Underlying structures in English sentences containing the verbs "order" and "tell" are compared. (Available from Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland) (RM)

This paper considers some aspects of sentence construction characteristic of the variety of English spoken at Isleta pueblo, an Indian community located fifteen miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. (CK)

Explains techniques used in teaching the process of nominalization to foreign students at the Universite de Paris VIII, in reaction to common usage in the press. The techniques specifically do not use a generative grammar approach but apply principles of transformation for syntactical description. (Text is in French.) (MSE)

An analysis of one theory of the acquisition of head movement by children is presented, using longitudinal data from the Mayan language, K'iche'. This theory assumes that children would just require positive evidence of head movement in the input language to instantiate the constructions of their own grammar. The Incorporation Theory addresses the…

In order to account for the ways in which combined and decombined sentences work, and to determine why some texts are perceived as being well-written and others are perceived as poor and ineffective, 11 texts were selected for distribution to students for ranking, all on the same topic--the Civil War. Overall, students ranked Bruce Catton's "Grant…

A study investigated Japanese 3-to-5-year-olds' comprehension of sentences using the temporal terms "before" and "after" and examined whether contextual information helped the children respond correctly. The children were asked to perform a task with a toy either before or after performing another task with a different toy.…

The "Write a Sentence Test" was developed for use in the evaluation of student writing abilities in association with a project in Memphis, Tennessee. This paper discusses ways of administering and scoring the test, decisions concerning modification of the test, and experiences when the test was administered to sample subjects. All forms…

The relationship between ease of comprehension and the syntactic form used to convey indirect requests was investigated among intermediate and advanced learners of English as a second language (ESL). The results were compared to those of native English speaking children and adults. Subjects were 82 college students enrolled in intensive ESL…

This paper discusses the importance of helping college composition students to become stylistically competent and cites a study that examined the essays of 32 college students and 27 skilled adult writers. T-unit measurements revealed that there is little difference between the groups in the number of clauses per T-unit, but the skilled writers…

Although intonation has been said to be one of the first meaningful units of language that a child acquires, it is difficult to say just what this really means. How does the child learn to distinguish the various grammatical meanings that an intonation can have? It was hypothesized that the child first acquires question and request forms on the…

Semantic readings of genitive constructions in Akan are discussed in relation to the position that semantic operative rules operate on surface structure and that positing deep structures or semantic structures for associative (genitive) constructions is unnatural and unnecessary. (AM)

This study investigates the relationship between social class membership and certain syntactic variables within a generative-transformational linguistic framework. Fourteen syntactic items are considered. Linguistic performance is more variable and complex within the higher ranking groups. (TL)

Event and factive causatives are distinguished. It is argued that ba-sentences in Mandarin Chinese are event causatives par excellence and that the ba and bei constructions, by deriving from the same underlying representation, can be shown to receive a unified account, if they are given a causative analysis. (Author/RM)

Recently collected evidence shows the likely existence of twelve South American Indian languages with object-initial word order. This is contrary to what had been generally predicted in the literature on word order typology before 1977. Numerous examples are provided of OVS (Object-Verb-Subject) and OSV (Object-Subject-Verb) word order, primarily…

It has long been said that there are an infinite number of English sentences. "This is the cat that caught the rat" is an Enqlish sentence. So is "This is the cat that caught the rat that stole the cheese.""This is the cat with white paws that caught the rat that stole the cheese" is unobjectionable as well. Since a…