Why do children from some minority groups and children living in poverty do poorly in school when compared to white middle-class children? Researchers have offered a large number of different answers to this question. One of the most popular answers has been based on the notion of "decontextualized language." This article argues that…

Describes the interaction between disjunct constituents and sentential structures and argues for an extension of the theoretical apparatus intially postulated in autosegmental phonology to represent complex syntactic structures containing disjunct constituents with a number of independent phrase markers that intersect at the linear axis. (66…

David Lightfoot's "How to Set Parameters: Arguments from Language Change" (1991), which adopts the principles and parameters approach developed by Chomsky as part of the theory of government and binding, is reviewed. (Contains 34 references.) (LB)

It is argued that the restrictions on "wh"-movement out of negative and factive islands cannot be explained solely by the Empty Category Principle but that embedded properties assigned by matrix verbs also intervene. (Contains 48 references.) (LB)

It is argued that in Russian verbs the perfect aspect is marked and the imperfect unmarked is wrong. For certain lexical classes, the imperfective rather than the perfective is marked. A systematic interrelationship among aspect, tense, and type of action is developed. (PMJ)

Presents an analysis of the similarities and differences between the temporal conjunctions "when" and "while." (AM)

One important function of the imperfective aspect in Modern Greek is to indicate indefinite repetition; when a modal element is present, however, the perfective may be selected instead. (Author/CFM)

Provides a history of the development of the theory of the "circumstantial" in grammar, presents its chief concepts, and discusses its implications for a theory of semantics. (AM)

Traces the development of French "grammatical analysis" and "logical analysis," from the 16th century concept of syntax, to 19th century pedagogy. (AM)

Examines the traditionally prestigious status of the sentence in grammatical analysis, and traces the history of the word "phrase" as a part of French grammatical language. (AM)

Using a particular sentence type--an exclamative construction referred to as "Nominal Extraposition" (NE)--this article outlines a formal model in which grammatical description includes the description of use conditions on form-meaning pairs. The article suggests that the relationship between NE and like exclamatives can be represented in an…

Discusses functional and anaphoric control in complex sentences (sentences with more than one verb) in Jordanian Arabic within the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar. It is argued that Jordanian Arabic utilizes anaphoric rather that functional control. (18 references) (JL)

Argues that intonation is best analyzed as an overt marking of the focus structure of a sentence. The linguistic level of f-structure in which both topic and focus are identified provides the link between context, interpretation, syntax, and intonation. (Author/VWL)

Presents an original description of the psychological processes involved in producing speech. (AM)

Examples illustrate that there are possible independent meanings of the imperfective, possessing stronger modality than the perfective in the Russian verb system. This is examined in past tense, infinitive, and imperative structures. (PMJ)