Linguistic expressions involving body parts (and other entities) belonging to an "interested person" often have unique grammatical properties, e.g., the dative case in Russian. The notion called Inalienable Possession (IP) is used to account for such properties. Semantic and pragmatic analyses account for some of the properties of IP in Russian.…

Results of a seven-week sentence stimulation treatment on sentence production in an aphasic adult female with agrammatism indicated that treatment influenced description of test picture sets and that some generalization to other picture sets occurred. (Author/DB)

Four language disordered children (3 to 4-years-old) were taught such subject properties as agreement morphemes, nominative case, and question inversion by learning first subject function and then subject properties, suggesting that functional theory of language has diagnostic and treatment implications for language disordered children. (Author/DB)

Through a dialog argues that transformational grammar should not be used as the linguistic description in university courses in applied linguistics because it has no particular validity as a pedagogical grammar, because it has a narrow view of the nature of language, and because it is theoretically inadequate.(SED)

Discusses some of the main theories about the present perfect tense and some misconceptions of interest to teachers. Emphasizes two theories of why and when a speaker uses of present perfect tense: the idea of "current relevance" and the idea of "the indefinite past," which merit further research. (SED)

Describes a study designed to explore the nature of early use of two forms of the perfect--the present perfect and the present perfect progressive--by children over three years old. Three factors were found to influence children's selective imitation and paraphrasing of the perfect: verb form, semantic sense of the perfect, and duration of the…

Describes a study which compares expressive language samples from normal children and language impaired children across a range of grammatical and lexical dimensions to determine if it is possible to characterize language impairment using such dimensions. Identifies two variables which were reasonably successful in discriminating the two groups.…

Presents a structural definition of the basic sentence unit, and suggests some guidelines for teaching this material. This concept of "X-word Grammar" has proven to be very helpful to students encountering difficulty with the concept of a sentence. (SL)

Reports on several stages of development in the acquisition of the Spanish copulas "ser" and "estar" by adult learners of Spanish and how the data relate to current hypotheses about second language acquisition. Postulates three stages of competence in the use of "ser" and "estar." (SED)

Suggests that an attempt be made to improve and streamline the grammatical terminology in German pedagogy. Proposes five processes by which this can be done, including retaining established terms that denote grammatical phenomena identical in English and German and replacement of pedagogically unsound, overlapping, vague, or inaccurate terms. (SED)

Describes a study done to determine if foreign language students are at a disadvantage when their teachers assume that the students have a working knowledge of English grammar terminology, which they may never have learned. Attempts to document the extent of students' knowledge of traditional English grammar terminology. (SED)

Reports the findings of a study done to test evaluative reactions to code-switching which involved alternation and/or mixing between the grammatical systems of English and Panjabi. Results are in line with similar studies and show that the same person is evaluated in different ways depending on how he or she speaks.

Formulates the following rules for the use of the passive progressive in English: (1) if the verbal predication is "telic" we have to use the passive progressive in order to express that the action is still going on, and (2) if the verbal predication is "atelic" the use of the passive progressive is facultative. (SED)

Refutes the idea of traditional philologists that the syntax of Latin verbs of fearing is idiosyncratic. Maintains that these verbs are inherently negative in Latin, and they conform in every respect to the highest level of principles of semantic and syntactic behavior that operate throughout the language. (SL)

Proposes a variation of the two-stem system of analyzing the Russian verb. The need for greater organization and systematization is stressed, as well as an increased focus on the great regularity of the Russian verb, and the relative simplicity of Russian verbal morphology. (SL)