A detailed view of the various uses in Russian of the conjunction "poka" is developed in this article. Frequent examples illustrate clausal relationships, negative constructions, aspect, and tense in typical "poka" constructions. The principal function of "poka" is related to the linguistic concept of simultaneity, and the standard dictionary…

This book begins with a consideration of the relation between language as representation and the reality that is represented. The object of this study is the semantic function of syntactical relations in French and Spanish, but other languages are also used for purposes of comparison. Three principal diatheses are revealed: objective, subjective,…

This paper examines the formal means by which Czech distinguishes transitive and intransitive verbs, and specifically the role of the particle "se" in the process usually called "derived intransitivization.""Se" is shown to perform a number of functions which preclude its being called simply an "intransitivizing…

This paper discusses subject-verb-complement (SVC) clauses and their renderings in English and Finnish. Comparisons are made on the level of surface structure and with regard to equivalence in the sense of one construction being an optimum translation of the other. The definition of congruence, i.e., formal similarity and equal number of…

This paper addresses itself to the question of why the English language should have levelled almost all of its inflections, and what the relationship is between the breakdown of the case system and the rise of fixed word-order, prepositional phrases, and verb periphrases. The explanation proposed for the phenomenon of syntactic drift is considered…

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…