Noting that no clear and adequate basis for a theory of translation exists at this time, this article examines problems common to three fundamental elements of translation. Illustrative examples, taken from Slavic languages, relate to discussion of grammatical, semantic-lexical, and stylistic aspects of translation. Various contributions of…

This paper examines and criticizes Lakoff's notions of a natural logic and of a generative semantics described in terms of logic. The author argues that the relationship of these notions to logic as normally understood is unclear but suggests a number of possible interpretations of the thesis of generative semantics. Further, on these…

This paper investigates a type of grammatical ill-formedness in English which is traceable to the repetition, under certain specified conditions, of present participles, e.g. the verb "continue" cannot occur with participles if it is in the present progressive. The solution to generalizing about ill-formedness of this type is by means of a…

This paper considers whether the negative transportation (NT) rule operating in English is operative also in Japanese and whether investigation of the phenomenon in Japanese may provide new insights for English research. The discussion begins with an explanation and examples of the NT rule in English. Japanese cases are then studied, and the…

Rules of lexical derivation can be used to account for certain case-related regularities existing between Japanese non-potential verbs and the potential verbs derived from them. Lexical derivation analysis in comparison with a transformational approach is simpler; it requires less powerful rules and therefore makes a stronger claim; and it…

This paper seeks to discover the rules active in the formation of tags (intonation tags, declarative tags, and tag questions) in English. The author discusses former analyses of these constructions and presents his own thoughts with many examples, concluding that English has at least two tag formation rules: one that accounts (perhaps…

This second volume of a two-volume report on a fully automatic high quality translation (FAHQT) contains relevant papers contributed by specialists on the topic of machine translation. The papers presented here cover such topics as syntactical analysis in transformational grammar and in machine translation, lexical features in translation and…

Refutes the theory that indirect requests are ambiguous. Arguments for it are examined and an attempt is made to expose the weaknesses in the kinds of tests generally used to detect "illocutionary" ambiguity. An alternative analysis in the framework of semantics and the pragmatics of directive speech acts is suggested. (AMH)

A discussion of passives in the context of generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG) looks at two problems associated with a lexical rule that derives passive participles from active verbs. The first occurs with sentences whose main verb takes an NP and does not have a passive counterpart. This situation requires a more restrictive metarule, and…

There is a set of French verbs which admits both indicative and subjunctive sentential complements. The indicative complement is correlated with a positive assertion about the truth of the complement; the subjunctive implies a neutral attitude or a non-assertion. When various sentential complement constructions are considered both in the…

From the standpoint of transformational grammar, this experimental work evaluates the extent to which children choose or fail to generalize their rules for the placement of the negative particles "not" and "n't." The subjects were eight three- and four-year-olds of middle-class background who had been producing sentences with…

THIS STUDY REPORTS AN EXPERIMENT ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT GRAMMAR-RELATED SENTENCE-COMBINING PRACTICE WILL MEANINGFULLY ENHANCE THE NORMAL GROWTH OF SYNTACTIC FLUENCY. TRADITIONAL STUDIES ON ERROR THERAPY AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE ARE REVIEWED, AND DESIGN AND RATIONALE ARE INFERRED FROM THE RESEARCH OF BATEMAN AND ZIDONIS. RULE LEARNING, PATTERN…

A LINGUISTIC MODEL OF HUMAN LANGUAGE MUST ACCOUNT FOR BOTH "SENTENCES" AND "MEANINGS" AS WELL AS EXPLAIN HOW SPEAKERS ARE ABLE TO TRANSLATE SENTENCES INTO MEANINGS AND VICE VERSA. THE AUTHOR DOUBTS THAT THE RULES OF A TRANSFORMATIONAL GENERATIVE GRAMMAR WILL BE ABLE TO CONSTRUCT A TRANSDUCER CAPABLE OF TRANSLATING MEANINGS INTO…

THIS STUDY WAS MADE IN AN ATTEMPT TO DISCOVER HOW MUCH ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULATION IS NECESSARY FOR NORMAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN. THROUGH ANALYSIS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMER, THE SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES OF TWENTY 5-YEAR-OLD CULTURALLY DEPRIVED NEGRO CHILDREN IN BALTIMORE WERE COMPARED TO THOSE OF A GROUP OF MIDDLE CLASS WHITE NURSERY SCHOOL…

A review of the background of transformational grammar and a discussion of Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" begin this introduction to the "new" grammar. Following discussions are on the components of a theoretically complete grammar, the main deep structure components (noun phrase, auxiliary, and verb phrase), grammatical relationships,…