In modern Russian, the particle-connective "Ze" has two general and distinct functions: (1) intensification-emphasis and (2) conjunction-opposition. As these functions are actually performed by two different particles, this article accounts for their development and etymology. (CHK)

Examines tense, aspect, and voice choices in the reporting verbs in a corpus of research articles from the "Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine." Investigates how such choices correlate with other syntactic elements in the citations, as well as with the discourse functions of the citations in their contexts. (TB)

Illuminates the psycholinguist mechanism that underlies the claim made by the output hypothesis that production makes the learner move from semantic processing prevalent in comprehension to more syntactic processing that is necessary for second language development. Reviews previous literature in language acquisition and cognitive psychology on…

Uses a detailed analysis of a single grammatical problem to present the principal commitments and mechanisms of a grammatical theory that assigns a central role to the notion of grammatical construction. The grammatical phenomenon used to introduce construction grammar is the construction that licenses the surprising syntactic and semantic…

Linguistically, political discourses have generally been discussed within qualitative approaches (e.g., Blackledge, 2005; Chilton, 2004; Chomsky, 2004; van Dijk, 2005; Wodak, 2002). This paper presents tools to design a quantitative research relating political speech with sociolinguistic variables. Notions such as Accommodation Theory (Giles &…

Discusses two kinds of "temporal indifference" in German tense forms: "timelessness" (Function I) and "all-time-ness" (Function II). Function I occurs in generally true statements, proverbs, definitions, etc. Function II denotes a time period which "empirically appears unbounded on both sides." (Text is in…

Discusses the syntactic differences in expressing wishes or desires in Italian and Russian. (CFM)

Part (1) appeared in "Russisch" 1974/4. Discusses the uses of the prepositions "na" and "v," using many examples taken from current texts for teaching Russian. (Text is in German.) (WGA)

The results of a survey in which 50 British university students were asked to assess the acceptability of 40 indirect object sentences are analyzed, and some problems inherent in English indirect object constructions are discussed. (DS)

The opinions of various grammarians and linguists about the correct usage of "adonde" and "a donde" are presented. (Text is in Spanish.) (CHK)

Regardless of the syntactic variation of the direct object "a" in Spanish, a great deal of semantic unity underlies its use. Argues that it carries an invariant meaning that is present in every use of the form, and, concomitantly, its absence before a direct object carries an equally invariant meaning within the systematic semantic structure of…

This study investigated which categories of downgraders in requests is more learnable, and therefore, more teachable. Specifically, the study compared three categories of downgraders: internally modified syntactic downgraders (e.g., conditionals, aspects, interrogatives); internally modified lexical-phrasal downgraders (e.g., politeness markers,…

This paper presents three experiments which show syntactic priming effects in four- and five-year-old children. The experiments are modeled after priming studies with adults involving transitive and dative constructions. In Study 1 children were presented with a picture that was described by an experimenter. They repeated the experimenter's…

Purpose: Expository discourse, the use of language to convey information, requires facility with complex syntax. Although expository discourse is often employed in school and work settings, little is known about its development in children, adolescents, and adults. Hence, it is difficult to evaluate this genre in students who have language…