English language learners are often more grammatically accurate in writing than in speaking. As students focus on meaning while speaking, their spoken fluency comes at a cost: their grammatical accuracy decreases. The author wanted to find a way to help her students improve their oral grammar; that is, she wanted them to focus on grammar while…

This study focussed on the effect of grammar of Iwaidja, an indigenous Australian language, on mathematical conceptualisation. It investigated route description in Iwaidja. Spatial concepts such as direction, height and movement in relation to another object are briefly described using examples. Differences between English and Iwaidja are used to…

This thesis investigates the nature of grammatical patterns through an in-depth study of resultative constructions in Mandarin and Thai. At the heart of the thesis lies the proposal that event structure templates--complex, meaning-based grammatical patterns--must be recognised as primary objects of linguistic analysis. As content-theoretic objects…

We assessed whether and under what conditions noncanonical agreement patterns occur in Russian, with the goal of understanding the factors involved in normal agreement. Russian is a morphosyntactically rich language in which agreement involves features for number, gender, and case. If consistent, overt specification of number and gender agreement…

Background: Agrammatic speech can manifest in different ways in the same speaker if task demands change. Individual variation is considered to reflect adaptation, driven by psycholinguistic factors such as underlying deficit. Recently, qualitative investigations have begun to show ways in which conversational interaction can influence the form of…

The author discusses various approaches to the study of grammar. He points out that grammar is being taught less and less in our schools and thus it is necessary that grammar should be integrated with other segments of language. (MS)

A case is made for observing the rules of English grammar. Without these rules, it would be impossible to communicate effectively. Unfortunately, many people view these rules as obstacles, rather than aids, to the expression of their thoughts. (CK)

Discusses the fact that the basic tendency of structural grammar theory has been to emphasize the principle of formality of description, rather than formality of content. (CK)

Any English department that is changing from Traditional Grammar to Transformational Grammar (or any other system of grammar) is likely to find that such a curriculum change works best if transitional strategies are developed." Author illustrates these strategies and says they must be expanded into detailed lesson plans appropriate to…

Some basic notions of cognitive grammar are introduced in a discussion that emphasizes the importance to linguistic semantics of the way in which we construe a perceived situation. It is concluded that developing an optimal account of semantic structure and of grammatical structure are best conceived as simultaneous, mutually informative…

Strategies for the interpretation and formation of Mandarin Chinese compounds, designed for the English-speaking learner of Mandarin, as well as the linguist, make a distinction between two compound types: lexical and phrasal. While both types consist of sequences of verbs and nouns, lexical compounds are indivisible words formed in the lexicon,…

Verbal elements in Cairene Arabic are investigated in the light of two opposing hypotheses, one stating that the elements constitute a unit, the other stating that each element is an independent predicate. (AM)

Using a particular sentence type--an exclamative construction referred to as "Nominal Extraposition" (NE)--this article outlines a formal model in which grammatical description includes the description of use conditions on form-meaning pairs. The article suggests that the relationship between NE and like exclamatives can be represented in an…

Inverted sentence order (order other than subject-verb-object) may be used to mimic the rhythm of real dialogue; give the play-by-play announcer time to come up with the player's name; indicate the relative importance of the subject, verb, and object; distribute information; and indicate connection with prior information. As a stylistic option,…

Urges that a distinction between "grammatical knowledge" and "grammatical description" be maintained in every aspect of language instruction and in preparation of instructional materials. (RL)