Gives some examples of internal contradictions in the use of the Spanish subjunctive. Details these contradictions to show there is only a tenuous relationship between surface forms and semantic features and categories. (EKN)

TWENTY-EIGHT SS (SUBJECTS) WERE PRESENTED WITH COMPUTER-GENERATED AGRAMMATICAL STATEMENTS, AND ASKED TO CARRY OUT TWO TASKS ON EACH OF TWO EXPERIMENTAL DAYS. TASK 1 WAS A FORCED-CHOICE EXPERIMENT IN WHICH 50 PAIRS OF STATEMENTS WERE PRESENTED AURALLY TO EACH S, WHO HAD TO SELECT THAT MEMBER OF THE PAIR WHICH HE FELT WAS THE BEST APPROXIMATION TO A…

A putatively-universal, deep-semantic and -syntactic representation of motion and location is presented. The most characteristic patterns for deriving this representation to the surface in English on the one hand and in Atsugewi (a Hokan Indian language) on the other are then presented and compared. (Author)

Piaget's research on the processes and products of cognitive and representational development in early childhood is employed to outline the bases of early language development. The processes of assimilation and accommodation, leading to horizontal decalage; empirical and reflective abstraction, resulting in schemas and schemes; as well as…

A study is made of the derivation of English verbs from instrumental prepositional phrases, and their morphology and semantic categories are discussed. (Available from: See FL 508 214.) (RM)

Sentences containing "estar" + participle are analyzed in order to highlight their semantic characteristics. (RM)

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…

Presents an heuristic procedure, based on cooccurrence of forms, for identifying the closed systems of a language and to show how the systems interlock, differ in meaning, and manifest themselves. (AM)

A significant discovery of generative theory is that the features present in a lexical entry in a sentence's deep structure influence choice and arrangement of words in the surface structure. The systemic and nonsystemic functions of Spanish count and measure entity nouns are elaborated and analyzed. (CHK)

It has long been said that there are an infinite number of English sentences. "This is the cat that caught the rat" is an Enqlish sentence. So is "This is the cat that caught the rat that stole the cheese.""This is the cat with white paws that caught the rat that stole the cheese" is unobjectionable as well. Since a…

The question of whether word meanings have internal structure identical in kind to the syntax of sentences is examined. Evidence is sought for the structural aspects of word meaning and the issue of whether judgements of similarity between words is based on meaning content or on meaning structure is raised. Four hypotheses were tested: (1)…