Three grammars that, since the 50's, have supplemented or offered alternatives to traditional grammar are discussed in this article. The role of grammar in communicative utterances and the underlying considerations in describing a grammatical system are analyzed. Then, brief summaries about and comments on structural linguistics, tagmemic grammar,…

A critical review of the development of case theory as put forth by N. Chomsky, C. J. Fillmore, J. M. Anderson, J. J. Robinson, and S. Starosta. (Text is in French.) (AM)

There is a set of French verbs which admits both indicative and subjunctive sentential complements. The indicative complement is correlated with a positive assertion about the truth of the complement; the subjunctive implies a neutral attitude or a non-assertion. When various sentential complement constructions are considered both in the…

It is argued that too much attention to deep structure has led to neglect of surface realizations. Case relations and case forms are studied as well as the relationships between the two. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Criteria for defining individual members of the preposition word class are set forth. Arguments are presented against calling prepositions meaningless, yet it is conceded and explained that those which occur in wider contexts are vaguer due to their greater variability. The unitary, polysemous, and/or homonymous nature of prepositions are…

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…

Three aspects of existential sentences in English and Polish are discussed, and on the basis of the considerations of the logical and structural characteristics of existential sentences, some conclusions are drawn concerning the deep structure and derivation of these sentences. (Available from: See FL 508 214.) (RM)

Discusses the development of Fillmore's case theory. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Discusses problems related to case grammar theory, including: the organizations of a case grammar; determination of semantic roles; definition and hierarchy of cases; cause-effect relations; and formalization and notation. (Text is in French.) (AM)

This paper is concerned with the treatment of anaphoric phenomena in a semantically based transformation grammar. It is argued that account of anaphora in terms of coreference are no better than accounts in terms of identical NPs; instead, it is proposed that a unified account of anaphora, which covers both quantified and unquantified NPs, may be…

In many languages (e.g. Latin, Greek, Russian, Turkish, German) the relationship of a noun phrase to the rest of a sentence is indicated by altered forms of the noun. The possible relationships are called (surface) "cases." Because (1) it is difficult to specify semantic-free selection rules for the cases, and (2) related phenomena based on…

THE ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE IS CONSIDERED AS A QUESTION OF SPECIFYING HOW CHILDREN'S CAPACITY FOR LANGUAGE INTERACTS WITH THEIR LINGUISTIC EXPERIENCE--THE INTERACTION TAKING THE FORM OF RELATING THE UNIVERSAL ASPECTS OF THE DEEP STRUCTURE TO THE IDIOSYNCRATIC ASPECTS OF THE SURFACE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE. THIS INTERACTION OCCURS IN THE ACQUISITION…

This paper suggests that traditional syntax describes a sentence's syntactic structure, and that verb valence theory describes a sentence's semantic structure. According to this theory, a verb has a certain valence, or power to attract a certain number of "adjuncts." It is further shown that a given semantic structure can be converted into…