The standard treatment of object pronouns in Latin American Spanish assigns a direct-object function to "lo" and "la" and an indirect-object function to "le." This study challenges this descriptive attribution in light of the contradictory and refractory evidence in Spanish morphosyntax. It is suggested that more…

The dependency approach to grammar, in which it is assumed that grammatical relations can be described in terms of a relation between two element types, a head and a dependent, is discussed in the context of Arabic. Operational criteria used for defining the notions of head and dependency are reviewed, and claims for the usefulness of recognizing…

A greater understanding of psychological treatment can be achieved through an analysis of the language used by those participating in such treatment. Several conceptual aids are needed: (1) a theory about how language conveys meaning; (2) a model of language in psychological treatment; (3) reliable units of measure; and (4) since psychological…

Although Mandarin is a discourse topic oriented language rather than a subject and sentence oriented one, Chinese children acquiring Mandarin attempt in their early speech to exactly mark the same referential grammatical relationships as subject, object, location, and instrument by using case or ergative markers. Only after marking a closed set of…

This Samoan language manual is designed for use by both teachers and students. The manual outlines and explains each lesson for the teacher and provides a source of reference for the learner. The lessons are intended for use in the classroom under the direction of the teacher. Total immersion in Samoan and exclusion of English are important…

The communication of "person" has been a particularly elusive area of Japanese discourse. The elusive status of the person term (as distinguished from the Indo-European personal pronoun) raises the question of whether such terms, along with titles, kin terms, proper names, age-status terms, and zero forms, may all be part of a single…

The development of a new grammar of English for machine translation systems at Weidner Communications Corporation is described. Although the project began with the intention of simply modifying the grammar rules already in use in the translation system, the reorganization of the grammar was deemed necessary for providing a principled manner of…

This study attempts to account for the distributional restrictions of Japanese head-internal relative clauses, and the restrictions on accessibility of noun phrases to head internal relativization in terms of the Empty Category Principle (ECP). The data indicate that there is a subject/object asymmetry in the distribution of the head - internal…

It is proposed that, in contrast to Chomsky's argument, it is possible to arrive at an empirically grounded definition of innate linguistic competence that guides the child in the construction of grammar, particularly when this process is viewed as developmental. This approach treats language acquisition as a process of change. It is suggested…

The paper reports on a two-part longitudinal study of the English language competencies of deaf students for whom total communication through manual coded English (MCE) was the primary method of instruction. In Part I of the study, the performance of three groups of deaf Ss who used MCE was compared with that of three groups of normal hearing Ss…

The study investigated narrative schemata (abstract, prototypical memory frameworks containing the typical plot organizations for a story) with 17 hearing and 40 hearing impaired college students (poor and good readers). Subjects were asked to order statements into story order for three stories. Analysis of the stories in their original and edited…

The native speaker's knowledge of his language is characterized as a grammar of expectancy that incorporates pragmatic knowledge of the world. Thus, in teaching a second language, the student must be allowed to take advantage of previously acquired expectations about situations while learning a new grammar of expectancy. (Author/LG)

This study attempted to determine the effects of two grading foci, emphasis on content vs. emphasis on grammar, on the reliability and level of grades awarded to English composition themes and the effects of annotation vs. no annotation on the reliability and level of grades awarded. (Author/RK)