This paper examines how overt teaching is instrumental in reducing subject-verb agreement (SVA) errors of Malaysian EAP learners which in turn improves the quality of their writing. The researchers used overt teaching of these grammatical items, that is, SVA and investigated how this method has significantly benefitted the learners who were second…

Although it is widely acknowledged that collocations play an important part in second language learning, especially at intermediate-advanced levels, learners' difficulties with collocations have not been investigated in much detail so far. The present study examines ESL learners' use of verb-noun collocations, such as "take notes," "place an…

Some of the orthographical and phonological problems involved in the use of the Spanish prepositions "ex" and "post" are discussed. Examples are provided. (Text is in Spanish.) (DS)

The two major schools of thought concerned with the meaning of proper names, i.e., the direct-reference or referrential/causal theory, and the description theory, are outlined, and new arguments are presented for a strong version of the second of these theories. The referential theory takes the meaning of the name as being the same as its…

The factive nominal construction of Spanish shows to what extent semantic notions and syntactic constraints are mutually influential. Positive presupposition on the part of the speaker as to truth or falsehood of a subordinate proposition is reflected by the use of the indicative mood; negative or indefinite presupposition by use of the…

A categorical difference between the verbal groups of English and German is discussed. The English verbal group is analyzed as consisting of a lexical constituent and modifiers. The latter divide into four groups of (full) auxiliaries (passive, aspect, time relation, and epistemic modals) and into the two main classes of verbal and non-verbal…

Chinese has been classified as an "isolating" language which expresses grammatical relation with few or no bound inflectional forms and many fixed syntactic constructions. The basis for this notion chiefly originated from the nature of Chinese monosyllabic structures and the relation of syntactic to morphological phenomena. Mandarin Chinese,…

The Foochow-English section of the present dictionary lists the Foochow entries in romanized form followed by their Chinese characters and English glosses. The English entries in the English-Foochow section are followed by a notation indicating form class, Foochow gloss in romanized form and Chinese characters, and examples of usage. An…

The performative analysis claims that every sentence we utter refers to our utterance of it, and has a higher performative clause of the form "I plus Verb plus You." This paper deals with data that have been used to support this analysis, and shows that they do not confirm it. (CHK)

Part of a continued article. (RL)

Transparent" refers to words formed from other words in such a way that meanings and relationships to the original object or concept are clearly suggested; the author analyzes and classifies the processes according to which these types of words are formed. (RS)

Traces the evolution of the Spanish prepositions from the original Latin declensions. (DS)

Continuing series featuring points of grammar. (DS)

Containing series featuring points of grammar. (DS)

In modern Russian, the particle-connective "Ze" has two general and distinct functions: (1) intensification-emphasis and (2) conjunction-opposition. As these functions are actually performed by two different particles, this article accounts for their development and etymology. (CHK)