One problem with readability formulas is that they are generally calculated on factors at the sentence and subsentence level. However, the representation of text through information structures is equally important. The complexity of information structures and their realizations will affect reading difficulty and should be incorporated into…

Four different kinds of grammars that can define crossing dependencies in human language are compared here: (1) "context sensitive rewrite" grammars with rules that depend on context; (2) "matching" grammars with constraints that filter the generative structure of the language; (3) "copying" grammars which can copy structures of unbounded size;…

In the current debate about the abstractness of children's early grammatical knowledge, Tomasello & Abbott-Smith (2002) have suggested that children might first develop "weak" or "partial" representations of abstract syntactic structures. This paper attempts to characterize these structures by comparing the development of constructions around…

This paper aims to account for what at first appears to be a unique constraint in the formation of A-not-A questions. Most previous analyses employ the pragmatic notion of focus. This paper argues in favor of a presuppositional account, which has wide empirical coverage and is independently motivated and more theoretically coherent than the notion…

This paper examines the role of movable adverbs in Mandarin Chinese. In terms of their position within a sentence, most Mandarin adverbs can be classified as movable or non-movable. While identification of either class may be based on their semantic categories or on the number of syllables, the motivation for placing a movable adverb in front of…

The role of linguistics and its importance in the areas of cognitive development, psychology and semantics is discussed. (DEP)

Seven basic sentence constructions are presented as essentials for students progressing from beginning to advanced Japanese: equational existential, active verbal, stative verbal, sentential modifier, subordinate complex, coordinate compound. The constructions should be introduced at beginning levels, and the logical properties they share with…

Reviews pertinent research findings in grammar from 1902 to the present. (Author)

Explains how grammars and textbooks can present the formal tense relations of English in a concise, uncomplicated way. (PM)

A study by Brown and Fraser (1963) shows that children tend to use telegraphic speech, employing content and omitting function words. This limitation involves the grammatical or semantic complexity of the sentences. Braine (1963) attempted to formulate productive rules for the initial stages in the acquisition of syntax by identifying two classes…

The nature of foreign language aptitude and the consequent implications for teaching are discussed. Areas include teaching of aptitudinal skills, diagnosis of individual difficulties, necessity of identifying sounds as unique entities, "audiolingual habit theory" vs. "cognitive code learning theory," and inductive and deductive teaching…

This is a grammatical and semantic analysis of verb usage in French. The occurrence of verb stems and endings with associated adverbs is described, defined and diagrammed. (MLA)

The grammatical deviations produced by 26 migrant children were categorized into tenses (formation and usage), pronoun usage, subject-verb agreement, possessive adjectives, negation, number concord in antecedents, irregular morpheme construction, irregular syntactic constructions, modification of nouns, preposition substitution, word omission in…

A study examined lexical specificity, the occurrence of pragmatic information, and a syntactic aspect (presence or absence of inversion) of the acquisition of both indirect and direct wh-questions in children aged five through eight years. (MSE)

Recent findings in developmental psycholinguistics have shown that below the age of eight children have difficulty in understanding English sentences that do not conform to normal SVO pattern (Chomsky, 1969). Experiments with French-speaking children are reported which duplicate and extend this research. (Editor)