Observation of sentences shows that expected incompatibility of the present perfect in English and adverbs of finished time may be ignored by speakers who focus on the current relevance of the event to the moment of speaking. Communicational problems and conflicts may be resolved pragmatically with reference to the principal purpose of…

Critiques Aoun and Li's (1993) syntactic analysis of quantifier-scope interpretations in English, Chinese, and Japanese, showing serious theoretical problems with their results and proposing a quantifier-scope analysis that avoids those problems. The proposed expert system considers several important considerations and arrives at a composite…

Results of three experiments are reported that investigated the processing of locally ambiguous object-subject sentences in German. The aim was to test whether the type of grammatical information that signals garden-path has an impact on how difficult it is to arrive at the correct structural assignment. (Author/VWL)

Shows that the German "perfekt" has a uniform temporal meaning that results systematically from the interaction of its three components--finiteness marking, auxiliary, and past participle--and that the two readings are the consequence of a structural ambiguity. This analysis also predicts the properties of other participle constructions, in…

Outlines three criteria that justify using passive voice. Claims teaching sentence focus--keeping the topic of the sentence in the subject position--will accomplish the end of teaching the appropriate uses of active and passive voice (NH)

Shows that there are at least two types of gapping in natural languages: canonical gapping and LPD. Argues that Chinese has some gapping sentences that result from ATB movement from V to "v." Data from Chinese affirm Johnson's (1994) theory of gapping that gapping occurs in those languages only with verb movement. (Author/VWL)

Outlines basic functions of passive constructions in language in general, and describes in more detail what form this takes in a proposal of American Sign Language (ASL). Compares discourse examples of active and passive constructions in ASL, addresses the role of topicalization in passive constructions, and discusses passives and reference…

"Of the many difficulties young writers may encounter when engaged in the complex act of writing, crafting sentences that accurately convey their intended meaning is particularly challenging. Sentence combining can provide systematic instruction in sentence-construction skills within an overall framework of the writing workshop."

On the basis of 572 examples taken from seven million-word corpora of written English the present study--which complements the spoken data-based studies of Oberlander & Delin (1996) and Weinert & Miller (1996)--explores the relationship between information structure and discourse role with reversed what-clefts. The study confirms the typically…

Three experiments are reported that examined whether stem complexity plays a role in inflecting polymorphemic words in language production. Experiment 1 showed that preparation effects for words with polymorphemic stems are larger when they are produced among words with constant inflectional structures compared to words with variable inflectional…

The purpose of the current study was to analyze the relationship between automated essay scoring (AES) and human scoring in order to determine the validity and usefulness of AES for large-scale placement tests. Specifically, a correlational research design was used to examine the correlations between AES performance and human raters' performance.…

Students in higher learning institutions need to write lots of reports based on the projects done. Since they are at the tertiary level of education, they are required to use English in their reports. This is to ensure that they are able to function well in English later at the workplace. Writing requires students to apply rules regarding sentence…

We often speak about developing students' cultural and intercultural awareness as part of the language learning process. However, these elements are often dealt with superficially and the methods used are somewhat unclear to many practitioners and to learners themselves. As a result, we very often hear that learners do not learn a language at the…

SV sentences with unaccusative verbs like "The leaf fell" involve movement from object to subject position. This line of studies tested whether young children can produce this movement and whether they represent SV sentences with unaccusatives as derived by movement. In Hebrew, unaccusatives appear in both SV and VS orders. This optionality allows…

In "The New Language of the Old West," "Deadwood"'s creator and executive producer David Milch offers an extended exposition of the television show's language: "Language--both obscene and complicated--was one of the few resources of society that was available to these people.... It's very well documented that the obscenity…