Two analyses were…

IN THIS PAPER, PREPARED FOR THE APRIL 1967 TEXAS SYMPOSIUM ON LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS, IT IS PROPOSED THAT THE GRAMMATICAL NOTION "CASE" DESERVES A PLACE IN THE BASE COMPONENT OF THE GRAMMAR OF EVERY LANGUAGE. IT IS ARGUED THAT PAST RESEARCH HAS NOT LED TO VALID INSIGHTS ON CASE RELATIONSHIPS AND THAT WHAT IS NEEDED IS A CONCEPTION OF BASE…

In this paper the bitransitive clause is defined in terms of its nuclear tagmemes: subject, predicate, direct object, and indirect object. A semantic characterization is given of the prototype bitransitive clause with a correlation of situational roles and grammatical functions. The nine different dominant orders in bitransitive clauses which were…

Children's productions of words with stop-liquid clusters in the adult model are compared across six languages. Although the children learning these languages need not follow the same course of learning, processes operative on adult clusters are shown to be very similar. The children's productions all progressed through the same three major…

Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965), whose linguistic theories have been influential both in his native Denmark and throughout the world, here describes in larger perspective and in a manner intended for the layman, certain aspects of linguistic science. He begins by distinguishing the functional analysis of a single language from the description of a…

Experimental work on the concept of linguistic difficulty is summarized. Inherent linguistic difficulty is distinguished from contrastive linguistic difficulty. Studies of phonological acquisition are cited which tend to support the notion of an ordered acquisition of language features, and it is recommended that we look to cross-linguistic…

Metathesis was examined as a more or less systematic process that tends to preserve segments or features that would otherwise be lost or changed through the effects of other processes, notably reduction, assimilation, epenthesis, et al. It was also shown that metathesis is recessive as opposed to most other competing processes. With one exception,…

A discussion of three classes of metaphors in the context of Whorf's thesis that language reflects culture with a view to uncovering cultural differences between Chinese and English. It is concluded that universal psychological constraints on human language impose limits by dictating some patterns of metaphors and ruling against others. (AMH)

Examination of American Sign Language--produced by a deaf child acquiring the language from deaf parents, and videotaped at age 13, 15, 18, and 21 months--shows conformity to many of the phonological rules operative for all languages. (Author/CFM)

This essay affirms that people are not, like insects, genetically compelled to live and work collectively. Above all, language separates us from the rest of the animal world, allowing us to depart from reflex activity to consider the ambiguous and unknown and formulate new ideas. (Text is in Spanish.) (CHK)

Attempts to characterize the process of first language acquisition by children. Suggests that language learning involves the acquisition of both language knowledge and language behavior, hence of the internalized representations underlying linguistic competence and also the ability to deploy this knowledge in interpreting and speaking the language…