An experiment is reported that uses cross-modal priming to look at the resolution of anaphoric reference. Subjects given a visual lexical decision test simultaneously with an auditorily presented sentence showed selective semantic activation of the pronoun's referent on the basis of the pronoun's lexical properties. This finding is discussed in…

German offers a good example of how syntax meets the discursive needs of speakers/hearers and writers/readers. A pedagogic grammar should put the emphasis on the ways the foreign language conceptualizes reality and on the syntactic realization of those concepts for construction of discourse. (Author/MSE)

Concludes that children were better able to comprehend sentences containing pronouns that functioned as objects in relative clauses, but that in clauses where the pronoun functioned as subject, its presence or absence was not important. (FL)

Discusses the steps involved in using short-paragraph dictation exercises: (1) preparing a passage which is of high interest and focuses on grammatical problems exhibited by students; (2) determining the best way of presenting the passage; and (3) evaluating student performance. Identifies the technique's benefits for improving writing skills.…

This experiment investigated whether three- and four-year-old children show systematic preferences for animate or inanimate nouns to function as actors and objects of simple active and passive voice sentences. The children had to choose from several toys a suitable referent for a nonsense word used in a sentence. (Author)

Attempts to show that conditional sentences are based on two separate binary choices: the choice between "open" and "theoretical" and the choice between "event condition" and "truth condition." Truth conditions, unlike event conditions, are concerned not with what might or might not happen but with what…

Analyzes the nature of punctuation, its functions (syntactic, suprasegmental, and semantic), its role in written language, and punctuation as grapheme. (AM)

Indicates that object relative (O) clauses are learned after subject relative (S) clauses. Shows that children did not reliably comprehend O-clauses until nine years of age, two years after S-clauses. Suggests the need to attain a level of operational thought before O-clauses can be understood. (RL)

Explains why people say "for she and I"--and argues that such usage is correct. (RS)

Three studies are reported that addressed methodological problems in Stowe's (1989) study, which reported that semantic information eliminates garden paths in sentences with direct object versus subject ambiguity, such as in "Even before the police stopped the driver was frightened." Findings support a sentence processing system relying on…

David Lightfoot's "How to Set Parameters: Arguments from Language Change" (1991), which adopts the principles and parameters approach developed by Chomsky as part of the theory of government and binding, is reviewed. (Contains 34 references.) (LB)

Outlines desirable qualities for graphic representation of sentence dependency structures in texts more than a few sentences in length. Several different display formats prototyped in the TEXNET experimental text structure management system are described, illustrated, and compared, and automatic structure manipulations are discussed. (36…

It is argued that the restrictions on "wh"-movement out of negative and factive islands cannot be explained solely by the Empty Category Principle but that embedded properties assigned by matrix verbs also intervene. (Contains 48 references.) (LB)

Examined data for two Danish children to determine subject omission, verb usage, and sentence subjects. Found that children exhibit asymmetry in subject omission according to verb type as subjects are omitted from main verb utterances more frequently than from copula utterances. Concluded that treatment of child subject omission should involve…