A contrastive analysis of Spanish word order is presented, first discussed in non-sentence constructions, and then in sentences and sentence-like constructions. A more productive methodology can be obtained in teaching word order through the balanced use of deductive and inductive methods. (NCR)

This article analyzes the Spanish version of the motorists' guide from the Department of Motor Vehicles of the state of California. There are many poor translations due to direct translation from the English. (NCR)

Five experiments examined how the duration of a word spoken in a sentence is influenced by the grammatical category to which it belongs, and the position of the word in a constituent. The findings indicated that a binary distinction between major and minor categories is sufficient for a theory of speech timing and synthesis. (Author/JAC)

This article hypothesizes that causative constructions among the languages of the world share some fundamental characteristics, even though they have different ordering restrictions and varying degrees of fusion. (Author/NCR)

A Spanish lesson is presented with sections on grammar, vocabulary, and expressions (modismos) with written test exercises and an assigned composition. (Text is in Spanish.) (NCR)

The "A comme..." section presents four articles: Suggested exercises for teaching the use of coordinating conjunctions; a technique for teaching letter-writing, based on an absence-excuse letter; the use of classified ads; and a suggested approach for the analysis of a contemporary novel. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Mirror images in constituent order are found in a wide range of parallel clause types in Japanese and English. Three detailed explanations for linear orderings are provided. (Author/HP)

All modern Romance languages except Rumanian have a class of causative + infinitive construction in which the infinitive subject surfaces as an agentive. This article investigates the question of how agentivization of the infinitive subject is to be handled in these languages. (DS)

In retelling 20 stories, 23 nursery-school children often refused to produce sentences in which causation was stated directly, but readily retold causation-implied utterances. Other results are discussed. (Author/RM)

Hungarian-Russian bilingual preschoolers, in general, paid more attention to allomorphy than did monolingual Hungarian or Russian peers in interpreting transitive sentences with varying word orders. (Author/CB)

Investigates the role of topic-comment structure and the frequency of topic-prominence in the oral interlanguage of Chinese- Japanese-, Korean-, Arabic-, Farsi-, and Spanish-speaking adult students of English as a second language. Results indicate that second language learning is generally characterized by an early topic-comment stage, independent…

A theory of the origin of the Chinese copula "shi," originally introduced into the language as a particle of affirmation, is presented. This theory also accounts for the contrastive and assertive use of the word when introduced into the language during the same period. (Author/CB)

Investigates the availability of surface representations for the interpretation of verb-phrase ellipsis. Results show that an elliptical verb phrase is most easily interpreted if its antecedent is in the immediately preceding sentence and that this can not be explained in terms of the unnaturalness of the passages with distant antecedents. (MM)

Identifies various speech styles of English as marked by stance adverbials. Indicates that the discourse functions of stance adverbials differ considerably from the functions suggested by their literal meanings. (JK)

Describes the "Competition Model" (Bates and MacWhinney, 1982) dealing with second-language sentence processing by bilinguals and research that has further developed theories dealing with the model. (CB)