These indexes, a set of measures of growth in syntactic fluency, are derived from the research in written syntax of Hunt and Christensen. They are a means of linguistic analysis of each T-unit (independent clause and its modifiers) in a writing sample. The indexes include: mean T-unit length; number of words in free modifiers, final position only;…

In recent years, there has been a growing research interest in the analysis of errors adults make while learning a second language. The underlying objective of most of these analyses has been to reveal the systematicity of adult errors in an effort to understand the process of adult second language learning. This paper deals with errors from a…

The effect of sentence length and syntactic structure on the repeatability of sentences by native and foreign speakers of English was investigated in this study using 18 native English speakers, 30 advanced foreign students, and 114 intermediate level foreign students. Eighty-four sentences were presented for repetition, varying according to word…

This study examines the effect of expectation (children's judgments as to the probable actor within a given sentence) upon comprehension of passive sentences, the relationship of syntactic comprehension to the paradigmatic-syntagmatic shift in word associations, and the effect of sex on each. Forty first-graders and 40 kindergarteners were blocked…

Patterns and possibilities of free modifiers in written composition were studied. One purpose of the investigation was to help students communicate more effectively in writing. A more specific purpose was to determine if complicated syntactic elements used as free modifiers could be lifted from the complex subject of grammar and be presented as…

The role of imagery formation as a mnemonic device in drawing valid inferences from a prose passage was studied. The 72 undergraduate subjects were divided into two groups: one given instructions to form images for the objects discussed in the text, the other given instructions to repeat each sentence five times. Half the passages consisted of…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether: (1) a new basal reading series (N Series) contained a larger variety of sentence patterns in beginning reading materials than a traditional reading series (T Series); (2) the variety of language patterns was systematically increased in beginning reading materials within either series; (3) the T…

Current research in linguistic typology shows some syntactic processes, such as rightward dislocation of modifiers, to be characteristic of certain types of languages, and that a language of that type without such processes is "unnatural" and likely to develop them. For instance, almost all languages with order Verb-Object (VO) have dislocation…

This study attempted to validate both the Fry-Kernel Distance Theory and the De Pierro findings, in determining the suitability of text material for the students to be instructed. First-year community college students were presented with sentences arranged in pairs, each representing two of four prescribed types. Subjects were to select the harder…

This book is based on the York Computer Inventory of Prose Style, which seeks to provide a quantitative description of the syntactic characteristics of the literary language of specific authors over the last 400 years. After a brief theoretical introduction and a description of texts and sampling procedures, the discussion turns to specific…

The tenth volume in this series contains five articles dealing with various aspects of Serbo-Croatian-English contrastive analysis. They are: "The Infinitive as Subject in English and Serbo-Croatian," by Ljiljana Bibovic; "The Contrastive Analysis of Collocations: Collocational Ranges of "Make" and "Take" with…

Describes an experimental computer-assisted history tutoring system that uses augmented transitional networks to allow computer interaction in natural language. (IRT)

This article consists of a practical semantic explanation of the embedding process in French and English, and outlines a methodology devised to facilitate the teaching of this process. (CLK)

Discussed are the construction and scoring of elicited imitation tasks, a sentence repetition procedure which can be used to obtain information about a child's syntactic abilities. (LS)