Topical structure analysis of English-as-a-Second-Language essay tests identified two topical structure variables, proportions of sequential and parallel topics in the essays, that differentiated the highest-rated essays from the lower-rated essays. (46 references) (Author/CB)

Offers an analysis of native speech data as a base for teaching the past tense in German. Interviews with native speakers revealed that the present perfect serves as the dominant past tense for main verbs; modal verbs, the copula "sein,""haben," and certain formulaic expressions occur in the preterite; and past tense use is linked to contextual…

Salient lexical, phonetic, and morphological peculiarities of the vernacular French of Quebec are examined and explained, and similarities to European popular French are discussed, both as a guide to texts written in the vernacular and to place this variety in its sociolinguistic context. (Author/MSE)

Reviews essays on statistical analysis of literature from the journal "Computers and the Humanities." Divides the essays into four groups: the philosophical, statistical analyses of language, literary texts, and themes. Questions whether valid statistical analysis of any text must be based on complete linguistic description. Emphasizes…

Describes a case study of a second-language student's writing process and development over the course of two years. Provides both a qualitative and quantitative perspective to second-language writing development. Presents a rationale for analyzing errors and syntactic maturity to better understand strategies employed by students when writing in a…

Argues for a fundamental structural similarity between serial verb constructions, widely known from Kwa languages, and v-v compounds in Japanese. A major theoretical implication of the analysis is that it supports an analysis of clausal structure where the external argument is not included in the immediate projection of a verb but is introduced by…

Comparison of 20 essays written by English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) beginners with prose of skilled writers suggests four constraints on information packaging are needed to facilitate identification of macrostructure. Results suggests that fragmentation in beginners' prose may be overcome if learners are made aware of the notion of…

Re-examines the case of the "pseudo-passive," an interlanguage structure considered typical of first-language Chinese learners of second language English. Earlier approaches to the analysis of the structure--typological and syntactic--are reviewed and an alternative approach--discourse-syntactic--is proposed to bridge a methodological…

Two classes in Developmental Reading were trained in question-formulation and were then required to ask any number and type of questions based on four texts. Three inter-raters coded the questions for their content and form. The results of the study showed the dominance of recognition or retrieval questions, suggesting the students' proficiency in…

This study looks at the syllable onset interval (SOI) patterning in Taiwan Mandarin spontaneous speech and its relationship to discourse and syntactic units. Monologs were elicited by asking readers to tell stories depicted in comic strips and were transcribed and segmented into Discourse Segment Units (Grosz & Sidner, 1986), clauses, and…

This paper makes connections between the research reported in this issue the broader area of second language studies focusing on learner language, interaction, individual differences, linguistic analysis, and language learning and teaching. Theoretical, empirical and ethical challenges posed by technology-based second language studies are…

The extension of the progressive aspect to stative verbs has been identified as a characteristic feature of New Varieties of English across the world, including the English of black South Africans (BSAfE). This paper examines the use of the progressive aspect in BSAfE, by doing a comparative analysis of three corpora of argumentative student…

Based on the idea that linguistic competence depends ultimately on knowledge of the culturally determined norms of language use, this paper focuses on the way business-related telephone conversations between Finns and Anglo-Americans are organized, with special attention to differences in the way the opening "How are you?" sequence is…

An analysis of Aleut personal names is presented, derived from census data obtained during a 1790-1792 scientific expedition to the Aleutian Islands. The census contained about 1,500 different Aleut male names from 66 villages, listed alphabetically and interpreted here. Some identifiable female names are also included. The work also provides…

Research on adult second-language (L2) learner's self-repair is reported. Repairs are defined as "structure shifts," which are types of correction or improvement where the speaker leaves a structure uncompleted, abandoning it or shifting to another structure. Two principal types of repairs are distinguished: code- and discourse-related…