This study examined givenness in discourse via passive constructions in research articles. While it is commonly held in grammar books and grammar classes that the passive voice is the counterpart of the active voice, the present study argues that Argument movement in passive constructions can act as a syntactic device contributing to sound…

This research investigated three synonymous adjectives "perfect," "flawless," and "impeccable" in terms of meaning, degree of formality, collocations, and grammatical patterns. The three synonymous adjectives were scrutinized through the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings suggested that these…

Although vocabulary instruction is a pressing need for postsecondary reading instructors, a minimal amount of current postsecondary scholarship addresses this need, and almost no current scholarship addresses the textbook tradition of morphemic analysis (MA). The present article reviews the literature on MA instruction and argues for teaching MA…

This study examines the use in Japanese of verb forms containing -(r)are in syntactical expressions. The meaning and function of the adversative passive and its behavior vis-a-vis the non-adversative or plain passive is discussed, and the related non-derived constructions and their relationships to the adversative passive are analyzed. Finally the…

The paper reviewed studies in word-level processing skills and related areas, and profiled how the development of L2 word recognition and integration skills would contribute to autonomous "kango" (Chinese originated words or words created from Chinese originated words) vocabulary learning. Despite the fact that the acquisition of a…

Concludes that it is time for teachers to be more critical of the commercial materials and classroom practices commonly used to sensitize children to different semantic cues and morphological units. Argues that without a firm knowledge of context clues and morphemes on the part of teachers, the teaching of these skills will remain incidental. (FL)