Both lack of time and the need to translate texts for numerous reasons brought about an increase in studying machine translation with a history spanning over 65 years. During the last decades, Google Translate, as a statistical machine translation (SMT), was in the center of attention for supporting 90 languages. Although there are many studies on…

This article reports an eye-tracking study on the native and non-native processing of case in Spanish. Twenty-four native and 27 first language (L1) German non-native speakers of Spanish were tested on their sensitivity to case marking violations involving structural case with objects of ditransitive verbs and to violations of inherent case for…

Based on part of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Sate University of New York at Buffalo. (VM)

Describes a part of a study on children's acquisition of Warlpiri, an aboriginal language spoken in central Australia, which aimed to find out at what age the children respond consistently to particular word orders and case frames for simple transitive sentences. Makes comparisons with the acquisition of Turkish transitive clauses. (SED)

Linear syllogisms present two premises, each describing a relation between two terms. The individual's task is to infer the relation among the three terms of the linear syllogism, and then answer a question about one or more of these relations. For example, "John is taller than Bob. Sam is shorter than Bob. Who is the tallest?" Students…

Examines comprehension of sentences with multiple negations among 71 monolingual Anglo and bilingual Hispanic undergraduate science and engineering majors. Finds that both groups misused rules of logic and natural discourse; similar groups benefited from training to eliminate inappropriate reasoning strategies, but only Anglos retained the…

A progress report is presented of a study which applies a system of generative grammar to error analysis. The objective of the study was to reconstruct the grammar of students' interlanguage, using a systematic analysis of errors. (Interlanguage refers to the linguistic competence of a student who possesses a relatively systematic body of rules,…

A study of overregularized use of verbs by two children over a period when they were 2 1/2 to 5 years of age shows overregularizations in two directions: non-causative verbs were used as causatives; and causative verbs were used non-causatively. According to terminology from logic, predicates were classified according to the number of noun-phrase…

This study argues that positive second-language (L2) data do not necessarily rule out inappropriate L2 grammar. Rather, L2 learners appear to postulate first-language (L1) grammar as an interim theory about the L2, at least in the initial stages of L2 acquisition. The case where L2 grammar intersects L1 concerning time adverbial clauses was chosen…

A study examined patterns of English usage in 52 Japanese university freshmen's written compositions, particularly in the use of the subordinating conjunction "because." It was found that students often fragmented sentences when "because" was involved, or used a comma to separate a trailing dependent "because" clause…

This study explored the dichotomy between global errors, that is, those violating rules of overall sentence structure, and local errors, that is, those violating rules within a particular constituent of a sentence, and the relationship of these to communication breakdown. The focus was tense continuity across clauses (TC) and subject-verb…

This paper is based on a longitudinal study of the development of questions in the spontaneous speech of two anglophone boys learning French by attending French language schools. The development of form-meaning relations in information questions in the children's French L2 speech was examined and comparisons were made with the same form-meaning…

A study compared the perceptions of two experts from different cultural backgrounds concerning salience of a variety of errors typical of the English written by Hong Kong secondary and college students. A book on English error types written by a Hong-Kong born, fluent Chinese-English bilingual linguist was analyzed for its emphases, and a list of…

A study examined the relationship between syntactic complexity and overall accuracy in the written English of 30 advanced learners of English from five different native language groups. Results show similar patterns of error distribution, a similar level of relative strength in syntax, and relative weakness in morphology. (Author/MSE)

Papers in this volume include the following: "The Structural Sources of Verb Meaning" (Lila R. Gleitman); "Acquisition of Noun Incorporation in Inuktitut" (Shanley Allen, Martha Crago); "Why Do Children Omit Subjects?" (Paul Bloom); "Acquiring Language in a Creole Setting: Theoretical and Methodological…