Examines patterns of transfer in the sentence processing strategies displayed by Chinese-English and English-Chinese bilinguals. Results indicate that late bilinguals display strong evidence for forward transfer: late Chinese-English bilinguals transfer animacy-based strategies to English sentences; late Chinese-English bilinguals transfer…

In this practitioners' guide, a recognized reading expert explains how educators, parents, and concerned citizens can spot ineffective reading programs that may hide under the "scientifically-based" banner. Although the term "whole language" is not commonly used today, programs based on its premises remain popular. These…

Economic forecasting in the world of international finance confronts economists with challenging cross-cultural writing tasks. Producing forecasts in English which convey confidence and credibility entails an understanding of linguistic conventions which typify the genre. A typical linguistic feature of commercial economic forecasts produced by…

A study analyzed the structure of negative sentences in the Thai language, based on data gathered from two native speakers. It is shown that the Thai negative marker generally occurs between the noun phrase (subject) and the verb phrase in simple active sentences and in passive sentences. Negation of noun phrases is also allowed in Thai, with a…

The study presents a grammar of Eastern Bontoc, an Austronesian language of the northern Philippines that includes five village dialects and has about 8,000 speakers. Data are from transcribed recordings of primarily one dialect, gathered in 1977-80. The discourse-oriented grammar is outlined in six chapters: an introduction to the language, its…

The purpose of this article is to investigate ways that the grammatical and semantic structures of the Finnish clause limit its possibilities for expressing information structure. The study aims to discover whether there is a correlation between the semantic structure of the sentence and the possibility of using the inverted word order for…

Hypothesizing that students choosing their own topics would produce significantly more writing, a study examined the writing sample length of 42 sixth grade students who had been divided equally into two treatment groups. Treatments were counterbalanced so that during the first writing period students in one group wrote on topics they had selected…

The book is an attempt to create an appreciation of the complex Lushootseed language, spoken by American Indians in the area between Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains northward to the Skagit River Valley. The book is divided into two parts: readings about Lushootseed life and a brief description of the Lushootseed language. The readings, taken…

A conscious understanding of the grammar system can have value for student writers. Unfortunately, the positive value of teaching grammar in an instrumental, or functional, way has been overshadowed by the negative and irrelevant data concerning "formal grammar." However, if teachers were to use "rhetorical grammar" and emphasize the importance of…

A study examined sentence production errors and syntactic complexity in students' writing in two modes of discourse and at three grade levels. Subjects, average and high developmental students enrolled in seventh, ninth, and eleventh grade classes, each wrote two compositions, one in the descriptive the other in the persuasive mode. Data analysis…

The experimental evidence on the value of a sentence-combining approach to improving reading comprehension is still sparse, but the possibilities seem rich.

A practicum provided 10th- grade students in 2 English honors classes with direct instruction in sentence combining. The goal of the program was to increase the syntactic complexity of student writing, to have students express more in each sentence. Instruction was approached from different aspects. The students worked with two textbooks on…

Data drawn from videotapes of children aged 20 to 32 months were analyzed for patterns in the use of various self-reference forms at an age when children rarely refer to others compared to their use at an age when children more regularly refer to others as main participants. First, the distribution of the forms…

Since many studies indicate that young readers have difficulty comprehending many commonly occurring forms of anaphora, an instructional experiment was conducted in which a variety of anaphoric forms was taught, the intervention period was of sufficient duration, and external validity was enhanced so that results would be generalizable to the…

Verb agreement, rules, and their application in Lakota, a Siouan language, are examined in the framework of relational grammar. It is argued that certain relational grammar concepts, especially the notions of level and working 2, provide the necessary theoretical apparatus for formulating concise rules of verb agreement in Lakota. The rules…