The Russian device for distinguishing between mass words and count words by forming singulatives through suffixation is studied. (PMJ)

In 1999 the issue of grammar and its teaching re-emerged in Singapore as a topic of great intensity in a government-managed media debate. As studies in other educational contexts have shown, debates about grammar in political discussions and in the media typically proceed in terms of a discourse of crisis and falling standards. More specifically,…

Cued American English (CAE) is a visual variety of English derived from a mode of communication called Cued Speech (CS). CS, or cueing, is a system of communication for use with the deaf, which consists of hand shapes, hand placements, and mouth shapes that signify the phonemic information conventionally conveyed through speech in spoken…

Suggests that, in some Fujian Southern Min dialects, the patterns VP-neg and Adv-VP are mutually exclusive, presenting data from Xiamen to show recent innovations in the yes-no question pattern. Describes this innovation, explaining how the origin of the innovative patterns and limitations on their further development are influenced by…

A comparison of the error profiles of monolingual (child L1) learners of Dutch, Moroccan children (child L2) and Moroccan adults (adult L2) learning Dutch as their L2 shows that participants in all groups massively overgeneralize [-neuter] articles to [+neuter] contexts. In all groups, the reverse gender mistake infrequently occurs. Gender…

Investigates the distribution of existential polarity wh-phrases (EPWs) in Chinese that behave like negative polarity items, examining the distribution of Chinese EPWs and arguing that using EPWs is felicitous if the local propositions in which they appear do not entail existence of a referent satisfying the EPW description. The paper considers…

The sophistication of research, the acceptance of diversity, and the potential applications of research in the field of linguistics are on the rise. (MSE)

Discusses the use of "there is" and "there are," and recommends notional agreement (agreement of a verb with its subject or of a pronoun with its antecedent in accordance with the notion of number rather than with the presence of an overt grammatical marker for that notion) as a useful approach to deciding which to use. (SR)

Discusses the use of "and" and "or" in technical writing. Suggests that the strict meanings of "and" and "or" are called for in technical writing much more than in ordinary prose. (SR)

Critiques Aoun and Li's (1993) syntactic analysis of quantifier-scope interpretations in English, Chinese, and Japanese, showing serious theoretical problems with their results and proposing a quantifier-scope analysis that avoids those problems. The proposed expert system considers several important considerations and arrives at a composite…

Shows how to characterize language learning in a finite parameter space, such as in the "principles-and-parameters" approach, as a Markov structure. Explains how sample complexity varies with input distributions and learning regimes. Finds that a simple random-step algorithm always converges to the right target language and works faster than a…

Presents an analysis of the two passive (or passive-like) constructions in Singapore English which exhibit substrate influence from Malay and Chinese. The paper shows that while substrate languages contribute to the grammar of Singapore English, the continued prestige of standard English exerts normative pressure and mitigates the effect of…

Examines features that make Wole Soyinka's poems bilingual and bicultural. Four linguistic strategies revealing features used in Yoruba poetic discourse are identified across Soyinka's four anthologies: literal translation, creative translation, transference, and stylistic translation. The study reveals that the native language and literary…

Proposes that the bei-construction, a Mandarin Chinese passive construction, is not derived uniformly, but rather, three types of bei-sentences must be recognized. Presents basic facts about bei-construction; shows consistent structural differences between bei-sentences with and without the lexical logical subject, discussing A-dependency and…

Uses a detailed analysis of a single grammatical problem to present the principal commitments and mechanisms of a grammatical theory that assigns a central role to the notion of grammatical construction. The grammatical phenomenon used to introduce construction grammar is the construction that licenses the surprising syntactic and semantic…