THE ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE IS CONSIDERED AS A QUESTION OF SPECIFYING HOW CHILDREN'S CAPACITY FOR LANGUAGE INTERACTS WITH THEIR LINGUISTIC EXPERIENCE--THE INTERACTION TAKING THE FORM OF RELATING THE UNIVERSAL ASPECTS OF THE DEEP STRUCTURE TO THE IDIOSYNCRATIC ASPECTS OF THE SURFACE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE. THIS INTERACTION OCCURS IN THE ACQUISITION…

The paper begins with a discussion of several recently proposed analyses of nominal compounds in English. It is then suggested that the relations which may appropriately underlie nominal compounds of the type Noun + Noun can best be defined negatively, i.e. by listing those relations between two nouns which cannot underlie compounds rather than…

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 paper explores the syntactic properties, in Romanian, of one kind of subordination, namely Sentential Predicate Complementation. Some generalizations are offered concerning the relationship between the meaning and the syntactic properties of these constructions. The complement structures are isolated into groups according to verb selection:…

The source of syntactic ambiguity and facts concerning the resolution of such ambiguity are discussed in this paper. The attitude of qenerative linguists towards ambiguity is examined, and a working distinction is drawn between vaqueness and ambiguity. The consequences of this distinction are then examined for syntactic ambiguity and an ordering…

This book attempts to bring linguists and language teachers up to date on the latest developments in semantics. A survey of the role of semantics in linguistics and other academic areas is followed by a historical perspective of semantics in American linguistics. Various semantic models are discussed. Anomaly, ambiguity, and discourse are…

The present level of understanding of the psycholinguistic processes and capacities underlying the child's acquisition of language is reviewed in this publication. In the first chapter, linguistic theories, biological characteristics of language learning, and the distinctions between language competence and language performance are discussed. The…

In line with current thinking in transformational grammar, syntax as a system can and should be studied before a study is made of the use of that system. Chomsky's lexical redundancy rule is an area for further study, possibly to come closer to defining and achieving explanatory adequacy. If it is observed that English nouns come in two types,…

The use of case frames of verbs as a control for the teaching of vocabulary items has a number of distinct advantages over other controls. The case frame associated with a particular vocabulary item, or with a particular semantic class, would be the same in the native and the target language (English). This would have the advantage of allowing the…

This work reports on an initial study of the possibility of providing a suitable framework for the teaching of a foreign language grammar through string analysis, using French as the target language. Analysis of a string word list (word-class sequences) yields an overall view of the grammar. Details are furnished in a set of restrictions which…