The author of this paper argues that, in the study of current usage, we need to supplement data from corpus studies by using methods that elicit use, reports of use, and evaluations of use on items which interest them. Ten methods for experimental elicitation of such data are described, related to one another, and illustrated with examples of data…

Sentences in rhetoric texts were used in this study to determine a way in which thetorical syntactic parallelism can be analyzed. A tagmemic analysis determined tagmas which were parallel or identical or similar to one another. These were distinguished from tagmas which were identical because of the syntactic constraints of the language…

This study attempts to bring together most of the information about the transformational analysis of the grammar of English that was available up through the summer of 1968, and to integrate it into a single coherent format. The format chosen is that of C. Fillmore (the "Deep Case" hypothesis) combined with the "Lexicalist" hypothesis of N.…

The first half of this document reports on research that explores the ways in which knowledge of the world affects judgments of sentence acceptability. Sixty children in grades four through eight were studied at two times, one year apart. The subjects were first interviewed regarding their knowledge of the world in order to identify their role…

The objectives of this study were (1) to analyze the linguistic structures and the linguistic deviations used by children in their written sentences, and (2) to compare the structures and deviations with the quality of the writing, as judged by three competent raters. Eighty fourth-grade and 80 sixth-grade children (8% black) from working-class…

Discussed and related to the classroom or clinic environment are linguistic factors affecting comprehension of a message presented to a listener by a clinician or a teacher. (DB)

The primary goal of the present study is an exposition of the structure of Mam, a Mayan language of the Mamean group. Mam is the most widely spoken of the four Mamean languages, and has been roughly estimated to have a quarter million speakers located in the departments of Huehuetenango and San Marcos in Guatemala and in the state of Chiapas in…

This paper proposes a set of hypotheses on the nature of interrogration as a possible language universal. Examples and phrase structure rules and diagrams are given. Examining Tamazight and English, genetically unrelated languages with almost no contact, the author distinguishes two types of interrogation: (1) general, querying acceptability to…

This paper discusses interrogative structures, based on the results and conclusions derived from comparing the interrogative systems of 79 randomly selected languages. The paper begins by listing a number of generalizations about interrogative structures based on disparate observations in the field. These generalizations constitute the basis for…

Presented were an explanation of deviant language in terms of the transformational model, a review of literature on deviant language use, and data comparing the use of syntactic and morphological structures by nine normal and nine deviant language users. (GW)

This textbook provides support for learners of British Sign Language (BSL) and others interested in the structure and use of BSL, and assumes no previous knowledge of linguistics or sign language; technical terms and linguistic jargon are kept to a minimum. The text contains many examples from English, BSL, and other spoken and signed languages,…

The problem of determining the grammatical status of predicate words in Russian is examined in this article. The contrast between the morphological heterogeneity and the seemingly uniform function of predicative forms has led to the postulation of a new part of speech described as the "category of state". However, the status of predicate words as…

This teacher's manual is designed to help the elementary school teacher understand and teach modern linguistics successfully in the classroom. Instructional materials deal with linguistic approaches to (1) building sentences, with an emphasis on subject-verb agreement, the functions of the adjective in the sentence, and the insertion of new…