To integrate many of the theoretical linguistic studies examining pronoun reference, this paper focuses on tracing the shift from purely transformational syntactic studies of intrasentential phenomena to the wider orientations of discourse and pragmatic studies. The first section describes the classic studies of pronominalization within the…

The basis for acquisition of categories in child language was investigated. The early encoding of the distinction between mass and count nouns was examined to determine whether children categorize them on the basis of semantic type or syntactic regularities. An experiment was designed in which semantic and syntactic cues were in competition:…

Language samples were gathered from two children, from several weeks after the first birthday of each child to the beginning of the child's two-word period (approximately 10 months). The children were observed and videotaped every two weeks, to obtain 33 continuous minutes of tape. Analyses focused on the question of whether or not the child uses…

A set of six conditions for critically analyzing proposals in the various areas of language acquisition is developed and justified. These conditions are then applied to theoretical proposals in language acquisition literature. Proposals in the following areas are discussed and evaluated: (1) phonological development, (2) early lexical development,…

Some results are reported of an investigation into the meanings of the English modal auxiliary verbs. The corpus consisted of the one million word Brown University corpus of American English and a matching Lancaster University corpus of British English. The three factors operative in the study were: (1) contextual features, that is, co-occurring…

Limitations of linguistic theories of translation are outlined and an argument is presented for the inclusion of an evaluation component in a comprehensive theory of translation. The tasks which a linguistic theory of translation sets for itself are formulated since these provide an ad hoc set of criteria for testing the adequacy of the various…

IN AGREEMENT WITH CHOMSKY, THE AUTHOR DISCUSSES SELECTIONAL RESTRICTIONS ON SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS BASED ON CRITERIA OF WHAT MUST OR CANNOT OCCUR IN THOSE SLOTS IN A SENTENCE. THROUGH AN ANALYSIS OF INTERDEPENDENCY RELATIONSHIPS, VARIOUS DEEP- AND SURFACE-STRUCTURE FEATURES ARE DISTINGUISHED CONCERNING TRANSITIVE VERBS AND THE INTERPRETATION OF…

This paper is directed toward a traditional problem in the analysis of texts, that of finding meaningful linguistic units that are larger than a sentence and smaller than the text itself. Two principles are given for finding extended temporal structures based on the temporal expressions that occur in sentences: a sentence can be captured to form…

A distinction is drawn between pragmatic and semantic meaning and a supporting discussion is presented. The hypothesis is then stated, that there are cases where semantic meaning of an utterance is learned as an abstraction from pragmatic meaning. Data from two experiments on a group of 63 preschool children are presented which provide empirical…

The central concern of this book is the pursuit of experimental methods whereby grammatical and semantic inquiry can be put on a satisfying objective basis. (To state that the aim is to find out whether a given linguistic form is "acceptable" is true, but an oversimplification which is misleading because it implies a "yes or no" decision and…

In stratificational theory, linguistic structure is viewed as a series of codes which interrelates meaning and expression. Each of the codes is associated with a distinct structural level, which has come to be called a stratum. The works listed in this bibliography include some specifically concerned with the development of the theoretical model…

THIS ANALYSIS OF UNDERLYING SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE IS BASED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE PARTS OF SPEECH CALLED "VERBS" AND "ADJECTIVES" ARE TWO SUBCATEGORIES OF ONE MAJOR LEXICAL CATEGORY, "PREDICATE." FROM THIS ASSUMPTION, THE HYPOTHESIS IS ADVANCED THAT, IN LANGUAGES EXHIBITING THE COPULA, THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES CONTAINING PREDICATE…

Examines the semantics of certain prepositions to show that the interpretation of relationships between linguistic units in a sentence is not always deducible from the logical structure underlying it, if this study does not include the study of pragmatic factors. Available from Liber Laeromedel, Box 1205, S-22105 Lund, Sweden. (Author/TL)

This article offers a new definition of the concept of auxiliaries, based on the conviction that auxiliarity is a grammatical function rather than a semantic, logical or metaphorical one. Examples are taken from Spanish. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Three linguistically significant dimensions of differences between illocutionary acts are outlined which are said to form the basis of a taxonomy of the fundamental classes of illocutionary acts. Five basic kinds of illoctionary acts are defined. An assessment is made of Austin's classification. (Author/RM)