Margaret Speas'"Phrase Structure in Natural Language" is reviewed. It presents three recent innovations in phrase structure research that offer new tools to explain data and solve old problems: the VP-internal subject hypothesis, the layered VP hypothesis, and the articulated IP hypothesis. (Contains 19 references.) (LB)

Contradicts the single subjunctive theory of Dwight Bolinger and supports Samuel Gili Y Gaya in recognizing the subjunctive as more than one syntactic phenomenon. (CK)

Discusses two kinds of "temporal indifference" in German tense forms: "timelessness" (Function I) and "all-time-ness" (Function II). Function I occurs in generally true statements, proverbs, definitions, etc. Function II denotes a time period which "empirically appears unbounded on both sides." (Text is in…

English has two classes of modal deference expressions that may be superordinate to performative verbs. Verbs representing the illocutionary force of a sentence are sometimes embedded in modal constructions whose function is auxiliary to the central illocutionary act. This phenomenon is discussed in this paper. (CK)

This book attempts to bring together semantic theory and description in order to provide the foundation of a unified "semantics of English." Part 1 is thus devoted to semantic theory and Part 2 to the description of some central fields of meaning in English. In Part 1, theory is developed involving two kinds of semantic analysis:…

A structural-functional basis for the construction of an English tense system is proposed. It is asserted that such a system will facilitate the teaching of English tense usage. (Author/RM)

It is argued that in Russian verbs the perfect aspect is marked and the imperfect unmarked is wrong. For certain lexical classes, the imperfective rather than the perfective is marked. A systematic interrelationship among aspect, tense, and type of action is developed. (PMJ)

Compares the uses of the German Future I and Present tenses with the corresponding Russian tenses, which reflect the Russian verb aspect. In German the aspect plays a much smaller role. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Distinguishes between "mode" as a verb-form and "modality," a category of meaning expressed mainly by lexical and syntactical means. Describes the subjunctive in Russian and German; a schematic summary shows both languages using the subjunctive for hypothesis and wish, but only German for indirect discourse. (Text is in…

This article is a follow-up to the author's "Developments in the Teaching of the Russian Verbal System," in which determination of the "basic stem" is discussed. Here, the morphological behavior of Russian verbs is outlined, according to a classification system grounded on this basic stem. (Text is in Russian.) (DH)

Examples illustrate that there are possible independent meanings of the imperfective, possessing stronger modality than the perfective in the Russian verb system. This is examined in past tense, infinitive, and imperative structures. (PMJ)

The familiar linguistic diagram for language acquisition is held to be theory-neutral. Arguments of Lightfoot to the contrary are refuted, and theories about children's language acquisition are discussed. (Contains 11 references.) (LB)

Descriptions of the perfective aspect in Russian taken from Miklosich, Saxmatov, Peskovsky, Fortunatov, and Karcevskij serve as background reading to the author's discussion of the problem. He explores three basic questions: (1) Is aspect a Russian problem in grammar or lexicography; (2) What is the nature of the correlation between the perfective…

Summaries are reported of papers presented at a symposium on Chinese linguistics held in July 1977 at the University of Hawaii. Topics of the program were: semantics and functions, syntactic relations, diachronic phonology, synchronic phonology and phonetics, and aspect and time relations. (SW)