What errors in English subject-to-verb agreement reveal about the syntactic nature of sentence subjects was investigated. Participants in 3 experiments included 104 undergraduates and 64 members of a university community. Results suggest the abstract syntactic relation of subject controls/mediates verb agreement, not notional properties and…

Investigates the pragmatic functions of topicalizing subject (S) and object (O) in Standard Arabic and attempts to find a functional explanation for the occasional preposing/topicalization of S and/or O over the verb (V) to yield a construction in the form of SVO order or any other order sanctioned by the rules of Arabic grammar. (22 references)…

Comparison of undergraduate students' (N=42) processing of equal- and unequal-length sentences with passive and active voices and positive and negative forms revealed a significant active-passive main effect when sentences were of unequal length. An active-passive difference for positive, but not negative, sentences was also shown. (Author/CB)

A study was undertaken to test the theory that canonical sentence schemas can sometimes assign argument structure to verbs. The theory has the advantage of explaining errors without postulating the acquisition of erroneous lexical entries that have to be learned, and it can be extended to other kinds of errors in the choice and placement of…

An analysis of Polish transitive clause order is presented from the perspective of two competing word order principles: the form-driven principle of syntactic weight proposed by Hawkins and the pragmatically based Topic-Comment principle. The Topic-Comment principle is shown to be more consistently reflected in Polish transitive order. (Contains…

Some differences between Western and Chinese thought patterns are highlighted to help language teachers better prepare teaching strategies for Chinese-speaking students. Differences discussed include emphasis given to bigger/smaller units, tense, direct/indirect expression, individualism, appropriate behavior, linear vs. circular thinking…

Proposes that unbounded dependency constructions in English instantiate a surface subject-predicate structure in which the predicate is typically discontinuous. Evidence supports this discontinuous analysis over the operator-variable structure conventionally assigned to unbounded dependencies. A model of phrase structure is outlined. (85…

Children's literature, with its complex structures and discourse strategies, helps beginning language students develop reading strategies and begin understanding discourse strategies in native speech. Tsao's notion of discourse analysis is used to introduce topic deletion in a sample of literary texts. (Contains 25 references.) (LB)

Three studies investigated Spanish and English readers' interpretations of sentences with complex noun phrases (NPs). In contrast to earlier findings, results provided evidence for cross-language universality of the late closure parsing principle. Results suggest that late closure is not language-specific but specific to only certain classes of…

Explores research relating parts of clauses to the communicative roles they play. Proposes that M. A. K. Halliday's system of analyzing sentences into one or more kinds of themes and a rheme is a useful system in conducting such research. Discusses implications of this system for understanding discourse production, structure, or reception. (RDS)

A reassessment of the role of negative evidence in nonnative language acquisition argues that the grammar-building process cannot make use of negative evidence to restructure interlanguage grammars, and that second-language learners do not unlearn verb movement but extend the pattern with which they are already familiar. (46 references) (Author/CB)

Several examples of genre analysis are examined to identify criteria employed for the identification of textual boundaries. The conclusion is that there are nonlinguistic reasons for generic staging in texts and that the search for structural divisions is a search for cognitive boundaries in terms of convention, appropriacy, and content. (42…

The effects of 3 factors with reputed control over the word-order options allowed by English grammar (animacy, word length, and prosody) were studied in recall and judgment tasks performed by 850 undergraduates in 7 experiments. Findings suggest a preeminent role of conceptual factors in word order. (SLD)

Investigates three types of cues [semantic, syntactic (intensional), and adjacency] to subjects of verbs in English sentences. Finds that, when the adjacency strategy does not apply, even highly literate native speakers have great difficulty in correctly comprehending subject-verb correspondences. Discusses findings in context of the relationship…

Comparison of disfluent conversational utterances of 14 children who stutter and 14 children (mean age of both groups 52 months) who do not stutter found that for both groups, disfluency clusters were typically produced at clause onset and within the most complex linguistic contexts and that they reflect the effects of producing multiple syntactic…