Describes a study done to identify those syntactic structures that effectively communicate ideas in written German composition of fourth-semester students. Also identified were grammatical structures that writers can control on a syntactic level, but which they do not employ as a communicative strategy. (Author/SED)

Phrasal verbs occur frequently in written and spoken English and may be difficult for non-native speakers to understand and produce, particularly when parts of the phrasal verb should be separated and when they should be adjacent. The study reported here analyzes natural data in context to determine whether the word order of the parts of a…

The linguistic complexity of grammatical structures depends on their usage. Such complexity must be purposefully controlled by the teacher of English as a second language. Examples of shortcomings in the presentation of various structures in current textbooks illustrate this point. (PMJ)

Li's work, which expands the government binding (GB) literature on Chinese linguistics and contributes to understanding constituency and word order, is described. Important issues are noted, empirical or theory-neutral criticisms of Li's accounts are raised, and alternative solutions are offered. (21 references) (LB)

Investigated the acquisition of base-generated topics in Mandarin Chinese by British students learning Chinese. The hypothesis is not confirmed that it would not be difficult for English speakers to acquire the base-generated topic in Chinese because in the acquisition of Chinese, English-speaking learners are exposed to positive evidence of…

Three experiments investigated whether word order and case markers play a role in the native speaker's comprehension of Japanese. In Japanese, verbs are at the clause-final position and the order of words other than the verb appear to be flexible. The fact that verb information does not become available until the end of a clause suggests that…

Children and adults participated in a series of experiments to examine certain cues to surface constituency that are salient to children in the recognition of syntactic structure. Cue recognition was studied through a set of experiments requiring seven-year-old children to repeat certain syntactic constituents. It was found that the children could…

This issue of the journal includes these papers on contrastive linguistics: "Tag Questions, Transformational Grammar and Pragmatics" (Wolfram Bublitz); "Toward Contrasting Styles" (Karol Janicki); "Some More Remarks on the Pedagogical Uses of Contrastive Studies" (Waldemar Marton); "Stress in Polish--With Some Comparisons to English Stress" (James…

This study examined the effects of children's cognitively based role expectations on their judgments of the grammatical acceptability of sentences. Sixty children, 12 each in grades 4 through 8, individually heard 10 sentences violating the Minimum Distance Principle (MDP). The sentences were grammatical, but linguistically complex, and violated…

A study was conducted to determine whether a significant correlation existed between an essay's letter grade and five important factors of syntactic maturity (clause length, t-unit length, sentence length, clauses per t-unit, and t-units per sentence). A total of 45 essays--15 A, 15 B, and 15 C papers as graded by five junior college English…

This paper argues: (1) that one of the major syntactic constraints adopted by many proponents of the Extended Standard Theory, namely the Specified Subject Condition (SSC), is empirically inadequate with respect to "unbounded" extraction phenomena; and (2) that the unbounded extraction data which the SSC purported to account for need to be…

Research indicates that first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition involve some of the same processes, yet L2 learners apparently acquire the structures of the target language in a systematic way by passing through a sequence of developmental stages. This study shows that in the earliest stages of syntactic development the L2 learner's…

On the basis of the grammatical theory developed by Noam Chomsky, it is reasonable to presume that the different parts of a sentence may not all be understood with equal facility and speed. One purpose of this study was to determine whether some of the grammatical relations within a sentence were understood more readily than others. Sentences of…

The development of production and comprehension by one two-year-old girl of three Japanese constructions (passives, causatives, and "te moraw"), which have similar surface configurations "NP ga NP ni V ("rare"/ "sase"/ "te moraw") TENSE," is investigated through elicited imitations and responses to the investigator's questions about the content of…

An extreme view of language acquisition sees base structures as innate, and acquisition of the grammar of a particular language as a process of learning the transformation rules needed to get from base structures to surface structures of adult native speakers. Base structures are understood to most resemble simple-active-affirmative-declarative…