Attempts a sketchy classification of English causative verbs, using various linguistic theories but primarily that of generative grammar. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Production of the morpheme BE was studied among 22 children (ages 4-5) with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Contractible contexts were produced more accurately than uncontractible contexts by both groups, and there were no significant interactions between language status and contractibility. Copula forms were produced more…

Describes the use of negation in three corpora representative of early to mid-19th-century African American English. The study examines the negative form "ain't," negative concord to indefinites and verbs, negative inversion and negative postposing. Findings reveal that the negation system of early African American English derived…

Recipes exhibit a phenomenon nonexistent in other commonly studied varieties, (for example, conversational discourse), namely, zero anaphors as direct objects. This article examines this phenomenon and explores its consequences for linguistic theory. Results reveal that stylistic, semantic, and discourse factors are the most important in the…

Examines "it"-clefts and "wh"-clefts in English and their Chinese equivalents in a universal, functional perspective that consists of assigning "participant roles" in processing a clause. The analysis shows that a functionally-oriented and semantically-motivated approach to the focusing constructions provides greater insight into the discourse…

Argues that the position of the finite verb in Old English clauses reflects synchronic variation in underlying structure, INFL-medial versus INFL-final, and that the syntax of main and subordinate clauses is the same. Quantitative data analysis indicates that the frequency of INFL-medial structure increases at the expense of INFL-final structure…

Examined 2-year-olds' comprehension and production of novel nouns, verbs, or actions at 3 intervals after training conducted in massed or distributed exposures. Found that for comprehension, children learned all item types in all training conditions at all retention intervals. Production was better for nonverbal actions than for either word type…

Explores the interaction between the timing of verb models and the focus of the events to which they refer on verb learning by children. Findings revealed that the movement verb was learned better in the impending condition and the result verb in the completed condition. (seven references) (Author/CK)

Examines Japanese equivalents of the six mental predicates defined as semantic universals in Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, with special attention to syntax and semantics of complementation types. It is shown that each primitive predicate has a specific set of syntactic frames for expressing primitive meaning and that extended meanings that…

Explores the combinatorial possibilities of semantic primitives of time and space in French, as defined in the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Highlights the need for new ways to express the allolexical relationship in some combinations, particularly those expressing "when/time." (Author/MSE)

Suggests that Japanese learners will learn manner-of-motion verbs with goal prepositional phrases in English from positive feedback. Immediate Japanese learners of English and advanced learners of Japanese were tested using a grammaticality judgment task with pictures. Results support the prediction. (Author/VWL)

Investigates whether native speakers of Korean learning English develop Knowledge of the holism effect in the English locative and knowledge of the narrow constraints. Results suggest that when given a ground-object structure, both learners and English native speakers preferentially chose a ground-holism picture. (Author/VWL)

Greek has two verbs of agency that can be used interchangeably to mean "to look for." Examined whether children will obey the principle of contrast to diagnose that one verb is mentalistic and the other is to be construed behaviorally. A study of mothers' verb use confirmed that the verb preferred in home use gave below chance performance on a…

Discusses a teaching method for helping students understand the imperfect vs. preterit in Spanish. The method relies on teaching the importance of the aspectual values of the imperfect tense through the use of television programs coupled with special messages. (GLR)

A longitudinal study examined two-year-olds' acquisition of the English auxiliary system after a six-week exposure to additional auxiliary input in varying sentence contexts. Results indicated that subjects did not significantly differ from a baseline group that did not receive additional input. (Author/CB)