Investigated the acquisition of Japanese unaccusative verbs by English-speaking learners, specifically whether second language learners are sensitive to syntactic and semantic properties associated with the "takusan" construction as a syntactic test and the "-teiru" construction as a semantic test. Results show learners generally know the…

Introduces the concept of lexical unit as proposed by Cruse (1986) in the context of second language vocabulary learning to replace the notion of "word." Defines the concept in terms of lexical semantics and applies it to the task of learning a second language. Describes studies in which the learning of different types of lexical units is…

Advances the hypothesis that, when translating French personal constructions involving an adjective and a verb infinitive into English, the property of the English adjective determines whether the verb will be translated as an infinitive or as a gerund. Alternatives for handling such translations in machine translation systems are explored. (five…

The Spanish verb "haber" presents unresolved puzzles concerning its meaning and derivations. Apart from its familiar and recent function as auxiliary in the perfect tenses, the verb's underlying meaning "to have, to hold" persists in the impersonal "hay" while other morphemes previously associated with "haber" may prove unrelated. (Author/MSE)

Presents a description of auxiliary and aspectual marker verbs in African American English. Discussion focuses on patterns of the auxiliary system as a whole, highlights the generalization that speakers of the dialect make when they use the system, describes how the language system is rule-governed, and presents some meaning differences between…

An empirical study of word order correlations, based on a sample of 625 languages, determined exactly what pairs of elements correlate in order with the verb and object. An alternative to the Head-Dependent Theory is presented: the Branching Direction Theory, based on consistent ordering of phrasal and nonphrasal elements. (85 references)…

Paper examines interaction of semantic contributions of aspect markers "-guo" and "-le"; negative adverbs "bu" and "mei"; and two classes of verbs. Proposed analysis systematically accounts for temporal orientation of members of several classes of sentences in terms of aspectual contributions made by two aspect markers, negative adverbs, verbs,…

Aspectual functions performed by the various past tense forms do not overlap in French and English. Difficulties compounded by inaccurate and oversimplified explanations are noted, and different functions are discussed. (LB)

Argues for the description of thematic roles as two-cluster concepts called Proto-Agent and Proto-Patient, each characterized by a set of verbal entailments. It is asserted that an argument of a verb may bear on either or both proto-roles to varying degrees, according to the number and kind of entailments provided by the verb. (133 references) (JL)

Although both Chinese and Japanese allow resultative compounds of the form V/cause-V/result, Japanese resultative compounds do not show the semantic ambiguities seen in Chinese compounds. An argument that three factors explain this difference supports the claim that many differences among languages can be accounted for with universal principles…

Looks at the meaning of the verb "report," to make an argument for a view of genre as a cultural activity and a view of literacy involving children in the development of personal perspective. This argues against a text-based view of genre and a pedagogy that relies primarily on the modeling of "considered texts." (10…

Reexamines a claim that the indicative is the mood of assertion and the subjunctive that of nonassertion. The article discusses counterexamples to this claim and proposes an alternative analysis. The discussion argues that understanding the pragmatic context of an utterance is crucial to characterizing the distribution of mood in Spanish. (17…

Describes "need" as a semiauxiliary and marginal modal and as a full lexical verb in present-day British English from the syntactic, lexical, semantic, and pragmatic points of view. The descriptions given by grammars as well as examples in British-English texts are compared. (14 references) (Author/CFM)

It is argued that the restrictions on "wh"-movement out of negative and factive islands cannot be explained solely by the Empty Category Principle but that embedded properties assigned by matrix verbs also intervene. (Contains 48 references.) (LB)

Tested the prediction that "yes-no" questions that place forms of the copula "be" in initial position will also increase the rate of growth of children's copula verb development. Data from 33 children who were matched for stage of language development at 1;9 and 2;0 confirm that the frequency of inverted copulas in yes-no…