Argues that words with different meanings normally appear in discriminably different contexts, and that the cue for learning to associate direct antonyms is not their substitutability but rather their frequent co-occurrence in the same sentence. (Author/VWL)

The central purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that inalienable possession (IP) in Romance languages hinges more on inferences than is commonly assumed. Most of the analysis concerns Spanish because that language provides the best evidence of how IP is non-grammatical in the sense that it is free of morpho-syntactic constraints. French and…

Discusses the noun-plus-adjective construction in contemporary German and problems in translating this pattern into English. (AM)

THIS PAPER DEALS WITH THE SEMANTIC PHENOMENA WHICH UNDERLIE THE SURFACE STRUCTURE OCCURRENCE (OR NONOCCURRENCE) IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF ENGLISH NOUNS OF SUCH ITEMS AS THE DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ARTICLES AND THE PLURAL SUFFIX. THE INFLECTION OF ENGLISH NOUNS IS DISCUSSED IN SEMANTIC TERMS. RULES ARE GIVEN FOR THE GENERATION OF THESE INFLECTIONS IN…

This paper draws from data on 123 languages to examine the semantics of comparative systems in an attempt to define as closely as possible the relationships that exist among three basic types of constructions and among their constituents. It is determined that superlatives mark absolute disparity, that comparatives mark relative disparity, and…

Examines the use of the neuter form in predicate adjectives, drawing examples from Swedish and French, and working within the framework of nexus constructions. (AM)

To express that a degree of one event is conditioned by (or paralleled by) a degree of another, the "the...the..." construction with a comparative after each "the" is used. Examples include sentences such as: (1) the more dangerous mountains are to climb, the more challenging they are; (2) the more often a man has been in…

This study relates the suffix "-age" to "-able,""-eux,""-ment,""-Xtion," and "-ure" in Quebec French. Morphologically, some "-age" suffixals which can be denominal in Quebec French can only be deverbal in European French. Semantically, "-age" deverbals are subdivided…

This updated and expanded version of a 1991 book provides an account of the development of Spanish over the last 2,000 years. The six chapters include: (1) "Introduction" (e.g., Indo-European, Latin, and Romance); (2) "Phonology" (phonological change, transmission, suprasegmental features, development of the vowel system, development of the…

Proposes an alternative account of the child's learning of nouns and adjectives that relies on properties of the semantic categories to be learned and of the word-learning task itself. In five experiments, a simple connectionist network was trained to label input objects in particular contexts; the network learned categories resembling nouns…

Studies of the acquisition of word meaning and the semantic features involved have been mostly confined to noun categories and polar adjectives. Investigation of the semantic categories underlying verb forms has implications not only for theories of child language acquisition but also for theories of semantic structure in general. Experimental…

This paper provides an analysis of Choctaw morphology based on the orthographical system described by the same author (See FL 002 864). The author begins with a discussion of the articles, cases, and conjunctions of Choctaw, considering their forms and uses. A consideration of independent and dependent personal pronouns follows and forms the basis…

An analysis of the structure of possessive-adjective phrases (e.g., "women's new suitcases, new women's suitcases") in English looks at some data that appear to conflict with the intuitive order of S-structure possessives preceding adjectives. A solution to this apparent anomaly is proposed: it is not the compounding of possessive-noun…

Although many authors have mentioned examples of how black usually connotes a negative evaluation and white a positive evaluation, the literature on the topic has not yet included an attempt to list examples comprehensively. Those which are cited here come from a wide variety of sources: primarily from dictionaries, books of slang, and personal…

The sixth volume of this series contains eight contrastive studies in the syntax and semantics of English and Romanian. They are: "Criteria for the Contrastive Analysis of English Nouns," by Andrei Bantas; "Adjectives as Noun Modifiers in Post-Verbal Position," by Ioana Poenaru; "Towards a Semantic Description of 'Tense'…