In Spanish, there is a very common type of sentence that has the following properties: (1) one of the arguments of the verb is a noun phrase that consists of an article and a noun; (2) there is also a dative pronoun dependent on the verb; and (3) the dative pronoun is understood as the possessor of the definite noun. It has been suggested that…

A study was conducted to verify Karttunen's (1973) theoretical linguistic distinction between verbs that function as "plugs" and those that function as "holes." Plugs are defined as performative verbs that block off a sentence's presuppositions so that they are not necessarily part of the speaker's own beliefs. Holes, on the…

The principal nominal deictic affixes of Bella Coola, a Salishan language of British Columbia, are examined. (Author/RM)

Explores the systematic arrangement of elements in American Sign Language and compares it with English syntax. (KM)

This study explores the relationship between question intonation patterns in French using dislocated questions and question-focus (Q- focus). A dislocated question is defined as an interrogative sentence whose sequence is interrupted by the topicalization of a constituent at the left ("Toi, tu viens?"), at the right (Tu viens,…

It is suggested that invited inference is a case of valid inference by saying that English "if...then" sentences are logically ambigous. The ambiguity of "if...then" sentences may be related syntactically or semantically to "or.""Or,""if...then," and "and" all invite inferences. (SC)

Three broad categories of comprehension skills (sentence, anaphora, and intersentence syntax) were divided into a total of 55 separate skills. Two different sentences or sentence pairs were written to incorporate each of the structures studied, and a four- or five-sentence paragraph was then written to incorporate each of these. Four question…

Memory and storage for base and surface sentence forms were compared by examining memory for these kinds of sentences. It was hypothesized that a subject hearing a sentence transforms it to its base form, stores it in this form, and recalls it, again transforming it, in its surface form. Thirty undergraduate educational psychology students,…

The style of a set of nursery tunes are described in terms of a generative rule system. It is found that there are many parallels between music and sentence structure. These parallels may reflect man's perceptual and cognitive capacities. (Author/DEP)

Closely examined the effects of word length cues on cloze scores. (HOD)

Discusses the issue of the use of the Spanish subjunctive in clauses that express neither doubt nor emotion, but appear to deal with strictly factual material. Such uses of the subjunctive are accommodated within the generally accepted one- or two-subjunctive models. (EJS)

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)

Reports outcomes of three experiments in which children were taught a sentence form that they did not as yet understand. Investigates whether (1) acquisition of word order relations for sentence form would be affected by pragmatic ordering principles and (2) whether referent animacy would be included in children's rules for word order. (Author/BE)