Discusses various theoretical approaches to the semantic analysis of lexical units, focusing on the componential or axiological approach which defines a unit's semantic "value" as the combination of certain distinctive features. Concludes that this approach, so far, has not offered much practical assistance to translators faced with…

Study of verb-copying in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on its relationship to the thematic structures of verbs and on phrase structures, shows that the function of verb-copying is to highlight the quantity element in a sentence. (21 references) (Author/CB)

An investigation of the sociolinguistic features that govern contemporary use of the Italian formal ("Lei") and informal ("tu") forms of address suggests that teachers of Italian must help students become aware of the complex factors underlying the choice of form, rather than just drill them in usage. (12 references) (CB)

Presents basic rules governing the use of German predicates that are interpreted as but not synonymous with "be" or "put" in English, focusing on the verbs' special characteristics and correct usage in authentic German sentences. (12 references) (Author/CB)

A pilot study attempting to determine the feasibility and value of a cognition-based study of classifiers in Chinese demonstrated that the use of the classifier "tiao" was not an arbitrary linguistic device of categorization, but represented some type of human categorization based on an imputed salient perceptual property of extension of…

All consonant sounds involving the sound /y/ omit the letter Y, such as few, cute, immune, and view. Perhaps 75% of high school students whose formal reading level is below seventh grade will not be able to pronounce these words that contain the "invisible" Y sound. Good students usually do not have to be taught this pattern, but average…

This is a contrastive synchronic study. Scales and rules of conversion are set up whereby it is shown which non-cognate consonants appear in initial position in one dialect and what they become when converted to the other. A matrix of contrast to show consonantal feature differences is also used. (SC)

This article describes an experiment in which the following hypothesis was tested and supported: that tension serves to reinforce the phoneme's articulatory characteristic, whether it be closure or openness; and that audibility interferes with perception of tension. (Text is in French.) (AM)

THIS STUDY OF THE CANTONESE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM IS A CASE STUDY OF THE PHONOLOGICAL COMPONENT OF A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR. ATTEMPTS ARE MADE IN CHAPTER III TO SOLVE SOME OLD PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE ANALYSIS OF CANTONESE WITHIN THIS NEW THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK. MOST OF THE PROBLEMS ARE PSEUDO-PROBLEMS, IN THE SENSE THAT THEY POSE DIFFICULTIES ONLY…

The author reviews the lexical, grammatical, and phonological criteria claimed in support of the hypothesis that there is a "Midland" dialect. He finds the claim to be "an unsubstantiable artifact of word geography" and discusses the inadequacies of this method. While he is "not questioning the existence of a subdialect corresponding to what has…

This paper attempts to prove that King's (1973) hypothesis of a distinction between the phonological and the phonetic level, if it exists, is not as intuitively recognizable as he indicates. Two rules which King maintains are phonetic (one relating to regressive assimilation, the other to velar anteriorization) are shown not to correspond to his…

This paper examines the acquisition of English fricatives and is a preliminary report on one aspect of the Child Phonology Project at Stanford University. A characterization of English fricatives is presented, followed by a summary of current information on their acquisition. Three sample hypotheses from the Stanford project are discussed in…

The reappearance of an old controversy on how best to analyze the Russian palatalized consonants prompts the author of this article to define the words "palatalization" and "palatal." Contrastive examples clarify phonetic terminology including the classifications of "labial voiced and voiceless palatalized stops,""labial voiced and voiceless…

This article presents a description of intonation in English in terms of the relationship between the syntactic surface structure of a given sentence and certain distinctive intonative features.