This paper reports an experiment that investigates interpretive distinctions between two different expressions of generalization in Spanish. In particular, our aim was to find out when the distinction between generic statements (GS) such as "Tigers have stripes" and universally quantified statements (UQS) such as "All tigers have…

Second language acquisition has been observed to be variable in its outcome such that, unlike native speakers, all second language learners do not achieve total success. Second language acquisition is made of macro and micro processes. External and internal (e.g., age, individual differences) factors are assumed to affect language processing in…

Anaphoric expressions such as repeated names, overt pronouns, and null pronouns serve a major role in the creation and maintenance of discourse coherence. The felicitous use of an anaphoric expression is highly dependent on the discourse salience of the entity introduced by the antecedent. Gordon et al. ("Cogn Sci" 17:311-347, 1993)…

How languages are acquired and what stages learners go through has been the focus in language teaching area, and this cross-sectional study investigated the use of English adverbs by elementary, pre-intermediate and intermediate level Turkish EFL students at Anadolu University School of Foreign Languages by analyzing it from acquisitional…

This article examines how changes in linguistic theory affect the debate between the fundamental difference hypothesis and the access-to-Universal Grammar (UG) approach to SLA. With a focus on subjacency (Chomsky, 1973), a principle of UG that places constraints on "wh"-movement and that has frequently been taken as a test case for verifying…

The effect of presuppositions on the applicability of grammatical rules is discussed. It is argued that the speaker's presupposition may cause a grammatical rule to become optional. (RM)

Recent work in language and text has explored such broad functional categories as evidentiality and affect, and has examined their cross-linguistic occurrences and manifestations. This paper focuses on a single construction, explores its variations, and describes and explains its pragmatic and textual functions. This rare construction, exemplified…

Examines reflexivization in Italian and demonstrates that the proposals that (1) reflexive pronouns and their antecedents must be clausemates, and (2) the specified subject and tensed-S conditions, cannot be maintained as universals. (AM)

Presents theoretical syntactic formulas for translating sentences from one language to another. (KM)

The necessity is asserted for constructing a theory of contrastive analysis which would incorporate both translation equivalence and "form and placement of the rules in grammar" as criteria for making decisions concerning comparability. (Available from: See FL 508 214). (Author/RM)

Four hypotheses concerning the linguistic structure of yes-no questions and their answers are considered as hypotheses relating to the abstract structure of yes-no questions and to this abstract structure in all human languages. The universal base hypotheses are the following: (1) The abstract representation of all yes-no questions includes two…

A review of analyses of conditionals (in the philosophical literature) and of topics (primarily in linguistics) reveals that their definitions are very similar. This paper justifies the method of basing semantic analysis of a construction on a cross-linguistic examination of its superficial form. (Author/NCR)

An argument is made for a theory of deep structure which does not neglect surface structure analysis. See FL 508 197 for availability. (RM)

Relational Grammar, which has evolved from transformational grammar, relies on a "universal grammar" approach. By closely studying this approach, linguists will be able to understand Relational Grammar (RG) well enough to be able to participate in its further development. The basic assumptions of RG are that…