This first volume of a three-part language research study states and illustrates that the point of departure for comparative analysis of two languages rests on a comprehensive typology in each of a number of areas of grammar. The report suggests that a limited set of functions can be isolated, and that the range of grammatical possibilities open…

Chafe's theory of generative semantics, which uses spoken language for illustration, can be applied to American Sign Language in two ways: to combat the erroneous assumption that sign languages simply represent spoken language in visible form and to explain various parts of the grammar of American Sign Language. (MSE)

This discussion of universe-scope relations in Chinese and Japanese provides a contrastive analysis of certain features in the two languages. A striking similarity in the deep structure of the noun phrase in both languages is noted and discussed in detail. Both languages have two constituents in a noun phrase which have a semantic relationship…

Supports the claim that aspect in English and written Arabic is a function of a variety of sentential elements including verb form, verb class, and adverbials. The two languages are basically similar in regard to two universal aspectual distinctions: syntactic categories and semantic categories. (TR)

This report documents results of a two-year effort toward the study and investigation of the design of a prototype system for Chinese-English machine translation in the general area of physics. Previous work in Chinese-English machine translation is reviewed. Grammatical considerations in machine translation are discussed and detailed aspects of…

To determine the principal differences in syntactic structure between spoken and written American English, a corpus of the spoken (800 sentences) and written (280 sentences) utterances of six graduate students was described in terms of a transformational generative grammar. These utterances were used as a basis for a two-part grammar: (1) a source…

Given that the principal bounding nodes, or barriers, for subjacency are noun phrase (NP), S, and S-bar, with S optionally a barrier, NP and S-bar obligatorily barriers, differences between Greek and English WH-movement are discussed. The contrasts are derived from independently motivated differences in NP structure between the two languages.…

Based on the assumptions that a universal grammar has a number of functional parameters and that in each language, some are not activated, a study was undertaken to investigate two hypotheses. They are (1) that in a grammatical situation where an adult's first language parameter is not activated in the second language, the learner will "lose" the…

The author aims: (1) to show that generative phonology uses essentially the method of internal reconstruction which has previously been employed only in diachronic studies in setting up synchronic underlying phonological representations; (2) to show why synchronic analysis should add the comparative method to its arsenal, together with whatever…

Discusses the use of prepositional phrases as subjects and objects through consideration and analysis of: (1) characteristics of such phrases; (2) category status of prepositional phrases in typical noun phrase positions; and (3) sentences containing prepositional phrases in typical noun phrase positions. (CB)

This unannotated bibliography lists over 400 works, published between 1924 and 1971, dealing with the phonology of about 30 languages whose speakers are frequently taught English. For these languages, the bibliography includes as complete as possible a listing of studies within the generative framework. Where the coverage by generative treatments…

The distinction between artifact and tool is introduced into the study of language diversity and the posting of linguistic universals. A complicating factor in all language investigations is the use of language as the chief tool to create new language. Analogy and metaphor are considered as two major creative forces at work in all languages.…

This paper focuses on the two main schools of thought concerning the structure of Black English and its relationship to other dialects. One approach is that of the social dialectologists who claim that Black English shares features and origins of white non-standard Southern speech; the frequency with which specific features occur in actual speech…

This book discusses the relevance of applied linguistics to foreign language teaching and supports the point of view that linguistics is relevant as the source of assumptions rather than as the source of conclusions. In foreign language teaching, the assumptions based on linguistics must ultimately be evaluated on their ability to explain the…