Lardiere's keynote article adverts to a succession of "units of comparison" that have been employed in the study of cross-linguistic differences, including mid-twentieth-century structural patterns, generative grammar's parameters, and (within contemporary Minimalism) features. This commentary expands on the idea of units of cross-linguistic…

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…

Summarizes author's work in developing a transformational-generative grammar which can account for concurrent production of two or several languages. (DH)

Using methods developed in transformational generative grammar, three types of nominal constructions in Spanish are treated in this paper: Fact nominalizations ("[El] Escribir es agradable"), Manner nominalizations ("El tocar [de la mujer] es agradable"), and Abstract noun nominalizations ("La construccion rapida de esta escuela es dudosa"). While…

Challenges the notion that linguistic units which are equivalent from the point of view of being translated with ease from one language to another have a common deep structure. This notion is not seen as feasible in a transformational generative framework. (CLK)

Before beginning the Serbocroatian-English Contrastive Project, it was necessary to determine whether to base the analysis on a corpus or on native intuitions. It seemed that the best method would combine the theoretical and the empirical. A translation method based on a corpus of text was adopted. The Brown University "Standard Sample of…

Discusses the possessive constructions in English, in particular, the postponed construction. (An example of the postponed construction is "a book of John's," contrasted with "John's book," the preposed construction.) The study contrasts the possessive "of" with the "of" in other constructions and concludes…

A number of grammatical transformations are studied which often, but not always, involve the movement of constituents. Data from English, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Mandarin Chinese and Thai are investigated in an attempt to discover a principle (of potentially universal scope) that governs certain constraints that must be imposed on these…

MANY ATTEMPTS HAVE BEEN MADE TO DEFINE "AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD" FROM THE POINTS OF VIEW OF TWO COMPETING THEORIES OF LEARNING, THE BEHAVIORISTIC AND THE COGNITIVE. NONE HAS SUCCEEDED IN DEFINING SOME OF THE SPECIFIC TENETS TO BE ESTABLISHED FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING AS REQUIRED BY AN IMPROVED THEORY OF LANGUAGE LEARNING. A FLEXIBLE AND PROGRESSIVE…

The object of this theoretical inquiry is to examine the controversial issue of a fully automatic high quality translation (FAHQT) in the light of past and projected advances in linguistic theory and hardware/software capability. This first volume of a two-volume report discusses the requirements of translation and aspects of human and machine…

WITH PROGRESS IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS, THE APPLICATION OF LINGUISTICS TO LANGUAGE TEACHING HAS COME UNDER INCREASING SCRUTINY. WHILE THE STRUCTURALISTS HAVE FOUND COMPETITION IN THE MORE RECENT CONCEPTS OF THE COMPETENCE-ORIENTED AND THE PERFORMANCE-ORIENTED APPROACHES, AND MENTALISTIC THEORIES SEEM TO PROVIDE MORE EXPLANATIONS THAN…

Part of a 20-year Yugoslav Serbocroatian-English Contrastive Project, this study is intended to make students, teachers, textbook writers, and scholars aware of elements in the system of English modals that might cause difficulties to the native Serbocroatian-speaking learner of English. An eclectic method of contrastive analysis consisting of…

Intended for people with little or no training in linguistics, this book initially deals with such basic concepts as the definition of linguistics, the nature of language, and the linguistic variations within a society. The discussion then moves to a more detailed, non-historical analysis of language structure, focusing on lexical items,…