The properties of one of the structures of politeness in the romance languages, the deference system connected with the use of conditional tenses, are analyzed in this paper. Although only Spanish examples are given, the conclusions also apply to French, Italian and Roumanian. The first part of the paper analyzes politeness in relation to its…

Given that the principal bounding nodes, or barriers, for subjacency are noun phrase (NP), S, and S-bar, with S optionally a barrier, NP and S-bar obligatorily barriers, differences between Greek and English WH-movement are discussed. The contrasts are derived from independently motivated differences in NP structure between the two languages.…

Argues that children's OV utterances cannot be related transformationally to VO utterances because children initially acquire OV and VO with different sets of verbs, and also argues that L2 acquisition data can be accounted for within a model of L1 structural transfer, without requiring adult learner access to Universal Grammar. (Author/LMO)

A university faculty member developed first-year French instructional materials with a computer authoring program. The materials covered three classes of regular verb conjugations, noncognate vocabulary, and major grammatical structures. Initial results indicate the exercises helped students learn the material and successfully transfer it to other…

This volume focuses on the psycholinguistic aspects of language transfer when three languages are in contact, and provides an overview of the state of the art in cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition. This edited volume contains, in addition to an introduction, ten chapters. Chapter titles include the following: "The Effect of…

A notable feature of developing interlanguage grammars is the apparent optionality in those areas of grammar where optionality is not characteristic of stable state grammars. In the Valueless Features Hypothesis, it is proposed that the appearance of apparent optionality in the very early stages of interlanguage development is due to the partial…

Investigated the effects of the number of tokens in the conceptual representation of the to-be-uttered subject noun phrase in experiments in Dutch and French, in which subject-verb agreement errors were induced. Findings revealed a distributivity effect in both languages, supporting an account in which neither null nor post-verbal subjects are the…

Discusses the presence and significance of linguistics in Italian departments at universities in Australia and worldwide against the background of multiculturalism, the politicization of the Italian population in Australia, and the emergence of Italy as a major economic and political power. Argues that the boundary lines between linguistics and…

Analyzes essays and responses to cloze passages by second language learners to determine how speakers of various backgrounds establish a past-time discourse frame. Argues that speakers of Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, and Japanese may conceptualize time domains differently from English speakers and that students must learn that objective time and…

The difficulty with which native English-speaking adults learning French control the distinction between verb aspects has prompted study of the neurological processes that may affect this learning process. It is concluded that it may not be possible to change these basic perception patterns of adult learners. (MSE)

Calls into question the data of grammaticality judgment tasks on which several GB-based studies on the second-language acquisition of accusative verbs by Japanese learners of English base their arguments and reports the results of a pilot study. (Author/VWL)

Describes a case study and a follow-up comparative study that focused on expert foreign language teachers' professional knowledge as it was reflected in their spoken and written discourse. Both studies provide evidence indicating that professional knowledge can develop via its verbalization in reflective-narrative discourse from personal…

This article examines alternating verbs (such as "quemar"(se) "to burn") in second language (L2) Spanish by considering the learnability problem from a sequence learning perspective (N. Ellis, 1996, 2002). In Spanish, verbs of the alternating class are obligatorily marked with the clitic "se" in their intransitive form. Errors of omission among…

Purpose: Verb processing in early sequential Spanish-English bilinguals was investigated. Primary study goals were to identify potential patterns of development in relative levels of verb processing efficiency in a 1st (L1) and 2nd (L2) language and to investigate factors influencing cognitive control of the dual-language system in developing…

Research by the staff and advanced students of the North Dakota Summer Institute of Linguistics is presented. In "Verb Agreement and Case Marking in Burushaski" (Stephen R. Willson), an overview of Burushaski morphology and syntax is presented, with special attention to verb agreement and case marking. "A Backwards Binding Construction in Zapotec"…