Reviews some problems which have risen from the neglect of actual language behavior data in favor of data comprised solely of intuitions as to sentences' grammaticality. Discusses a study of syntactic variation across sex in Japanese as an example of research using socially situated real speech. (EKN)

Examines Japanese equivalents of the six mental predicates defined as semantic universals in Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, with special attention to syntax and semantics of complementation types. It is shown that each primitive predicate has a specific set of syntactic frames for expressing primitive meaning and that extended meanings that…

Analyzed the argument linking of the commercial transaction frame in English, Russian, and Japanese. The commercial transaction frame is semantically complex, because there are two transfers in opposite directions (money goes from buyer to seller and goods from seller to buyer). English and Russian construe the commercial frame in essentially the…