In Turkish, Relative Clause (RC) attachment ambiguity arises when two noun phrases (NPs) in a genitive construction follow the (RC). The present paper studies Turkish RC attachment preferences of Turkish native speakers in two experiments through off-line comprehension tasks. While in the first experiment the main verb immediately follows the NP…

This article reports on the first results of a large-scale research programme that aims to define and circumscribe the construct of phraseological complexity and to theoretically and empirically demonstrate its relevance for second language theory. Within this broad agenda, the study has two main objectives. First, it investigates to what extent…

This dissertation investigates the syntax of Spanish complementizers, with special attention to double-complementizer constructions and non-high "que" "that" complementizers. The goal is to explore the consequences of the behavior and distribution of such complementizers for the mapping of the Spanish left periphery, the…

Clause connectives are linguistic forms that convey relations between clauses in a sentence. They are typically compared, whether within a language or across languages, on the basis of a shared syntactic category, such as coordination and subordination, or a semantic one, such as sequence, cause, or addition. While the inadequacy of the…

Thai has imperfective aspectual morphemes that are not obligatory in usage, whereas English has obligatory grammaticized imperfective aspectual marking on the verb. Furthermore, Thai has verb final deictic-path verbs that form a closed class set. The current study investigated if obligatoriness of these grammatical categories in Thai and English…

Considers the results of an analysis of "creative" alternative names for the New York Exposition and Conference Center, which were collected in a newspaper contest. When comparing these results with those of a prior analysis of "practical" computer file names, it appears that the principles governing naming are analogous in…

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…

The role of linguistic structure in a referential communication task was examined by comparing encoding and decoding performance of 80 five- and seven-year-old children from Japan and the United States. The linguist structure demanded by the task was the simultaneous encoding and decoding of attributes of size, color, pattern, and shape. (In…

Discusses the differences between the English native and nonnative speaker's creation and use of nominal compounds. A comparison between English speakers and Japanese native speakers indicates that not only must nonnative speakers acquire rules in order to effectively compound words in English, but that rules must indeed exist, indicating that…

Discusses the current approaches to interlanguage syntax, focusing on the goal of finding consistency and pattern in syntactic variation. Some themes contributing to descriptive approaches include: the transition from morphosyntax acquisition studies to those of more complex syntax, the emergence of syntax from discourse, explicitness, and the…

This article investigates the information structure of verb-second (V2) declaratives in Swedish, German, and nonnative German. Even though almost any type of element can occur in the so-called prefield, the clause-initial preverbal position of V2 declaratives, we have found language-specific patterns in native-speaker corpora: The frequencies of…

To determine whether triage--which determines the probable revisability of a structure--is a feature of human parsing, its scope must be established. This study compares four hypotheses about how much work triage can do. Identifies empirical predictions that differentiate diagnosis with triage from simple basic diagnosis. What little evidence…

An examination of the place of American English in the research of William Dwight Whitney and Leonard Bloomfield focuses on the divergence of their approaches to language. A review of their works looks at the way in which Whitney's interest in American English complemented his other strong interests (the social and political setting for language…

A research project concerned with the development of English as a school subject in the Norwegian elementary and junior high school identifies and describes British and American influences on the theoretical climate of foreign language teaching in Western Europe from the 1950's to the 1970's. A distinct British influence, the so-called Palmer,…

Proposes that one theorist's challenge to the discipline of linguistics, which claims that linguistic structure is temporal and the study of language is a political activity, reflects the influence of philosophical deconstructivism that has heavily influenced other disciplines. The deconstructivist view of language is contrasted with competence…