Discusses Chomsky's linguistic theories and suggests that these theories have clear implications for politics, philosophy, and psychology. (five references) (JL)

In this study, errors in the English writing of students in the College of World Englishes at Chukyo University, Japan are examined to determine if there is a level of acceptance among teachers. If there is, are these errors becoming part of an accepted, standardized Japanese English Results show there is little acceptance of third person…

In vocabulary testing, whether to adopt context is a heat-debated topic. In the article, an experiment is designed to investigate what is the effect of zero context and sentence context on the vocabulary testing? And how do the different kinds of context in vocabulary affect the subjects' performance? The experimental result demonstrates that…

This study challenges the prevailing interpretations of the Greek rhetorical principle of "kairos"--"saying the right thing at the right time"--and attempts to draw on a more nuanced understanding of the term in order to provide generative re-readings of three Braddock Award-winning essays. (Contains 6 notes and 2 figures.)

Eight experiments evaluated a core assumption of several theories of text processing, the shared resource assumption, which states that component text processes share limited processing resources. Short texts each contained two critical sentences that together warranted a causal inference. The syntactic structure of the second sentence was either…

Noam Chomsky's transformational-generative grammar model may effectively be translated into an equivalent computer model. Phrase-structure rules and transformations are tested as to their validity and ordering by the computer via the process of random lexical substitution. Errors appearing in the grammar are detected and rectified, and formal…

This is a tongue-in-cheek rendering of an imaginary linguist's attempt to prove that a grammatical rule is not in fact optional, but conditioned. Through manipulation of the data, use of computers, etc., he succeeds in "proving" this. He also "proves" that this conditioning is contextual; that the rule which exhibits it is…

Samples of written language were collected from 140 congenitally deaf children at grade levels 3, 5, 7, and 9. The samples were then subjected to error, quantitative, and transformational analysis. Findings suggested a relationship between the order in which the deaf child acquires the rules of his language and the ordering of rules in a…

This paper discusses the validity and role of linguistic theory in terms of philosophy and logic and considers the relationship among these fields of human knowledge. The main objective of linguistic science is to discover the composition laws actually used by speech communities at any given moment in history. Linguistics is therefore not…

The eight papers in this issue are addressed to issues in pragmatics, semantics, syntax, discourse analysis, morphology, and particularly to issues touching on two or more of these areas at once. The final paper touches on phonology as well. The papers are: "The Myth of Semantic Presupposition," by Steven Boer and William Lycan; "A…

REPORTED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS AN EXPERIMENT TO DETERMINE THE DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY IN LEARNING AND USING "ENGLISH GRAMMAR II," A TRANSFORMATIONALLY GENERATED SUBSET OF ENGLISH (SEE AL 001 306). THE AUTHOR PRESENTS A GENERAL, NON-TECHNICAL EXPLANATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR AND A DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT IN LEARNING TO USE…

There is a set of difficult Spanish grammar questions (ser-estar, preterite-imperfect, subjunctive-indicative, word order, and prepositions) in which the description of the semantic component is essential. Even though generative formulations treat them in differing ways, these questions possess the common characteristic of associating a form…

Articles represent four schools of thought in the field of linguistics: structural, behavioral, transformational, and tagmemic. Summarizing structural linguistics before 1956, John Lotz emphasizes the importance of spoken language and the "internal order" imposed upon "physical and behavioral phenomena," and indicates some of the basic beliefs of…

Three grammars that, since the 50's, have supplemented or offered alternatives to traditional grammar are discussed in this article. The role of grammar in communicative utterances and the underlying considerations in describing a grammatical system are analyzed. Then, brief summaries about and comments on structural linguistics, tagmemic grammar,…

A review of traditional and transformational studies on the phenomenon of sentential complementation (noun clauses) reveals many areas of agreement. Although some adherents of generative grammar may have occasionally obscured this aspect because of the offensive nature of their criticism of other modes of analysis, it is seen that, in several…