Three linguistic features used in spontaneous conversation to express emotional involvement (this, never, and all) are analyzed. "All" and "never" have referential functions; "this" has both referential and deictic functions. The focus of this analysis is on the way that speakers use these features to express emotional involvement and to orient…

This paper studies the variety of Arabic imperative sentences, which are seen as the result of an interrelated set of choices made from a limited number of binary systems, and analyzes their occurrence in different situations. Where possible, relevant features of Arabic imperative structures are compared with their nearest English equivalents. The…

Yupik language has two devices to indicate switch reference. The rules generally given for them are not entirely correct, and counterexamples to the ideal have been found previously. A subset of those counterexamples in Central Yupik Eskimo support the claim that there are two systems, partially overlapping and partially unique, that organize…

A study examined 12 preschool children's early use of "who,""what," and "which" questions in spontaneous speech. Results indicated that children began to ask object questions before they asked subject questions, and acquired argument questions before adjunct questions. It was suggested that the two results could…

A discussion of Japanese topic construction argues that topicalization is merely an attachment of the topic particle "wa". It also proposes that other operations associated with this construction, such as movement and base-generation, are not specifically related to topicalization but can be explained in terms of more general rules of…

Two studies examined the development of major properties of reflexives and pronouns in English language acquisition by applying the theory of binding of reflexives and pronouns to potential antecedents in the sentence. The children ranged in age from 2.6 to 6.6 years. In the first experiment, the children were presented with two pictures and were…

The reader-centered emphasis dominating the current literature reflects an assumption that what is learned from text, and how much is learned, is determined primarily by the reader. An alternative thesis, however, is that much of the responsibility for text comprehensibility may lie with the producer of the text. That is, the text needs to be…

Explains how grammars and textbooks can present the formal tense relations of English in a concise, uncomplicated way. (PM)

A word combination can have a grammatical function differing from that of the individual words which compose it. This increases the flexibility of lexical material and suggests a new approach to the classification of items in a lexicon. Examples are drawn mostly from German. (TL)

This study examined the effects of sentence length and correct syntax on sentence imitation in 54 first-, second-, and fifth-grade elementary school children. The same children were asked to perform an additional discrimination task between normal and scrambled sentences. (Author/CS)

The present study investigated how much surface structure and meaning is retained when subjects process sentences at different levels of analysis at presentation. (Author/RK)

Discusses rules governing the intonation of French phrases and sentences. (Text is in French.) (RM)