This study addressed four questions raised in syntactic acquisition studies conducted by Carol Chomsky and others. Specifically, questions concerned the nature of syntactic structures in children's language repertoires, the uniformity and rate of acquisition of particular structures, the generalizability of the minimal-distance principle, and the…

The study analyzes, for readability and difficulty, the language of 50 commonly used application forms. The forms were compared with respect to length, readability, t-unit density, and word-length variables. Forms were also compared against two word-frequency lists. Results show that many of the words appearing often on forms do not appear on the…

This study investigated semantic aspects of children's language as it is related to emotional expression. Children's ratings of vocabulary items categorized as expressing happy, sad, loving, angry, confident, and scared feelings were examined in three different ways: in isolation, in verbal contexts, and accompanying pictures of emotional…

Kindergarten and first-grade children participated in a study of the role of reciprocal and inversion reversibility in language acquisition and cognitive development. Subjects completed cognitive tasks assessing conservation, seriation, and class inclusion, and language tasks assessing the active-passive transformation and the negative…

Predictors of relative clause production in adult second language acquisition were examined through a replication and extension of a study by Schachter (1974). The present study is different in that it was based on oral instead of written production and it was designed to examine avoidance with the consideration that avoidance presupposed choice.…

The linguistic literature contains many studies of the structure of the noun phrase. Syntactic structures that occupy NP position but which don't have the internal characteristics of a substantive (infinitives and THAT clauses, for example) are distinguished from lexical structures that occupy NP position and do have the internal characteristics…

This dissertation describes the grammatical structure of Shuswap, an American Indian language of the Salishan family spoken in British Columbia, Canada. The research was carried out on the Naskanlith Reserve near Chase, British Columbia, during the summers of 1966-69. Prior to this study, the language was last investigated before the turn of the…

An integrated analysis of the syntax and semantics of serial verb constructions (SVCs) in a group of West African languages is presented. With data from Dagaare and closest relatives, a structural definition for SVCs is developed (two or more lexical verbs that share grammatical categories within a clause), establishing SVCs as complex predicates.…

This contrastive analysis of Telugu and English covers the structure of sentences, clauses, and "groups" (phrases) from a pedagogical point of view. Areas of difficulty for Telugu-speaking students of English as a second language are listed, and a list of errors commonly made by these students is appended. (JB)

This dissertation examines relative clauses in Spanish. The introduction compares various characteristics of Spanish and English relative clauses, while chapter 1 contrasts restrictive and appositive relative clauses. The question of which relative forms should be generated by the grammar in both types of clauses is considered. Chapter 2 handles…

The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable instrument that could be used by teachers and staff in Colorado to assist in the assessment of oral English language, particularly the syntax and the phonology of first-grade children in bilingual bicultural education (BBE). The study also related the scores of the instrument to seven variables:…

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…

This study is concerned with the description of compound sentences, relative clauses, and complement clauses in Standard Persian within a generative-transformational grammar. Compound sentences are divided into conjunctive, disjunctive, and adversative types on the basis of the semantic relations they express. A conjunctive clause is either…

The test performance of 120 Anglo, black, and Chicano third- and fifth-grade children is used to demonstrate the similarities between the processes of diachronic and ontogenetic language change. The instrument used measured the range of knowledge of several grammatical structures. Analysis and interpretation of results suggested the gradual…

This work treats some of the important issues encountered in an attempt to synthesize natural sounding English speech from arbitrary written text. Details of the systems that interact in producing speech are described. The principal systems dealt with are phonology (intonation), phonetics, syntax, semantics, and text-view (discourse). Technical…