Two passive forms of verbs are discussed. One is related to its active counterpart transformationally and the other lexically. Voice is defined as the relationship between a verb's subcategorization feature and the surface form of the sentence it occurs in. (SC)

Data from a number of language (Slavic, Romance, Modern Greek) concerning predicate agreement with the polite plural (semantically singular, but plural in surface structure) suggest that more verb-like predicates tend to agree with the surface subject, while more noun-like predicates tend to agree with the underlying subject. (Author/KM)

Kuno's direct discourse analysis is examined and rejected, and the Prague School concepts of theme and rheme are shown to be relevant to Kuno's data and additional data. It is further shown that an incompatible application of two or more transformations produces sentences that tend to be bad. (SC)

This article examines predicate structures, with special focus on the nature of predicate auxiliaries and their role in assigning predicate function to non-verbals. (Text is in French.) (AM)

This article examines the conditions under which impersonal constructions may be used in French. The basic idea is that few rules govern this use, and that principally it is a matter of lexical interpretation. (Text is in French.) (AM)

An introductory textbook on Tamil grammar is presented. Tamil is spoken by the majority of the people who live in the State of Tamil Nadu in India. The 35 lessons cover the following: the Tamil alphabet, pronouns, morphophonemic rules, the plural, the imperative, the infinitive and negative imperative, oblique forms and uses, the dative and…

An 18-month study of the development of communicative competence in three Kaluli children from Papua, New Guinea, shows that Kaluli children use pragmatically appropriate word order before they correctly indicate "agent" by casemarking. In Kaluli, pragmatic concerns determine word order. The noun which the speaker intends to focus on is…

THIS GRAMMATICAL SKETCH IS A RUSSIAN-TO-ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE APPENDIX TO B.V. MILLER'S "PERSIDSKO-RUSSKIJ SLOVAR," MOSCOW, 1953. THE FIRST SECTION PRESENTS A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF THE SOUND AND WRITING SYSTEMS OF MODERN PERSIAN, THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF IRAN. FOLLOWING SECTIONS DEAL WITH THE PARTS OF SPEECH AND SIMPLE, COMPOUND,…

THE LANGUAGE OF THE HAUSA TRIBE AND A LINGUA FRANCA FOR MANY INHABITANTS OF NIGERIA'S NORTHERN REGION, HAUSA IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT LANGUAGE OF WEST AFRICA AND HAS MANY DIALECTS. THIS TEXT IS BASED ON THE KANO DIALECT AND IS INTENDED AS A PRELIMINARY STUDY TO A MORE THOROUGH ANALYSIS OF HAUSA MORPHOLOGY, SYNTAX, AND…

BASED ON A TRADITIONAL APPROACH, THIS REFERENCE GRAMMAR OF LITERARY DHIMOTIKI IS DESIGNED TO BE MOST USEFUL TO ADVANCED UNDERGRADUATES OR BEGINNING GRADUATE STUDENTS OF GREEK. (DHIMOTIKI, OR DEMOTIC, IS THE POPULAR FORM OF MODERN GREEK.) IN PART I THERE IS AN EXTENSIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION OF THE WRITING…

The ten papers in this volume are largely revisions of papers presented at the Texas conference, held March 22-24, 1973. The first paper, "Against Universal Semantic Representation," by Gilbert Harman, argues against the need for (and the possibility of) a level of semantic representation in a theory of language. "Remarks on the…

The ergative construction is characteristic of all 37 languages of the Caucasian group. After definition of "subject" and "object," a summary is given of 13 Caucasian intransitive and transitive sentence-types, with respect to the case forms of their subjects and objects. The principal "symptoms" of ergativity are:…

A study made to examine the development in production of the English verbal auxiliary and copula (VAC) "to be" compared a group of children with language dysfunction and a group of normal children. Two purposes were to see whether developmental differences are qualitative or quantitative and to calculate the importance of the VAC in language…

This study of certain phonological and morphological aspects of the Negro speech of Memphis, Tennessee, is a revision of the author's 1961 Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of Michigan. Twenty-four informants, all but one of whom were native Memphians, were used for the study; they were classed according to education and age. The interview…