Syntactic differences between languages are the focus of attention in this approach to contrastive study of grammatical categories. The categories of the first language are listed in a "translation-paradigm" opposite the possible categories of the target language after translation of the corpus. Three examples which contrast the clause, verbal…

The relevance of a specific linguistic concept--deep structure--to reading comprehension was investigated. The sample consisted of 87 fifth-grade students who were of above-average intelligence. To study the relationship of children's skill at recovering the deep structure of sentences to reading comprehension, the Deep Structure Recovery Test…

This text compiles papers treating problems in literary analysis which were read at a conference at the University of Toronto, Canada. Papers include: (1) "Elements Phonostylistiques du Texte Litteraire," (2) Some uses of the Grammar in Poetic Analysis, (3) "Morphosyntaxe et Stylistique," (4) "Le Lexique dans l'Oeuvre Litteraire," (5) "Analyse…

A discussion of a semantic approach to teaching these particles. The meaning of -zhe can be best characterized as "incompleteness.' Another characteristic of -zhe in a simple sentence is to change an action verb into a stative one. -Ne in conjunction with -zhe mitigates the incompleteness represented by -zhe. (Author/AMH)

Presents an analysis of noun phrases in which the definite article is used and omitted. Several studies are reviewed and two types of occurrences are distinguished: direct (agent, instrument, object) and oblique (locative, dative). The relationships, perceptible in the deep structure, are blurred in the transformations leading to surface…

Discusses how the different conceptions of a "private world" between native English speakers and native Chinese speakers can result in misunderstandings. The study examines the semantic structures of two Chinese categories, "si" (i.e., private, selfish, illegal) and "gong" (i.e., public, unselfish, official). Results…

Two studies are reported in which the following theory is tested: the agrammatic sentence form that is observed in the spontaneous speech of Broca's aphasics is attributable to the selection of elliptical syntactic structures in which the slots for many of the closed-class words that appear in complete sentences are lacking. (54 references)…

Supports the theory of level ordering by demonstrating, on the basis of productive morphology and phonology, that Turkish has four lexical levels. The first is the principle of Level Economy, which accounts for systematic exceptionality. The second is Level Prespecification, which exempts a root entirely from early lexical levels. Both of these…

A study investigated the effects of using videotaped self-modeling on the acquisition of new linguistic structures used for requesting in three preschoolers with developmental disabilities. Participants were able to learn through self-modeling; however, initial difficulties with generalization to the classroom setting were found. (CR)

In the current Government and Binding framework, every sentence must have a subject. When the matrix subject position is non-thematic, it is filled by an expletive. Japanese, however, lacks an overt expletive. This raises the question of whether the language has an expletive which is null, or raises an embedded subject to the matrix subject…

Tutelo is a Siouan language that was once spoken in Virginia and the Carolinas. Before it died out, a few scholars collected enough data on the language to elicit the main features and characteristics of the language. This paper looks at the noun in Tutelo. Specific focus is on the shape of the root, the marking of gender and number, the…

Analysis of the cofunctional relationship between common nouns and adjectives in English is examined in terms of the principle of semantic copredication. It is proposed that a formalized semantic metalanguage system can be constructed to demonstrate that some English adjectives behave like common nouns. Numerous examples are provided throughout…

Analysis of the interaction of the grammatical and copulative aspects of the Spanish verbs "era,""estaba,""fue," and "estuvo" revealed that for most of the data obtained, copulative and grammatical aspect operate independently, with syntactic-semantic constraints selecting one copula and grammatical aspect…

This article focuses on the structural and semantic analysis of the sentences containing the pronoun "it" as a formal object. Although at first sight "it" seems to have no meaning whatsoever, it actually plays an important role in the semantic structure of the sentence. The formal object "it" changes the…

Discusses the structure of Spanish noun phrases within the general framework of minimalist syntax. Proposes nominal functional category and feature checking via chain linking and suggests lexical specifications for common and proper nouns accounting for their distribution in the clause. (32 references) (Author/CK)