Based on the discrepancies found in many Malaysian English language textbooks, a detailed analysis on the way modal auxiliary verb forms and their semantic functions were introduced and presented in texts and exercises in five Malaysian textbooks was done. For that to be achieved, a qualitative page-by-page content analysis was applied. From the…

Children and adults made truth-value judgments on matches between pictures and sentences with pronouns and possible antecedents. Results revealed the role of dependence on grammatical structure in pronoun interpretation for all ages; a significant effect of pronoun directionality (position relative to antecedent); and adults' bias related to…

This paper examines the role of movable adverbs in Mandarin Chinese. In terms of their position within a sentence, most Mandarin adverbs can be classified as movable or non-movable. While identification of either class may be based on their semantic categories or on the number of syllables, the motivation for placing a movable adverb in front of…

Reports a preliminary investigation into the pitch correlates of politeness formulae produced by English and Japanese informants of both sexes. Because of differences in sociosemiotic function of pitch, Japanese females' pitch is more differentiated from the Japanese male pitch than is that of the English female from the English male. (Author/PJM)

Criteria for defining individual members of the preposition word class are set forth. Arguments are presented against calling prepositions meaningless, yet it is conceded and explained that those which occur in wider contexts are vaguer due to their greater variability. The unitary, polysemous, and/or homonymous nature of prepositions are…

Demonstrates the dimensions of the processes of simplification, transfer, and convergence in the contact situation of Chicano Spanish and English. It is argued that changes in a language may be accelerated by a contact situation, reviewing data on bilingual Spanish-speakers in the United States and monolingual Spanish-speakers in Mexico. (11…

This report offers a critique, from a linguistic viewpoint of the approach to grammatical description and prescription found in commonly used Australian school textbooks in 1987. Attention was directed solely towards grammatical content. A review of 41 primary and secondary level texts was conducted. All texts were published in Australia, and all…

Examined the development of principles of control in the grammar of 15 preschool children over a 9-month period, focusing on pronominal reference. The results confirm a developmental sequence that is driven by lexical learning and changing structural analyses. (38 references) (MDM)

Contrastive analysis is viewed as an interlinguistic, bidirectional phenomenon which is concerned with both the form and function of language. As such, contrastive analysis must view language psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically as a system to be both described and acquired. Due to the need for a psychological component in the analysis,…

Children's use of conjunctions was examined for linguistic complexity, developmental differences, and ethnic differences. Third, sixth, and ninth grade Anglo-American, Black, and Hispanic students completed sentence fragments ending in "and,""but,""because," and "even though." These conjunctions can be…