The primary aim of this study was to ascertain whether expectations affect children's performance on a measure designed to assess development of understanding of the Minimum Distance Principle (MDP) and its exceptions. There were three major hypotheses: (1) sentences harmonious with expectation should be more easily understood than neutral…

The first section of this study traces the history of the story of "Little Red Riding Hood," from its possible primitive origins, through its first publication in 1697, up to its current status. The second section analyzes the language of an interesting 1856 version of the tale and compares it with more modern versions. Table I indicates…

The behavior of the "It's...who..." type of construction and its relation to defining and non-defining relative clauses is examined. Reference is made particularly to suprasegmental features. Parallels are drawn to French relative constructions. (SCC)

Three linguistically significant dimensions of differences between illocutionary acts are outlined which are said to form the basis of a taxonomy of the fundamental classes of illocutionary acts. Five basic kinds of illoctionary acts are defined. An assessment is made of Austin's classification. (Author/RM)

Some task variables that influence sentence coding, and the ways in which those influences appear to be manifested in performance were outlined. Trends in empirical data were examined as evidence for two classes of coding strategies. (Author/RK)

In two experiments Ss (16 undergraduate students in the first, 14 in the second) listened to a sentence containing a brief tone, then wrote out the sentence and marked the location of the tone. (Author/SBH)

Discusses, using German and Italian as an example, sentences containing the indefinite agent (German "man") and reflexive and passive constructions, showing contrasts between equivalent structures in the two languages. (IFS/WGA)

The rules usually taught for german word order and order of sentence elements are seen as inaccurate. A numerical system is proposed which takes from the Duden grammar the three-field system, using the predicate segments as an orientation point. (IFS/WGA)

Demonstrates through an examination of naturally occurring discourse that Wh-Clefts and It-Clefts are not interchangeable; they have highly specialized distributions and functions. (EJS)

Proposes description of Latin syntactic structures through an analysis of their communicative functions. (AM)

Analyzes "possessive" reflexives in French, within the framework of a generative grammar approach. A list of examples is appended. (AM)

Contends that the rule "do not split infinitives" is a proper subset of the rule "do not split verbs," and that both should be taught. (DD)

Two explanations for the role of "se" in such constructions as "Se construyen casas" are given by grammarians; one states that it is a passive interpretation ("Houses are built"), the other advocates an impersonal interpretation ("One builds houses"). Different views are presented and analyzed. (Author/NCR)

A text was presented on three levels with regard to lexical density (LD - the quota of lexical words/total amount of words in a sentence). 132 subjects' comprehension of the text (discourse comprehension) was tested by a knowledge test and by subjective ratings. Results for discourse and single-sentence analysis were discussed as well as…

A defense of the grammatical correctness of the sentence, "Let us go then, you and I." (DD)