Syllepsis (in one meaning of the term) is most commonly thought of as an ungrammatical construction which can in certain contexts function as a figure of speech. Yet the common view is at odds with syllepsis occurring in well-written prose that we experience neither as ungrammatical nor as figurative; and with its being largely ignored by literary…

For almost 80 years, Chinese linguists have been fascinated by sentences like "Pijiu ba, he dianr!" ("Beer, I'll have some!"), which look superficially like a jumbled-up version of "normal-order sentences." Numerous accounts have been proposed to explain their structure and meaning, but no consensus has been reached as to how their true essence…

In "The New Language of the Old West," "Deadwood"'s creator and executive producer David Milch offers an extended exposition of the television show's language: "Language--both obscene and complicated--was one of the few resources of society that was available to these people.... It's very well documented that the obscenity…

German offers a good example of how syntax meets the discursive needs of speakers/hearers and writers/readers. A pedagogic grammar should put the emphasis on the ways the foreign language conceptualizes reality and on the syntactic realization of those concepts for construction of discourse. (Author/MSE)

Examines the effect of the misuse and over-use of logical connectives in English-as-a-Second-Language undergraduate writing, and suggests that students use a small subset of relatively comprehensible connectives, employ connectives for phrasal expansion, and view logical progression as an integral stage in writing. (Author/CB)

This three-paper report describes Nigel, a large, programmed grammar of English which has been created in the framework of systemic linguistics begun by Halliday, and which, in addition to specifying functions and structures of English, has a novel semantic stratum which specifies the situations for use of each grammatical feature. The…

Examines "it"-clefts and "wh"-clefts in English and their Chinese equivalents in a universal, functional perspective that consists of assigning "participant roles" in processing a clause. The analysis shows that a functionally-oriented and semantically-motivated approach to the focusing constructions provides greater insight into the discourse…

Demonstrates the similarities between English and Farsi with respect to discourse-functional constraints on inversion. It is argued that this phenomenon is significant because these two languages exhibit different canonical word order and thus expectations can be raised from some functional-syntactic universals. (15 references) (Author/CK)

Attempts to use a construct of literary theory to solve a linguistic problem: the notion of narrative perspective to explain tense variation in Bulgarian narrative. The specific phenomenon of variation is between the past indefinite and the indirect tenses in passages where all the verb forms should be indirect. (24 references) (Author/CK)

Presents an account of existential "there"-sentences in which the postverbal negative phrase (NP) is required to represent a "hearer-new" entity. The article identifies five types of formally definite yet hearer-new NPs that may occur in "there"-sentences. The restriction against definite NPs in "there"-sentences results from a mismatch in…

The alternation of Tagalog and English in informal discourse is a feature of the linguistic repertoire of educated, middle- and upper-class Filipinos. This paper describes the linguistic structure and sociolinguistic functions of Tagalog-English code switching (Taglish) as provided by various researchers through the years. It shows that the…

Although a number of word-frequency lists exist in German, there is an absence of studies investigating the relative frequency with which various grammatical structures are used. Traditionally, extended modifiers have been most prevalent in written German. Based on an analysis of authentic radio news broadcasts, this article makes the case that…

Emphasizes that traditional textbook explanations of the preterite and imperfect tend to focus on their aspectual differences. The article argues that a comprehensive analysis of the interaction of these two tenses in narration must go beyond aspect to include their respective temporal and discourse properties. (30 references) (Author/CK)

Since clauses are the largest functional components of a sentence, their analysis can increase attention to sentence structure and stylistic variation. Students can learn to distinguish main clause types by naming the verb forms used (transitive, intransitive, equational, and passive). Once students have mastered the recognition of main clauses,…

Compares strategies for conjunction in spoken English and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing. The article illustrates how ESL writers use "because" clauses to indicate the knowledge base for their assertions, to introduce independent segments, and to display links between sections of discourse. (44 references) (Author/CK)