This article discusses the origin and history of three Spanish idioms: "Aqui hay gato encerrado,""Seguir en sus trece," and "La carabina de Ambrosio." (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

A more highly constrained and more explanatory theory of phonology is produced if abbreviatory and essential variables are restricted. (CK)

To make a spelling program more effective, use the children's spelling tests to analyse their errors and indicate spelling patterns. (JH)

Switch reference, in which certain clauses contain a signal indicating whether that clause has the same or a different subject, is examined in Mbya Guarani. It is found that most cases can be covered by a grammatical rule stated in terms of the grammatical subjects of the two clauses involved, yielding "same subject" and "different…

Definiteness and indefiniteness are usually seen as essentially a matter of lexical semantics, in that whether a noun phrase (NP) is definite or indefinite depends on the choice of determiner. It may be more accurate to say that the position of the determiners within phrase structure configurations may correlate with the definite/indefinite…

An investigation of interrogative structures in French examined the extent to which variation in the structure of the questions was conditioned by their function. Data are drawn from a corpus containing 177 yes/no questions and 117 WH- questions. Findings suggest the following: (1) in identifying the communicative function of interrogatives, it is…

A series of phonetic production and perception experiments were designed to describe the phonological or phonetic domains of two effects in spoken English: final lengthening, generally interpreted as a mark for the edge of some linguistically-defined unit of speech production, and stress-timed shortening, generally interpreted as evidence for…

In an attempt to determine whether the generic "man" has a strong association with maleness, 307 college students (122 males and 185 females) were polled to assess their attitudes about whether people "outgrow" the limited definition of man or whether the generic still retains an exclusionary, "mostly males" coloring. In order to prevent the…

Examines the relationship between speaker and hearer in linguistic communication. (LG)

Spanish and English have exocentric verb+object = subject/instrument compounds, such as "abrelatas" (opens-cans) "can-opener" and "scarecrow." They share a general constructional pattern, consist of "clumps" or subfamilies of forms, and have a negative or jocular tendency. They differ in their individual…

Report of a study conducted to test the verbal behavior of native speakers of Spanish who were asked to provide a verb form not commonly used, the first person singular present tense of the verb "roer." (KM)

Argues that elementary reading materials should reflect the advanced syntax already evident in the language patterns of most youngsters. (RB)

Original Russian version appeared in "Voprosy jazykoznanija" 3, 1971. (DD)