This paper provides an overview of recent developments in the science of linguistics, and considers their relevance to the teaching of Spanish in Puerto Rico. First, three significant trends are explained and summarized: (1) structuralism, which emphasizes phonetics, pattern, and distribution, and rejects meaning as a tool of analysis; (2)…

Briefly discusses the work of L. Jakobovits, R. Wardhaugh and R. Lakoff with respect to current behavioristic and cognitivist theories of language learning. (PM)

In early transformational generative grammar, it was assumed that all semantic interpretation would be done off deep structure, but with the proposals for the extended standard theory (EST) of Chomsky (1968, 1972) came the realization that certain aspects of semantic interpretation, such as focus and presuppostion and scope of quantifiers, must be…

An attempt is made to overcome the shortcomings in Robinson's model of generative grammar by modifying her dependency rules and adding semantic specifications to the dependents of V, taking into account some of the considerations that led Fillmore to make up his cases. (Author)

A corpus of 10,000 sentences extracted from British theatrical texts was used to construct a frequency list of kernel sentence structures. Thirty-one charts illustrate the analyzed results. The procedures used and an interpretation of the frequencies are given. Such lists might aid foreign language teachers in course organization. Available from…

Introduction to the Grade Teacher special report, "Linguistics and the Language Arts.

If college freshmen know something about syntax, have practiced combining and breaking down sentences, and have learned to think in terms of deep structures and surface structures, they may be better able to understand and relieve the discomfort caused by a garbled key sentence structure. Grammar instruction in freshman composition provides a…

A reaction-time experiment measured the time that subjects needed to read and comprehend a series of sentences, the syntactic form of which was systematically varied. The focus was on the effect of syntactic structure on processing time, reflected in reaction time in a neutral context, and the effect of prior context on time needed to process a…

Modern linguistic theory offers two main contributions to the improvement of writing: readability and appropriateness. Readability can be developed by improving the correctness of forms used and achieved by carrying out an error analysis on the student's writing to provide insights into errors and clause structure. Linguists have determined that…

THE ENGLISH CURRICULUM CAN BE MADE MORE EFFECTIVE BY CONSIDERING THE SIGNIFICANT PART PLAYED BY THE COMPONENT OF GRAMMAR. THE NATIVE SPEAKER OF ENGLISH POSSESSES AN INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE RULES OF GRAMMAR AND YET CANNOT EXPLAIN WHAT HIS INTUITION KNOWS. THEREFORE, A PRECISE, ECONOMICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE LANGUAGE MECHANISM AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS…

GENERATIVE THEORY NOW DOMINATES MACHINE TRANSLATION AND HAS BEGUN TO TAKE OVER THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR IN THE SCHOOLS, AS ONE PUBLISHER AFTER ANOTHER COMES OUT WITH A TRANSFORMATIONALLY-ORIENTED SERIES OF TEXTBOOK FOR HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH. THE AUTHOR FEELS, HOWEVER, THAT THE EFFECTS OF THIS THEORY ON LANGUAGE TEACHING HAVE BEEN NEGLIGIBLE…

THE AUTHORS HAVE DESIGNED THIS GUIDE FOR NON-LINGUISTICALLY ORIENTED ENGLISH AND LANGUAGE ARTS TEACHERS WHO ARE FACED WITH THE PROBLEM OF TEACHING "THE NEW GRAMMAR." THE INTRODUCTION PRESENTS A RATIONALE FOR THE TEACHING OF LINGUISTICS IN THE CLASSROOM--"THE NEW GRAMMARS, INTELLIGENTLY APPLIED, MAY HELP CHILDREN NOT ONLY UNDERSTAND THE SYNTAX OF…

The discussion throughout this paper is devoted to answering the question: What is the nature of our knowledge of language and what theoretical assumptions does the answer entail for linguistic description? Discussed are--(1) what it means to know a language, (2) the distinction between linguistic competence and performance, (3) justification of…

A knowledge of transformational grammar may shed considerable light on a wide variety of ready "lapses." A skillful teacher who understands the origin of these errors may deal with them more effectively than in the past. This thesis is based on the quite widely accepted hypothesis that the grammar of the language has rules which operate in a…

The linguistic literature contains many studies of the structure of the noun phrase. Syntactic structures that occupy NP position but which don't have the internal characteristics of a substantive (infinitives and THAT clauses, for example) are distinguished from lexical structures that occupy NP position and do have the internal characteristics…