In open-ended and forced-choice situations, subjects were asked to interpret phrases containing superficially incompatible adjective pairs. The results demonstrate that English speakers implicitly understand proposed linguistic principles underlying prenominal adjective ordering. (SW)

This test was designed to measure awareness of the relationship existing between sentences that are similar in specific semantic content but different in syntactic structure. The test consists of twenty-five items of the three-option multiple-response type, with the stem of each item being a "pattern" sentence to be matched with one of the three…

In this paper the bitransitive clause is defined in terms of its nuclear tagmemes: subject, predicate, direct object, and indirect object. A semantic characterization is given of the prototype bitransitive clause with a correlation of situational roles and grammatical functions. The nine different dominant orders in bitransitive clauses which were…

The Agnate Sentences Test was designed to measure awareness of the relationship between sentences that are similar in semantic content but different in syntactic structure. In this study, developmental differences in the ability to decode written syntax are observed by means of this test which was administered to 63 4th graders, 65 8th graders,…

Experimental investigations of children's prose comprehension with special emphasis on the development of skills necessary for reading comprehension are examined in this paper. The research is discussed under four major headings which correspond to specific comprehension skills: identifying main ideas, understanding logical structure, making…

This paper is a response to Lavandera's question regarding the limits of the study of language variation. Sociolinguistics is characterized by its desire to limit representational meaning much more narrowly than formal linguistics. In addition while formal linguistics views language as species-specific and designed to accomodate logical…

The question of whether word meanings have internal structure identical in kind to the syntax of sentences is examined. Evidence is sought for the structural aspects of word meaning and the issue of whether judgements of similarity between words is based on meaning content or on meaning structure is raised. Four hypotheses were tested: (1)…

Conceptualizations of the reading process and the nature of comprehension are discussed in relation to the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) Beginning Reading Program. A method of syntactic analysis is proposed to help identify segments of meaning in reading materials. Components for comprehension assessment and instruction based on auch an…

Previous accounts of "generic" have been either too broad in including several sentence types as generic, or too narrow in limiting the definition of generic to the noun or verb alone. This research critically examines data and previous treatments of the generic verb, generic noun, and generic sentence. Because every generic sentence may…

A total of 19 good and 19 poor readers participated in an examination of the extent to which first grade children who were successful beginning readers would exhibit better syntactic skills in auditory and reading tasks than would less successful readers. To isolate differences specifically related to sentence processing skills, the two groups…

A detailed description of the syntax in the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) Mod 2 Kindergarten stories is presented to aid in the formulation of comprehension assessment and instruction. The lexicon and surface structures of the sentences appearing in the stories were classified and tabled in terms of types of elements and functions. The new…

Six papers dealing with crosslinguistic generalizations are summarized and discussed here. Two of them were about question structure: "Language Universals and Sociocultural Implications in Deviant Usage: Personal Questions in Swedish" by C. Paulston and "Valley Zapotec: Identical Rule for Both wh Question Movement and Relative Clause Constituent…

In order to study the complexity of sentence combining in college students, 32 students from five basic composition courses were asked to perform three writing tasks at three distinct times during the eight-week instructional period. Each student was asked to rewrite a passage of kernel sentences, to write a composition in the argumentative mode,…

Three papers from this issue of the Working Papers are provided here. "The Nesting Constraint in Child Language," by Patrick Alan Brogan, discusses a child's ability to perform complex, internally embedded sentences. It is hypothesized that difficulty stems from a child's limited short-term memory. "A Framework for Studying Kin Term…

This paper examines the status of surface structure in transformational grammar, and the way that surface structure mediates the contacts between the phonological and semantic components of the grammar. Surface structure refers not to a single but to at least four distinct notions that do not necessarily define a homogeneous level of…