Near-synonyms in English often cause considerable confusion among EFL students. This study aims to clarify this confusion through a corpus-based investigation of the target synonymous verbs "persist" and "persevere" with focus on distribution across genres, collocations, and semantic preference/prosody. The results, based on…

Narratives frequently represent perceptions that allow for multiple interpretations in terms of perspective: Perceptions can be interpreted from the narrator's viewpoint as well as the character's viewpoint. Two experiments examined the role of contextual viewpoint markers and verb tense in readers' interpretation of such ambiguous perceptions.…

This paper presents the results of a multidimensional analysis to investigate stylistic patterns and their communicative functions in language teaching research articles. The findings were that language teaching research articles contained six stylistic patterns and communicative functions. Pattern I consisted of seven salient positive features…

This study adopted Ambridge's research paradigm to examine the effects of entrenchment, preemption, and verb semantics in second language (L2) acquisition of English "un-" prefixation. Three groups of Chinese learners of English (second- and fourth-year English majors and teachers of English) rated the acceptability of 48 "un-"…

This paper argues that in interpreting literary pieces, language and literature should team up for their mutual benefit. Based on this assumption, this study explores the interface between language and literature by examining along stylistic lines the flash fiction piece "When It's A Grey November In Your Soul" written by Cristina…

Studies on ESL/EFL learners' use of the progressives reveal that it is one of the grammatical aspects most problematic to them. This paper presents the results of a study on the use of progressives among Year 5, Form 1 and Form 4 Malaysian ESL learners' compositions using the English of Malaysian School Students (EMAS) corpus. The purpose of this…

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of lexicogrammatical devices which highlight important or relevant points in lectures. Despite the established usefulness of discourse organizational cues for lecture comprehension and note-taking, very little is known about the marking of relevance in this genre. The current overview of…

This dissertation analyzes two derived Biblical Hebrew verbal forms, the Niphal and the Hitpael. Present scholarship on Biblical Hebrew does not agree on the definition or relationship of these two stems. In chapter 1 I outline the two major problems for the Niphal and Hitpael: (1) unified definitions for each, and (2) their functional overlap. An…

In Spanish, aspectual morphology is a critical element that speakers use to narrate and discuss past events. Previous qualitative accounts have shown that native Spanish-speakers apply past-tense aspectual morphology to verbs in order to distinguish between events viewed as perfective (bounded, discrete events) and imperfective (unbounded,…

First part of a continued article. (SK)

Part 1 appeared in English Language Teaching v24 n3 May 1970 (EJ 023 138). (FB)

Discusses the use of the two past tenses in French, specifically in literature and news reporting. (AM)

Describes the function of English modal verbs, arranging them in categories: permitting, asking permission, forbidding, commanding, exhorting, requesting, conjecturing, wishing. Various nuances are illustrated with numerous examples. For the clear, unambiguous functioning of each modal verb, an ample context is a prerequisite. (Text is in German.)…

Presents data that suggest that three factors--social variables, speech register, and linguistic variables--influence the choice of grammatical structure in Brazilian Portuguese where options exist to express the same idea. Examines the range of options used in responses that indicate general patterns of linguistic structures related to particular…