UNDER CONTRACT WITH THE AIR FORCE, THE LINGUISTICS RESEARCH CENTER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS CONDUCTED A RESEARCH PROJECT DESIGNED TO DEVELOP A GERMAN-ENGLISH SYNTACTIC TRANSLATION SYSTEM FOR SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL TEXTS. MORE SPECIFICALLY, THE OBJECTIVES WERE TO (1) WRITE A GERMAN-ENGLISH TRANSFER GRAMMAR THAT WOULD LINK THE LINGUISTIC…

The function of syntax as a factor in comprehension is described in terms of transformations of basic sentence patterns. Examples of transformations of the basic indirect object sentence are included to show emphasis, questions, negations, and coordinate or subordinate relationships. The term grammeme is defined as the minimum unit of syntactical…

The ten papers in this volume are largely revisions of papers presented at the Texas conference, held March 22-24, 1973. The first paper, "Against Universal Semantic Representation," by Gilbert Harman, argues against the need for (and the possibility of) a level of semantic representation in a theory of language. "Remarks on the…

Use of "the language of observation" as a level of scientific discourse is exemplified. The formal properties of this language are characterized, and the derivability and feasibility of the axiomatic method as applied to it are considered. Also discussed are the theoretical and practical significance of this level with respect to various…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a study of Francis Christensen's generative rhetoric of the sentence in enhancing the syntactic fluency of seventh graders as measured by Kellogg Hunt's normative data, and it identified demographic and syntactic features which affect student writing performance. The study involved 149 students and three…

Arguments for the introduction of an adverbial node label (ADV) in transformational grammar are examined and rejected. The following question is raised: Is a node label ADV necessary, or can the phenomena associated with adverbials be explained in terms of the set of node labels used to explain other areas of grammar? The author argues that a new…

This report reviews the psychological and psycholinguistic literature from the last decade that deals with memory for sentences. It is concluded that the encoded representation of a sentence reflects both syntactic and semantic content, with the semantic content being far less transient. (Author)

The class of English words traditionally called adverbs is examined and redefined in this paper. The following three subclasses of adverbs are identified: limiters, which are words that modify noun phrases; intensifiers, which are words that modify adjectives; and "true" adverbs, which modify verb phrases and sentences. Examples of these…

It has been demonstrated (in the research described here) that people hearing sentences on a tape recording process underdetermined sentences differently than people hearing them in a conversation. It has been shown that this difference is caused by the presence of underdetermined elements but not ordinary transformations. The effect of ordinary…

This study attempts to bring together most of the information about the transformational analysis of the grammar of English that was available up through the summer of 1968, and to integrate it into a single coherent format. The format chosen is that of C. Fillmore (the "Deep Case" hypothesis) combined with the "Lexicalist" hypothesis of N.…

This "new English grammar" textbook blends four systems of grammar: (1) the traditional, providing most of the terminology; (2) the historical, providing the historical background; (3) the structural, providing the sentence patterns; and (4) the transformational, providing the variations of the sentence patterns. The author points out the…

Section I of this report discusses the theoretical issues relating to the development of syntax recognition routines based on psychological models of human speech recognition and reviews the relevant psychological literature. The research reported deals with attempts to relate various syntactic variables to measures of the perceptual complexity of…

The individual components of language -- on the semantic, syntactic, and phonological levels -- mean little or nothing as individual constructs. Language research must proceed according to a concept of linguistic structure which reflects the correlation of elements within and between levels of structure. (VM)

Reflexives in Japanese and English show a number of interesting differences. Morphologically, there is a single form "jibun" ("jishin") in Japanese, which does not vary for person or number. In English there are various forms which always agree in person and number ("myself,""himself,""themselves,"…

The theory is presented that there are in Indo-European languages only two comparative morphemes and correspondingly two degrees of the comparative, superiority and equality. (RM)