Criticizes attempts to incorporate transformational grammar into foreign language teaching, citing specific failures in experiments with the transformational grammar model. (IFS/WGA)

Surveys current developments in linguistics and other disciplines which influence language teaching methodology. A brief bibliography is appended. (AM)

Examines the positive and negative features of traditional, transformational, and notional grammar as they relate to the teaching of French as a foreign language. (AM)

Reviews some aspects of word formation in foreign language teaching that are receiving attention in current discussions. (IFS/WGA)

Describes the use of some determiners in French and shows how their syntactic and semantic roles are interrelated. (Text is in French.) (TL)

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)…

Argues that if the study of language is to become important again in the teaching of writing, it will be through an expanded notion of rhetoric that understands language as the site of struggle over socially produced meaning. (RAE)

Provides a general overview of two books--"The Second Time Around: Minimalism and Second Language Acquisition" and "Second Language Syntax: A Generative Introduction--and shows how the respond to key issues in second language acquisition, including the process of second language acquisition, access to universal grammar, the role of…

Two types of sentence-level writing problems are often observed in student writing: (1) those that violate conventions of standard written English, such as subject-verb agreement errors and comma splices; and (2) those that involve a stylistic choice, such as beginning a sentence with an expletive structure like "There are" or using "if" rather…

The structure of complementation in complex predicates in Korean has attracted configurational analysis. Using a lexical functional grammar (LFG) framework, this paper examines the structure of complementation in complex predicates. The term "predicate" in this context is used to describe both verbs and adjectives that are assumed to…

Interest in the application of modern linguistic theory in composition research has faded, possibly because some of the basic principles that inform linguistic study have been misunderstood. For example, a common misconception is that linguists use the term "generate" to mean "produce." However, the purpose of a generative…

Dissatisfaction with the standard transformational grammar approach to teaching passive voice sentences gave rise to the method developed. It is based on the framework of a lexical-functional grammar, which claims that both active and passive sentences are base-generated, and that both active and passive verb forms occur in the lexicon. It would…

The modal auxiliary system in both German and English is seen as a grammatical category (relative assertion) which stands in specific opposition to the absence of a modal in a sentence (factual assertion). (Available from North-Holland Publishing Co., P. O. Box 211, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.) (CHK)

The fact that impersonal verbs in Russian do not form active participles or gerunds is discussed and explained. (RM)

An argument is made for a theory of deep structure which does not neglect surface structure analysis. See FL 508 197 for availability. (RM)