A polemic is made for frame semantics and the linguistic phenomenon of anaphoric reference without noun phrase (NP) antecedent is examined within this frame. Non-syntactic anaphora is that which does not point out into the real world but rather points back into the discourse in a frame which has been built up between the speaker and hearer in a…

Contradicts Pablo Jordan's theory that certain "se" constructions in Spanish are neither passive nor reflexive. It is claimed that syntactic evidence reveals two types of impersonal structures, the impersonal active and the passive reflexive. (Text is in Spanish.) (CK)

Presents rules for the correct use of the French pronouns "ce" and "il," based on the criterion of discourse coherence and an understanding of the principles underlying the use of demonstrative vs. personal pronouns. (MSE)

The phenomenon of "cross-code ambiguity" is offered as one explanation of the persistence of such Negro Nonstandard English (NNE) sentences as "The man he did it." In NNE the string "The man did it" is felt to be ambiguous, referring to either "The man who did it..." or, as in Standard English (SE), "The man did it." The use here of the pleonastic…

This paper argues that the hypothesis that all languages have a definitization process is empirically refutable, and that use of the terminology "definite" and "indefinite" is justified in that it reflects intuitions of grammarians and linguists. The following statements are tested against evidence from samples of different languages: (1) all noun…

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,…

Both English and Finnish make use of a category called the passive voice. In most cases these passives correspond to each other, but both are subject to restrictions. This paper attempts to determine how English passives overlap with the semantic area covered by the Finnish passive and what the choices are which face a speaker of Finnish in…

The "direct discourse analysis" introduced by Susumu Kuno is examined and found to be inadequate. To account for the data Kuno discusses, as well as for related data, a new approach to transformations is suggested. By determining the function, rather than the form, of a transformation, certain predictions are possible. Primary is the…