This book of supplemental exercises is one of a series of books designed to provide educational materials in addition to the instructional texts in the Adult Learning Skills Program. Exercises in this intermediate level book are for the English subject area. Course numbers and exercise topics are: 501 (nouns and articles, plurals, and nouns,…

An outline of the grammar of Kanasi, a non-Austronesian language in the Indo-Pacific family of the Daga branch and spoken in Papua New Guinea, includes analysis of noun phrases (numerals and descriptive modifiers, genitive constructions, and adpositions); verbs (affixes; tense, aspect, and moods; and causation); predicate nominals; existential,…

Instructional materials for the preterite tense in Spanish are based on Robert Terry's technique of using familiar stories in the foreign language, written in the present tense, which students must place in the past by changing verb forms. The objective is to avoid the disadvantages of simply translating verb tenses and to allow the student to get…

Instructional materials for the passe compose and imperfect tenses in French use the technique of presenting familiar stories in the foreign language, written in the present tense, which students must place in the past by changing verb forms. The objective is to avoid the disadvantages of simply translating verb tenses and to allow the student to…

The phenomena of null subjects in child grammars of English are examined in the context of Nina Moss Hyams' proposals about these structures within the framework of generative grammar. Some problems with these analyses are examined and an alternative analysis is proposed. It is noted that Hyams predicts that children learning a language requiring…

An approach to the study of numeral quantifiers in Japanese reveals some fundamental properties of Japanese, especially those pertaining to movement. Using numeral quantifiers, a demonstration shows that the subject of unaccusative verbs in Japanese originates in the object position and moves to the subject position at S-structure. It is also…

This study examines the object case markings "o" and "ga" in Japanese with respect to the degree of predictability. A speaker who assumes that the listener will have difficulty identifying the referent, tends to use a construction type that enables the listener to uniquely identify the referent. This notion of predictability is…

A study of children's language use in narratives given during play examined the longitudinal development of different linguistic systems of narrative structure: pronominal, clausal, and temporal. The narrative and dialogue in play with small toy figures was observed in eight children between the ages of 2 and 7. The findings suggest certain…

This study investigates how children learn not to overgeneralize about grammatical forms and how to reformulate hypotheses about the grammar of their language even when receiving little or no explicit feedback. Two proposals were looked at: (1) input monitoring theory stating that certain overgeneralizations are eliminated from production because…

Linguistics as a science has been concerned with comparison ever since its inception, the number and variety of approaches increasing steadily in the course of its development. Interest in linguistic comparison extends into the field of foreign language teaching. Linguists have attempted to solve the problem of methodology in contrastive…

The 'determiner' category was originally set up by structuralists for identifying nouns. The rewrite rule for 'determiners' in transformational generative grammar is inadequate for showing correspondences between type and token. An appraisal of quantity terms might eliminate the concept of the 'determiner,' and replace that category with one of…

Reports on a diachronic study concerning the syntactic phenomena of coordination and subordination and their place in language acquisition. The organization and evolution of the coordination system of 4 children, ages 3-6 was studied. The need for investigation of adult speech for further understanding acquisition is stressed. (Text is in French.)…

A critical review of the development of case theory as put forth by N. Chomsky, C. J. Fillmore, J. M. Anderson, J. J. Robinson, and S. Starosta. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Discusses the development of Fillmore's case theory. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Discusses problems related to case grammar theory, including: the organizations of a case grammar; determination of semantic roles; definition and hierarchy of cases; cause-effect relations; and formalization and notation. (Text is in French.) (AM)