An experiment in second language reading comprehension tested the hypothesis that similar surface and deep structures in L1 and L2 imply a similar means of passing from surface to deep structure. Dutch learners of French were the subjects. (CHK)

Seeking out inter-language differences in the execution of a contrastive analysis is given priority over looking for manifestations of language universals. But unless a contrastive study is based upon an understanding of language universals and contains a set of instructions for how each language realizes them, the common ground for contrast can…

The author questions the usefulness of the concepts of transformational generative grammar, especially as represented in Jacobs and Rosenbaum's "English Transformational Grammar, for the teacher of English as a Second Language. Paper presented at the TESOL Convention, Chicago, March 1969. (FWB)

In viewing the approach to English and other grammars in the light of linguistic universals, the author feels that the principal justification for deep structure analysis of English is that "deep structure analyses of all the languages of our multilingual world in combination can serve as a genuinely scientific basis of a defensible universal…

Proposes a new theory of morphological acquisition in second language learning, based on the theory of contrastive analysis and on the notion of the "psychomorpheme." (AM)

A project designed to gather information about similarities and differences that may be important for teaching English to Finnish learners, and, to a certain extent, for teaching Finnish through English, was conducted through a systematic comparison of the two languages and an analysis of instances where the two languages come into contact. In the…

Both English and Finnish make use of a category called the passive voice. In most cases these passives correspond to each other, but both are subject to restrictions. This paper attempts to determine how English passives overlap with the semantic area covered by the Finnish passive and what the choices are which face a speaker of Finnish in…

A Language-research experiment designed to examine the linguistic competence of bilingual Italian-American children demonstrates that structures shared by Italian and English are acquired in approximately the same order and at the same rate, and that the sequencing of specific structures reflects linguistic complexity. Structures appearing in both…

Little has been done to test or describe reading strategies of second language learners. The study reported in this paper was an attempt to begin to investigate the nature of perceptual strategies which second language learners employ when reading certain English structures, and to ask the question of whether second language learners, when…

This book discusses the relevance of applied linguistics to foreign language teaching and supports the point of view that linguistics is relevant as the source of assumptions rather than as the source of conclusions. In foreign language teaching, the assumptions based on linguistics must ultimately be evaluated on their ability to explain the…

The parameter-setting model of universal grammar provides a basis for integrating two theories of second language acquisition: contrastive analysis and creative construction. The elicited responses of adult native speakers of Spanish and adult native speakers of Japanese were examined. The head-initial/head-final parameter was the principle…

Papers from the 1973 Neuchatel Colloquium in Applied Linguistics are presented. Contents are as follows: "Karttunen's Types of Implication in English and German: A Contrastive Study," W. Abraham; "The Relevance of Generative Semantics for Language Teaching," R. Dirven; "'Be' plus 'ing' Revisited," H. Adamczeski; "The So-Called Deep Structures and…