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)

Research supported by the Contrastive Semantics Project at the University of California, Berkeley. (DD)

Proposes an approach to contrastive linguistics which takes into account syntax and semantics, and discusses the role of such an approach in explaining surface structure differences between English and Chinese sentences of the type: "He is a good pianist" and "I have a bad knee." (AM)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how languages express contrastive emphasis. It is argued that all contrastively emphasized constructions have underlying cleft sentences, independent of whether the surface structure is an equational or a nonequational one. It is furthermore argued that emphatic word orders are systematic and predictable…

Mirror images in constituent order are found in a wide range of parallel clause types in Japanese and English. Three detailed explanations for linear orderings are provided. (Author/HP)

The phenomenon of "cross-code ambiguity" is offered as one explanation of the persistence of such Negro Nonstandard English (NNE) sentences as "The man he did it." In NNE the string "The man did it" is felt to be ambiguous, referring to either "The man who did it..." or, as in Standard English (SE), "The man did it." The use here of the pleonastic…

This book begins with a consideration of the relation between language as representation and the reality that is represented. The object of this study is the semantic function of syntactical relations in French and Spanish, but other languages are also used for purposes of comparison. Three principal diatheses are revealed: objective, subjective,…

This first volume of a three-part language research study states and illustrates that the point of departure for comparative analysis of two languages rests on a comprehensive typology in each of a number of areas of grammar. The report suggests that a limited set of functions can be isolated, and that the range of grammatical possibilities open…

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…

This paper examines the formal means by which Czech distinguishes transitive and intransitive verbs, and specifically the role of the particle "se" in the process usually called "derived intransitivization.""Se" is shown to perform a number of functions which preclude its being called simply an "intransitivizing…

This paper discusses subject-verb-complement (SVC) clauses and their renderings in English and Finnish. Comparisons are made on the level of surface structure and with regard to equivalence in the sense of one construction being an optimum translation of the other. The definition of congruence, i.e., formal similarity and equal number of…

The distinction between artifact and tool is introduced into the study of language diversity and the posting of linguistic universals. A complicating factor in all language investigations is the use of language as the chief tool to create new language. Analogy and metaphor are considered as two major creative forces at work in all languages.…

This report describes work on a pilot system for a fully automatic, high-quality translation of German scientific and technical text into English and gives the results of an experiment designed to show the system's capability to produce quality mechanical translation. The areas considered were: (1) grammar formalism, mainly involving the addition…

This paper addresses itself to the question of why the English language should have levelled almost all of its inflections, and what the relationship is between the breakdown of the case system and the rise of fixed word-order, prepositional phrases, and verb periphrases. The explanation proposed for the phenomenon of syntactic drift is considered…

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…