A study examines various Huastec clause types that are reflexive in some sense, including ordinary reflexives, which involve co-reference. Two mutually exclusive morphosyntactic devices are used in Huastec: reflexive pronouns and verbal morphology. In this way, Huastec is like various European languages. Clauses involving reflexive pronouns and…

Intended for use by students at any level above grade 3, this practice book helps students use the parts of speech correctly in speaking and writing. The book reviews (1) the kinds of sentences; (2) the use of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives in sentences; (3) capitalization and punctuation; and (4) proofreading. The book is…

A collection of five board games for the Spanish language classroom contains gameboards, game markers, and directions for each game. It also contains general instructions for the teacher about the classroom use of board games. The games include: "Uvas," for use in vocabulary development and cultural awareness; "Montana Rusa," for general…

A dictionary of Thai sign language outlines and illustrates the vocabulary and structure of the sign language used by the deaf community throughout Thailand. It reflects the Thai lexical structure, with the signs arranged into six basic sign groups (movement verbs, oppositions, negation, verb tenses, dimensions, and a category containing days,…

Outside the core grammar, the set of "peripheral" or marked properties of a language include exceptions or relaxations of the settings of core grammar and the idiosyncratic features of the language governed by particular lexical items. The core/peripheral distinction has direct implications for grammatical development in children. The…

A study investigated Japanese children's acquisition of the syntactical subcategorization of action verbs. Aspects of caregiver language that provide children with information about the characteristics of an action verb are detailed, and the utterances of four Japanese toddlers are analyzed for their usage characteristics. Caregiver sentences are…

The reversal of subject and predicate terms in quantified, categorical expressions was studied as an operation that is potentially important in issues of representation and comprehension of quantified relations. In two experiments students were asked to evaluate the relation between two quantified expressions. The salience of reversal in the…

The problem of teaching the use of the verbs "ser" and "estar" in Spanish can be only partially addressed by current linguistic explanations. In the absence of rules that will enable the student to predict correct sentences using the verbs, the most effective teaching technique is to use a situational-functional approach providing students with…

In early transformational generative grammar, it was assumed that all semantic interpretation would be done off deep structure, but with the proposals for the extended standard theory (EST) of Chomsky (1968, 1972) came the realization that certain aspects of semantic interpretation, such as focus and presuppostion and scope of quantifiers, must be…

In technical texts, verbal nouns are frequent, expressing phenomena, processes and procedures. With these occur "replacement" verbs, which serve as the verb of the clause. These may form free associations or firm combinations, as is shown in word lists. This difference must be reflected in the design of exercises. (Text is in German.)…

An effective approach to minimizing the difficulties ESL learners have with the English verb phrase is to associate a clear function with each form. Three main contexts for teaching and lines of development are discussed. (Author/ND)

Twenty college students, ten each in the experimental and control groups, were the subjects of an experiment designed to demonstrate that integration of verb meanings occurs in connected discourse. Six paragraph-length stories, each of which included one or two critical sentences containing a general verb, were presented orally to the subjects.…

AFTER TAPE RECORDING AND ANALYZING INFORMAL CONVERSATIONS WITH KINDERGARTEN AND THIRD-GRADE NEGRO CHILDREN IN THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS, A PROGRAM OF LANGUAGE ARTS INSTRUCTION WAS DRAWN UP TO (1) USE ACTUAL STATEMENTS MADE BY THE CHILD IN HIS DIALECT FOR CONTRAST WITH STANDARD ENGLISH, (2) LIMIT PATTERN PRACTICE TO VERBS AND TO STATEMENTS EASILY…

The linguistic literature contains many studies of the structure of the noun phrase. Syntactic structures that occupy NP position but which don't have the internal characteristics of a substantive (infinitives and THAT clauses, for example) are distinguished from lexical structures that occupy NP position and do have the internal characteristics…