Two markedness hypotheses in current language acquisition theory are examined. One view of markedness, the developmental hypothesis, states that the unmarked case is the child's initial hypothesis, i.e., the hypothesis that is set in advance of linguistic data. The developmental hypothesis further predicts that children will proceed in a fixed…

Yupik language has two devices to indicate switch reference. The rules generally given for them are not entirely correct, and counterexamples to the ideal have been found previously. A subset of those counterexamples in Central Yupik Eskimo support the claim that there are two systems, partially overlapping and partially unique, that organize…

A word combination can have a grammatical function differing from that of the individual words which compose it. This increases the flexibility of lexical material and suggests a new approach to the classification of items in a lexicon. Examples are drawn mostly from German. (TL)

This paper explains why certain prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions in Spanish are sometimes written as separate words and sometimes combined as one. (Text is in Spanish.) (CK)

Argues that Mandarin co-verbs are best viewed as prepositions which are still in the process of changing from earlier verbs. Arguments include the fact that co-verbs have prepositional meanings and that sentences containing co-verbs are not two-clause sentences. (Author/RM)

ONE OF FOUR THESES WHICH FORM THE "SUPPLEMENT TO STUDIES IN LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE BEHAVIOR, PROGRESS REPORT V," SEPTEMBER 1967, THIS STUDY WAS DESIGNED TO RESEARCH (A) WHAT SORT OF INFORMATION ABOUT GRAMMATICAL CONSTITUENTS IS NECESSARY IN A GRAMMAR, AND (B) HOW THIS INFORMATION CAN BE PRESENTED IN A GENERATIVE TAGMEMIC GRAMMAR. THE FIRST CHAPTER…

THIS IS A REPRINT OF A BOOK PUBLISHED IN 1864. IT IS INTENDED AS A REFERENCE GRAMMAR FOR STUDENTS OF HAWAIIAN AND FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THE COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR OF THE POLYNESIAN LANGUAGES. IT FOLLOWS THE PATTERN OF THE TRADITIONAL GRAMMARS OF THE TIME, BUT THE AUTHOR WAS AWARE OF THE DANGER OF IMPOSING ON HAWAIIAN THE CATEGORIES OF EUROPEAN…

TWO OF THE MAJOR GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS MUCH STUDIED BY MANDARIN GRAMMARIANS IN THE PAST DECADE ARE THE EXISTENCE OF PARTS OF SPEECH AND THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE IDENTIFICATION OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN SENTENCES. THE GOAL OF THIS STUDY IS TO DEAL WITH A VARIETY OF PROBLEMS IN CONNECTION WITH THE NOTIONS OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN MANDARIN CHINESE…

This course on the language of Sri Lanka is intended to be taken under a Sinhala-speaking instructor. The present module is intended as a reference manual on Sinhala structures which will supplement and expand on the brief notes that appear in Module 2 (see related documents). After a brief explanation of the Sinhala sound system, the grammatical…

Contrastive analysis can help solve certain problems in translation, for example, that of idioms. A contrastive analysis of source language (SL) and target language (TL) might have as its theoretical framework a contrastive lexical analysis based on generative semantics. In this approach both SL and TL idioms are broken down into their semantic…

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…

After outlining the structural linguistic approach to form classes in general and Spanish nouns and adjectives in particular, the author concludes that "nouns and adjectives in Spanish cannot be characterized in any satisfactory fashion by their occurrence in morphological or syntactic frames." The grammatical framework used for this study is "the…