The purpose of this research was to determine the effects of Cardio-Syntactic Analysis instruction on writing scores in an 11th grade English class. The sample consisted of 35 students enrolled in an Honor's English 11 class at Volunteer high School, in Church Hill, TN. The class was randomly assigned into an experimental group of 17 students and…

Generative semantics is (or perhaps was) a research program within linguistics, initiated by the work of George Lakoff, John R. Ross, Paul Postal and later McCawley. The approach developed out of transformational generative grammar in the mid 1960s, but stood largely in opposition to work by Noam Chomsky and his students. The nature and genesis of…

There is significant variation in the literature on how demonstratives are characterized semantically, leading to divergent syntactic analyses of demonstratives. A major source of this disagreement regards how distance specifications relate to the demonstrative: whether [+/- speaker] is an integral property of the demonstrative or not. I argue…

This dissertation offers a novel account of the syntax of sentence adverbs. The need for a new account is clear from the lack of descriptive coverage and theoretical coherence in current work on adverbial syntax. Descriptively, the majority of work has so far neglected the fact that sentence adverbs behave syntactically like typical focusing…

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the nature of word order variation in declarative and interrogative clauses in Turkish within the framework of the generative syntax. The specific issue that will be examined in this dissertation concerns the role of discourse-pragmatics in word order variation. I will argue that all movement…

This dissertation introduces Minimal Reduplication, a new theory and framework within generative grammar for analyzing reduplication in human language. I argue that reduplication is an emergent property in multiple components of the grammar. In particular, reduplication occurs independently in the phonology and syntax components, and in both cases…

Competence-based theories of island effects play a central role in generative grammar, yet the graded nature of many syntactic islands has never been properly accounted for. Categorical syntactic accounts of island effects have persisted in spite of a wealth of data suggesting that island effects are not categorical in nature and that…

Standard criticisms of unjustified grammaticality assignments in generative syntax are easily countered by reminders that grammaticality is a different notion from acceptability. In response, the criticisms are reformulated here in a way that interprets unjustified assignments as possible evidence of the predictive failure of current generative…

Natural language poses several challenges to developing computational systems for modeling it. Natural language is not a precise problem but is rather ridden with a number of uncertainties in the form of either alternate words or interpretations. Furthermore, natural language is a generative system where the problem size is potentially infinite.…

In an attempt to explain first language attrition in emigrant populations, this paper investigates the explanatory power of a framework that has--until now--received little attention: the regression hypothesis (Jakobson, 1941). This hypothesis predicts that the order of attrition is the reverse of the order of acquisition. The regression…

A formal grammatical system is described in which the lexicon plays a central role. A distinguishing feature of this system is its departure from the priniciple of monocategorial lexical attachment, that is, it permits many-one translations by the lexical attachment component from syntactic categories to morphemes. In this system the underlying…

On critique of an anthology which contains 12 papers by 11 authors. The critique is preceded by a lengthy theoretical framework for such terms as syntax and semantics, since the anthologized authors, who represent a diversity of specialities, use such simple terms in widely differing senses. (EJS)

A discussion of Roman Jakobson's view that grammatical meaning is distinct from lexical meaning is presented. (HP)

Homophony refers to sameness in sound but not in meaning. (DD)

Discusses two causes of what is considered here the inadequacy of generative grammars. (RM)