The serious student of language, English or foreign, and especially the future language teacher must receive a solid training not only in theoretical but also in applied syntax. Such a course should be offered at the advanced level and deal with the syntax of the language involved in a rigorously systematic way. The search for a systematic, yet…

From an outline of the recent history of the psychology of language the author proceeds to discuss research that has been done recently in psycholinguistics. These studies fall within the following areas: (1) "The Study of Grammar as a Psychological Process," (2) "How We Remember Sentences," (3) "What We Do When We…

The author endeavors to penetrate the "mists o f mentalistic myth" which enshroud the "very real, solid, and substantial results of generative or transformational linguistics." In attempting to clarify and clear up misunderstandings about theories of grammar as put forth by Chomsky (whose practice, the author feels, is "superior to his description…

Written in Spanish, the article discusses the transformational grammar of the Spanish used by Chicanos. (NQ)

A comment on the considerations William Watt must deal with in order to establish his belief that transformational grammar and psychology are at odds in their rules for theory building. (SC)

The contrasting views of Saussure and Bloomfield ("mentalist" versus "mechanist"), the hypotheses of Whorf showing the influence of language on certain habits of thought, and Chomsky's notion of generative transformational grammar in the context of language use are reviewed. The author notes the limits of these systems and suggests that in dealing…

The author raises the question of how to relate modern transformational grammars to a body of empirical fact, and suggests why paraphrasing might legitimately be considered a feature of behavior relevant to linguistic competence. This study is introduced by a discussion of the empirical basis of descriptive linguistics, followed by sections…

The article discusses models of synchronic and diachronic phonology and suggests changes in them. The basic generative model of phonology is outlined with the author's reinterpretations. The systematic phonemic level is questioned in terms of its unreality with respect to linguistic performance and its lack of validity with respect to historical…

Expanded version of a lecture delivered in May 1971 at the Padagogische Hochschule in Braunschweig, West Germany. (WB)

Recent experimental work in teaching standard English to speakers of nonstandard dialects of English has shown that such speakers often have a good receptive command of the standard dialect, and readily re-encode stimuli presented in the standard dialect into their own nonstandard forms. This fact shows that some modification is needed in the…

Discusses the effect of sentence structure on the reading acquistition process of beginning readers. (RB)

Special issued devoted to language and history. (VM)

Noam Chomsky's theory of grammar, or more specifically his theory of syntax, proposes to describe all possible English sentences through an explanation of how the native speaker generates sentences. It is the study of one's competence that offers insights into how language is acquired and how the rules and generalizations of that language are…