The present dissertation intends to investigate the syntactic nature and L2-acquisition of passive sentence structure in two Romance varieties, Italian and Spanish. First, I will present an analytic proposal couched within the Generative Approach (Chomsky, 1957, and subsequent work); from there, and following Perlmutter and Postal's (1977)…

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…

The formal-functional contrastive analysis approach is suggested as an alternative to both the structural and the transformational contrastive approaches. A theoretical explanation and a practical contrastive technique for the formal-functional approach are given. (CJ)

Pessimism regarding pedagogical applications of contrastive studies, and reasons therefore, are described. Several misunderstandings believed to contribute to this pessimism, and several areas of controversy concerning uses of contrastive studies, are discussed. See FL 508 197 for availability. (RM)

The claim that the best language teaching materials are based on a contrast of the two competing linguistic systems has long been a popular one in language teaching. It exists in strong and weak versions, the strong one arising from evidence from the availability of some kind of metatheory of contrastive analysis and the weak from evidence from…

This article reviews the historical development of applied linguistics in foreign language instruction. Five major principles influencing early applied linguistic theory are summarized, emphasizing the oral nature of language. Central to the article are discussions of: (1) prescriptive or normative grammar, (2) transformational grammar, (3)…

Describes a comparative study of interrogative words in Spanish and English, which resulted in a series of hypotheses about the way Spanish speakers convey the interrogative how plus adjective or adverb. To test the hypotheses, surveys were conducted with native Spanish speakers. Surveys and results are discussed. (AMH)

Paper adapted from a doctoral dissertation, The Linguistic Problems of Yoruba Learners and Users of English," 1968, London University, England. (DS)

This bibliography lists books, articles, papers, theses and dissertations describing English-Polish contrastive studies conducted in Poland. There are 403 works listed in both languages, divided into two groups: General Works and English-Polish Contrastive Studies. (CHK)

This paper explores the auxiliary systems of English and German and the use of the auxiliary verbs in various complex predicate structures in the two languages. It aims at alleviating two types of problems in learning German involving governing patterns and ordering problems in clauses. (CHK)

Although critical of some of the claims made for contrastive analysis in the past, this article treats contrastive analysis as a useful pursuit which can contribute to language learning. (FB)

Two questions, what is a contrastive grammar, and what is comparable across linguistic systems, are touched on. The problem of the exact relationship of contrastive linguistics to linguistic theory is addressed. Two perhaps mutually exclusive views are discussed. See FL 508 197 for availability. (Author/RM)

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…