Presents a preliminary study on the analysis of cleft sentences in Chinese, defining the cleft sentence in Chinese, clarifying its relationship to equation sentences, and discussing two alternative analyses. (Author/AM)

Discusses the applicability of "fuzzy sets" to explicating the notion of "vagueness." (Author/HP)

This article makes two points: (1) that isochrony, the rhythmic organization of speech into more or less equal intervals, is primarily a perceptual phenomenon; and (2) that there exists a way in which isochrony is integrated into the grammar of English at the syntactic level. (Author/CFM)

Discusses the five studies conducted to date on the relationship between formal grammar instruction and student writing skills, concluding that new studies need to be done and the old studies need to be duplicated. (DD)

One hundred-twenty children (15 boys and 15 girls) ages 4-7 years, who exhibited normal language development, were tested using a story completion approach to study language development. (Author/MH)

Discusses the problem of choosing among many linguistic theories for second language instruction. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Explains how the "futur anterieur" is often used to indicate past time in French grammar. Using authentic evidence from a news magazine, some hypotheses on the conditions of use of the "futur anterieur" are suggested. Criteria for distinguishing past tense functions from modal functions are also presented. (TR)

American Sign Language verbs have several ways to indicate time: 1)reference to a specific time; 2) extension at wrist, elbow, or shoulder to indicate future time; 3) flexion at wrist, elbow, or shoulder to indicate past tense. (Author/LMO)

Briefly discusses the concepts of "subject,""complement,""transitivity," and "intransitivity," contrasts the classes of complements in German and Italian based on identical criteria of classification, justifies such a classification for complements, and suggests didactic implications for the theory of…

Aphasic (N=15) and non-brain-damaged adults listened to and retold two narrative stories three times in succession. Both aphasic and non-brain-damaged subjects were affected by story structure and increased the amount of information retold across retellings. Non-brain-damaged subjects retold slightly more (statistically insignificant) information…

In a personal letter, Chomsky suggests that while the study of grammar has little detectable effect on writing ability, it can, as a branch of science, help students learn how (and why) to think about hard and intriguing questions and to develop natural curiosity. (HOD)

Illustrates some of the problems and the advantages of three programs designed for language arts instruction: "English Volume I" (MECC), "English SAT 1" (Microlab), and "Vocabulary Prompter" (Jagdstaffel). (AEA)

Presents a simple classroom exercise that transforms a remote future need for grammatical competence into a more practical, immediate, and useful skill. (HTH)

Discusses the teaching of the semantics and syntax of a particular construction employed to quote questions indirectly in Spanish. Argues that questions in indirect speech are always introduced by "que" in Spanish and are interpreted as questions. Indirect questions not introduced by "que" are normally interpreted as assertions. (SED)

The study investigated whether Nonstandard English (NSE) dialect responses to an examiner-constructed sentence completion test were congruent with and predictive of use of NSE during spontaneous conversation. It was concluded that the sentence completion test is satisfactorily congruent with and predictive of patterns of dialect used in…