College students learned artificial grammar under two conditions: paired associate learning (PA), and observation of exemplars (OBS). OBS induced abstract representation of the rules of grammar. PA produced very different learning--subjects knew some whole items but detected little structure. Grammar was learned largely by analogy rather than…

While distinguishing between literary criticism and the scientific study of translation, Latin American translations are analyzed according to the identification of "speech facts," levels of stylistic performance, translating from scratch, and the stylistic features of Rabassa. (NCR)

A contrastive analysis of Spanish word order is presented, first discussed in non-sentence constructions, and then in sentences and sentence-like constructions. A more productive methodology can be obtained in teaching word order through the balanced use of deductive and inductive methods. (NCR)

This article analyzes the Spanish version of the motorists' guide from the Department of Motor Vehicles of the state of California. There are many poor translations due to direct translation from the English. (NCR)

Five experiments examined how the duration of a word spoken in a sentence is influenced by the grammatical category to which it belongs, and the position of the word in a constituent. The findings indicated that a binary distinction between major and minor categories is sufficient for a theory of speech timing and synthesis. (Author/JAC)

This article hypothesizes that causative constructions among the languages of the world share some fundamental characteristics, even though they have different ordering restrictions and varying degrees of fusion. (Author/NCR)

A Spanish lesson is presented with sections on grammar, vocabulary, and expressions (modismos) with written test exercises and an assigned composition. (Text is in Spanish.) (NCR)

The theory that reduction transformations provide speakers with the option of deleting redundant information when communicating to a topic-cognizant audience is supported. In the experiment, college physiology students were provided with deep structure proximal sentences (base propositions), and asked to communicate them to different audiences,…

The "A comme..." section presents four articles: Suggested exercises for teaching the use of coordinating conjunctions; a technique for teaching letter-writing, based on an absence-excuse letter; the use of classified ads; and a suggested approach for the analysis of a contemporary novel. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

"It" as a personal pronoun is used in many expressions without reference to persons or things. Chinese students of English as a second language find the different uses hard to understand. The differing uses of "it" in English and Chinese and errors made by Chinese students are discussed. (SW)

An inventory of grammatical and lexical units expressing the notion of place in "Le Francais fondamental," Level One. Interrelationships are discussed from the point of view of vocabulary patterns and syntax. There are numerous tables and examples of interrelated verbs, adverbs, nouns, and prepositions. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A collection of four short articles giving detailed lesson plans using magazines, editorials and recipes to teach grammar. "A" is used as the example in these lesson plans. The first article deals with avoir and the past participle. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Students of French are now more fluent orally than their counterparts of a few years ago. They are using, however, a more anglicized French. The causes are three: (1) unawareness of the value of words; (2) infrequent use of reference material, specifically the dictionary; (3) lack of adequate knowledge of basic rules. (CFM)

A sketch of the development of functionalism in relation to other linguistic theories and a brief analysis of the present state of the research. Topics covered are: form versus function; the impasse between distributional and transformational grammar; and transformational grammar according to Harris. (Text is in French.) (AMH)