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)

Direct quotation can be a source of meaning in storybook texts for beginning readers. The author of this article sketches the linguistic complexity of direct quotation and offers instructional strategies. Three aspects of direct quotation are examined: the cluster of print features and syntactic characteristics that direct quotation involves, the…

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)

Reports the levels of proofreading skills among various groups, the fundamental abilities underlying such skill and the causes of deficiencies, and the effects of proofreading drills and of direct instruction in language mechanics on proofreading skill. (JOW)

This paper proposes that resultative verb-particle constructions (VPCs) have an underlyingly different structure from idiomatic VPCs; both structures differ from the Small Clause analysis of R. Kayne (1985) et al and the verb-particle complex analysis of K. Johnson (1991). Empirical support for the new proposal comes from anaphor deletion facts…

An alternative grammar to Burt's elementary transformational grammar of English is described and presented in a computer format, and derivations obtained employing the grammar are given. (Author)

Event-related brain potentials were recorded while subjects listened to sentences containing a controlled infinitival complement. Subject and object control items were used, both with 2 potential antecedents in the upper clause. Half of the sentences had a gender agreement violation between the null subject of the infinitival complement and an…

Schaeffer (1997, 2000) argues that children lack knowledge of specificity because Dutch children omit determiners and fail to scramble pronouns. Avrutin & Brun (2001), however, find that Russian children place arguments correctly according to whether they are specific or non-specific. This paper investigates object agreement and specificity in…

Five types of Verb Phrase (VP) anaphors which appear to exist in free variation actually have specific grammatical, semantic, and rhetorical functions which account for the existence of some to the exclusion of others in certain syntactic environments. The five anaphors are: "do so,""do it," Verb Phrase Deletion (VPD), VPD with…

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)

Memory and storage for base and surface sentence forms were compared by examining memory for these kinds of sentences. It was hypothesized that a subject hearing a sentence transforms it to its base form, stores it in this form, and recalls it, again transforming it, in its surface form. Thirty undergraduate educational psychology students,…

The purpose of this experiment was to determine if subjects who were unaware that a phrase has been deleted from a sentence could match the deleted phrase in both semantic content and syntactic position. Subjects were required to complete one of two blanks in a sentence with a prepositional phrase. Instructions stressed that these completions…

One hundred-twenty children (15 boys and 15 girls) ages 4-7 years, who exhibited normal language development, were tested using a story completion approach to study language development. (Author/MH)

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…

A review of Language and Psychology: Historical Aspects of Psycholinguistics by Arthur L. Blumenthal. (DS)