Makassar language (bM) is a language of ethnic groups which is taught as local content subjects in schools, both in oral and written literary traditions. This study aimed to examine the behavior of affixes and clitic morphosyntactics in the passivation of Makassar sentences. Field research methods were used by applying the conversational…

The so-called deviant character of a set of non-native texts is examined by looking closely at how sentence syntax realizes and affects textual functions. Two broad groups of syntactic phenomena are considered: subordination and "marked structures," such as passives and clefts. Emphasis in this paper is on the following four ways in which syntax…

This article discusses the various styles of commercial correspondence in Spanish. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

Data from a language development project at the Polytechnic of Wales were used to compare the speech and writing of 48 monolingual English-speaking children. The 48 children came from three groups, aged 8, 10, and 12. For the collection of spoken data, the children, divided into groups of three, were tape recorded while they made a construction…

To find differences and similarities between spoken and written English, analyses were made of four specific kinds of language. Twenty adults, either graduate students or university professors, provided a sample of each of the following: conversations, lectures, informal letters, and academic papers. Conversations and lecture samples came from…

In recent years, T-unit analysis has been applied in second language research to characterize the syntactic nature of linguistic input and to assess the syntactic maturity of the learners' written production. This measure has been seen to provide an objective and reliable method of determining the overall complexity of language samples. However,…

The purposes of this study were (1) to provide a method for the quantitative study of grammatical (syntactic) structures which is coherent, systematic, and broad, yet capable of refinement to accommodate details, and (2) to search for the developmental trends in the frequency of various grammatical structures written by students of average…

Students at first, fourth, seventh, and tenth grade levels and at graduate levels chose conjunctions "and" and "but" in two-clause sentences with varying degrees of logical relationship, with similar or contrasting clauses. Grade, type of relationship, and similarity were variables in a 5 x 3 x 2 repeated measures analysis of response to logical…

Confronted with the problem of determining the frequency of syntactical patterns in present-day written Australian English, the author employs a method of analysis which produces an output in the form of a two-dimensional line diagram showing all the syntagms comprising the sentence under analysis. For the remaining problem of sorting the diagrams…

This volume contains papers presented in connection with a symposium held in 1975 and sponsored by Abo Akademi, for the purpose of discussing ongoing research in word-order studies. Papers include: (1) a prolegomena by N.E. Enkvist; (2) "On the Ordering of Sister Constituents in Swedish," by E. Andersson; (3) "What is New…

A study investigated the importance of sentence topic in written discourse. Training second language writers to identify sentence topics in drafts of their written work has been proposed as a central means of helping writers achieve greater coherence. The study explored the notion that "topic" is a psychological rather than linguistic concept, and…

The grammar of the Korean language presented here is descriptive and structural, and does not align with any particular theory. An introductory chapter gives some background information about the language and related research. Subsequent chapters treat: writing and sound systems, including some sound rules and suprasegmental features; morphology…

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…

The present study reports on exploratory research to determine whether the Aluminum Paragraph, a sentence-combining exercise developed by O'Donnell (Hunt, 1970) to measure the development of syntactic complexity in the writing of native speakers of English, can also serve as a measure of the active syntactic proficiency of learners of English as a…

Trends and developments in computer applications in Chinese language research are described, focusing on these areas: input of Chinese characters and Chinese corpus; automatic segmentation of Chinese written text in corpus; development of a grammar knowledge base for Chinese words to be used as a resource for text segmentation and corpus…