Many recent models of language comprehension have stressed the role of distributional frequencies in determining the relative accessibility or ease of processing associated with a particular lexical item or sentence structure. However, there exist relatively few comprehensive analyses of structural frequencies, and little consideration has been…

This paper presents an alternative analysis of tough constructions for N. Chomsky's 1981 wh-movement analysis of tough constructions. To replace Chomsky's solution and to obviate the need for generalized transformations in Government-Binding (GB) theory, an alternative analysis is proposed in which the tough subject originates as an embedded…

The behavior of non-terms in Shaba Swahili is examined within the framework of relational grammar. Shaba Swahili is peculiar because it reflects a complex linguistic situation; its population consisted of people coming from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The behavior of Shaba Swahili non-terms is discussed with reference to several…

Recent work in language and text has explored such broad functional categories as evidentiality and affect, and has examined their cross-linguistic occurrences and manifestations. This paper focuses on a single construction, explores its variations, and describes and explains its pragmatic and textual functions. This rare construction, exemplified…

A study investigated the differences made in the meaning of a passage in English by placing adverbial clauses before (preposing) or after (postposing) the verb. Examples are: "When the wolf arrived, he was picking apples"; "He was picking apples when the wolf arrived"; "While he was picking apples, the wolf arrived"; and "The wolf arrived while he…

This study examined children's acquisition of language by means of correlating spoken words and observed objects and actions. The common sense view of word learning via observation applies easily to learning nouns for objects, but becomes problematic in the process of learning verbs. When they encounter novel verbs applied to observed situations,…

Second in a series of books designed to make learning to write and understanding the structure of language easy and fun, this book gives students the opportunity to see how each of the parts of speech functions in a sentence. The focus of the book is twofold: to help students learn to recognize and write complete sentences and to familiarize…

A basic introductory grammatical text of Marathi is presented. The book is divided into two parts. Part One deals with a few basic sentence constructions, and with subject pronouns, the etiquette of pronoun reference, possessives, noun plurals, adjective-noun agreement, and adverbs of place and time. Part Two is almost entirely devoted to verbal…

Designed to investigate the types of responses given to a sentence completion task when constraint elements of word order, word form, redundancy, distance between lexical items, and the interaction among these elements are considered, this instrument consists of 34 sentences, half of which are high associative sentences, while the other half are…

Research in the active-passive verb relation has indicated that there is an interaction between syntactic form and verb semantics among children of preschool age. The present study examines the contribution of active-passive syntax and verb semantics to comprehension difficulty for preschoolers, 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and adults. An additional…

The use of rhetorical questions to express the negative poses some problems in Hindi; this article attempts to deal with these. (CK)

This article discusses the relationship between intonation and enunciation. The premise is that intonation performs in dependent sentences what allocution and modality perform in independent sentences. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Replicates earlier studies and shows that children's ability to process syntactically well-formed sentences increases over the early school years. (Author/ED)

Two experiments measured the frequency of perceptual errors as a function of differential presupposition in descriptive sentences. More errors occurred when misrepresentation involved presupposition than when it involved the focused proposition. Several surface structures of English, in combination, increased the presuppositional strength of the…

Concludes that complex sentences and sentences imbedded within sentences require more eye-movements. (RB)