This article deals with denominal adjectives, also referred to by linguists as pseudo-adjectives or non-predicating adjectives. These adjectives are seldom used predicatively. This article explores the mechanism of this syntactical constraint. Examples of non-predicating adjectives that do not respect this syntactic constraint are analyzed. It is…

While the prenominal or postnominal position of descriptive adjectives in Spanish has been widely discussed, there is a partial aspect of this topic which is either ignored or dealt with in a perfunctory manner, namely, the possible existence of a semantic principle determining the sequence of descriptive adjectives in coordinate series of two or…

Revised version of a paper presented at the Spring Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, York, April 1971. (DD)

Explains Spanish pronominalization as one simple process, and notes its application the teaching and learning of Spanish. (CHK)

The criteria employed in most textbooks to differentiate "ser" and "estar" followed by an adjective are mainly semantic. Most exercises offer to second language learners too high a proportion of "estar" usages, a practice that leads to overgeneralization with regard to the use of "estar." An experiment was…

To express that a degree of one event is conditioned by (or paralleled by) a degree of another, the "the...the..." construction with a comparative after each "the" is used. Examples include sentences such as: (1) the more dangerous mountains are to climb, the more challenging they are; (2) the more often a man has been in…

To test to what extent children are aware of the differences between closed-class and open-class words, 104 children aged 3 to 5 years participated in a sentence repetition task. Children were more likely to repeat sentences correctly when the nonsense words functioned in open-class rather than in closed-class contexts. (Contains 20 references.)…

This collection of papers is divided into four sections. Section 1, "Historical Linguistics," includes "The Grammaticalization of Non-Dative Reflexes of Latin ill- in Spanish" (Jose R. Carrasquel) and "'Esto es Ligero de Fazer': Object to Subject Raising in Medieval and Early Modern Spanish" (Mark Davies). Section 2, "Language Acquisition and…

This paper describes predicate adjective usage in modern standard Russian using a corpus of written Russian derived from "Pravda" (neutral literary style) and "Krokodil" (conversational material). The short, long nominative, and instrumental forms are examined in relation to the type of adjective, copulative verb, sentence subject, and other…

The use of poetry in the second language class is explored as a means of gentle, non-threatening communication. Techniques for using poetry to teach intonation, using adjectives, verbs, pronunciation, and syntax, as well as for offering the student another means of expressing feelings, are explored. Sample poems and lessons are discussed, and…

A sample of 48 middle and lower class kindergarten and second grade students participated in a study to determine what speech adjustments school-age children made for listeners of different ages. Half the second grade subjects learned about two performance tasks--a board game and constructing columns of colored blocks--from the researcher, after…

This reference guide presents detailed information about current English usage with emphasis on both formal and informal written language. The practical needs of advanced learners of English as a second language are considered and there is heavy concentration on grammatical usages that continue to trouble foreign students: articles, verb forms,…

This grammar of Pashto was designed to accompany a set of beginning- and intermediate-level instructional materials for teaching the Pashto language to English speakers, but can be used separately as a reference by readers who are not learning the language. Introductory sections in English and Pashto describe the content and organization. The…