Schizophrenia is a devastating mental disorder that affects thought, language and communication. Considering the language disorders, the aim of this study is to examine the average sentence length of patients with Schizophrenia and compare the results with a control group by using four different language tests. Fifty patients with schizophrenia…

Priming methodology was previously used to investigate children's ability to represent abstract syntactic forms. Existing evidence indicates that following exposure to a particular syntactic structure (such as the passive voice), English-speaking children increase their production of that structure with new lexical items. In the present work, we…

In four experiments, we investigated the role of shared word order and alignment with a dialogue partner in the production of code-switched sentences. In Experiments 1 and 2, Dutch-English bilinguals code-switched in describing pictures while being cued with word orders that are either shared or not shared between Dutch and English. In Experiments…

This paper deals with the counterexamples to the general principles that: (1) a sentence as utterance has only one illocutionary force, in the sense of J.L. Austin; and (2) performative verbs do not normally retain illocutionary force in embedded contexts. Various tests for illocutionary force are applied, such as substitution of another speech…

This paper examines language variation in terms of overdetermination and underdetermination of structural information as related to grammatical rules and the structure of social behavior. (CLK)

Discusses dislocation, a construction in which one element, usually a noun, is isolated either at the beginning or at the end of a sentence while being represented in the body of the sentence by a pronoun. Discusses the place of dislocation in linguistic studies and its pedagogical implications. (SED)

Discusses the ellipsis of major sentential elements as a pervasive grammatical phenomenon in Japanese conversation and demonstrates its relevance for current theories of discourse or text analysis. (FL)

The aim of this study is to supply the Russian language teacher with information about the patterns most frequently and consistently occurring in common speech. It begins with a discussion of normative grammar and linguistic reality, colloquial language, the sentence, sentence length, short expressions, and generative grammar. Sentences used in…

Describes the grammaticalization of the Swedish word "bara" (English "just") in present-day adolescent speech. "Bara" has in the last 15 years been used with 2 new functions in spoken, narrative discourse: to foreground central events and to introduce quotations. (40 references) (Author/CK)

The syntactical speech characteristics of black children living in depressed areas of an Eastern city were compared with the eight identified by Baratz, i.e., absence of "s" in the third person singular, zero copula, double negation and "ain't," zero past marker, zero possessive marker, zero plural marker, the substitution of "did" or "can" for…

Investigated patterns and strength of connections between English dative verbs and the double-object dative argument structure in native-speaker production. Subjects completed three written production tasks using dative and other verbs from different semantic classes of verbs. Results show alternating dative verbs varied in patterns of connection…

Argues that a pattern analogous to that in speech errors also appears in intrasentential code-switching, i.e., the alternating use of two languages in a sentence by bilinguals. Notes that studies of spontaneous conversation of bilinguals indicate that open class items may be code-switched, but closed class items may not. (41 references) (Author/CK)

In speaking a child sometimes makes constructions in which a sequence of separate utterances expresses a semantic relation not expressed by either utterance. These "vertical constructions" are the main point of this study. Previous studies of construction in child language have largely dealt with sentences. In this study, sentences are…

To determine the variety of syntactic patterns that potential English teachers would normally use and the possible differences in their oral and written discourse, 1000-word oral and written language samples were collected from 21 student teachers. These samples were divided into T-units and classified according to 23 sentence patterns based on…