This study reflects the author's efforts to synthesize ideas drawn from various linguistic theorists, especially Schlesinger, Chomsky, and Fillmore. The first section gives the theoretical background for the study. The second section discusses roles, relations, and constructs. The final section discusses the applications of the study to teaching…

This volume, dedicated to Professor Robert B. Lees on the occasion of his departure from the University of Illinois, contains 15 papers on a variety of linguistic topics: C. L. Baker, "Problems of Polarity in Counterfactuals"; Lawrence F. Bouton, "Do So: Do+Adverb"; Chin-chuan Cheng, "Domains of Phonological Rule Application"; Joseph F. Foster,…

The oral reading miscues of 18 proficient readers, six each from grades 2, 4, and 6, were divided into those which did not change syntactic structure (nontransformation miscues) and those which did (retransformation miscues) and were analyzed through the use of the Goodman Taxonomy of Reading Miscues. The two groups of miscues were compared with…

At present a computer system cannot be constructed for handling the totality of a natural language in any significant way. It is, however, possible to construct a system for communication in a narrow field of discourse. A working model for a specialized discourse based on a recognition grammar is discussed. Some properties of the recognition…

In order to mechanize the processing of natural language, the linguist must make the machine interpret the meaning, or semantic content of the language, in some way or other. This means that the machine should extract not only syntactic but also semantic information from the source sentence through the analysis of it. In this paper, the authors…

To find out what factors are involved in a child's learning of syntax, investigators studied the syntactic complexity of the language a mother and child use when talking to each other. The complexity measure used was one developed by Dr. Sheldon Frank and Dr. Harry Osser, and is based on the concepts of generative grammar and transformations.…

Recent experimental work in teaching standard English to speakers of nonstandard dialects of English has shown that such speakers often have a good receptive command of the standard dialect, and readily re-encode stimuli presented in the standard dialect into their own nonstandard forms. This fact shows that some modification is needed in the…

This material was designed to present the essential features of English phrase and clause structure, for the benefit of both native speakers and learners of English as a second language. The author has followed a "deliberately eclectic" approach. The diagrams are developments of the type discussed and exemplified in Hockett, 1958, and…

The purpose of this study was to analyze differences in children's written questions by means of the theoretical model of transformational-Generative grammar. Eight questions written by children in grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 comprised the nucleus of this study. The eight questions were chosen from a larger group of questions and separated into…

A preliminary study of the syntactic characteristics of the imperative construction in modern Chinese is presented. The term "imperative" is used to refer to the type of syntactic construction which is marked by an implicit or explicit second person subject, and which expresses a direct command. Indirect or implied commands expressed by a…

Current linguistic theories, such as interpretive and generative semantics, are judged theoretically unsound and practically unsuitable for pedagogical purposes. Although the concept of case must be included in a grammar, current case theories are also rejected. The concept of case is redefined, as are the defining criteria for each case. A noun…

The author addresses the need for a new acoustic recognition strategy, extending the position that any adequate grammar of a language must distinguish between auditory and articulatory knowledge. Reviewing the existing literature and theories of language and its acquisition, the author discusses their limitations and inadequacies in accounting for…

A heuristic strategy model of sentence comprehension, similar to ones suggested by Bever, Fodor and Garret, is discussed, with the focus on the conceptual characteristics of such a model and on relevant research. Briefly, the model assumes that a speech perception device constructs a representation of a heard sentence corresponding roughly to a…

This curriculum guide describes courses and provides some sample lesson plans for an English program for eighth and ninth grade students. All of the students are required to take a basic writing course for the first nine weeks of the semester. For the next nine weeks some students receive large group instruction in linguistics and the other…

A context-sensitive, generative lexical rule model is developed that is capable of overcoming the insufficiencies of both the transformationalist and the lexicalist approaches to work formation, e.g., semantic-syntactic asymmetry, metaphoric usage, and restricted rule productivity. (DB)