The syntactic nonconversational features of monologue speech were analyzed in nine normal Ss (ages 2 and 3 years), three at each of R.Brown's three language developmental stages. (Author/PHR)

Examines a representative text corpus to gain insights into language structure and use and to open new areas of linguistic inquiry. Various illustrations are presented that provide a glimpse into the value of corpus-based investigations for increasing one's understanding of language use and imparting insights important for designing effective…

Argues that reading research often traces the "first cause" of reading back to the "taxonomic linguistic system," a system discussed in last month's column. Asserts that although many possible first causes exist, the more important issue concerns how to apply these multiple causes in developing an approach to reading…

This article presents evidence supporting the syntactic nature of adjunct extraction in English and other languages, including the coextensiveness of adjunct and argument extraction and their parallelism with respect to strong/weak crossover effects. Also discussed is the challenge that binding domain effects pose for accounts of adjunct…

This article presents a comprehensive view of German syllable structure based on phonetic and psycholinguistic experimental results supplemented by phonological arguments. It supports a theory of syllable structure based on the arrangement of segments according to the Sonority Sequencing Principle augmented by language-specific constraints.…

Examines Pierre Bourdieu's basic theory on language and criticisms of structuralism, transformational grammar, and the speech act theory as they appear in Language and Symbolic Power. Bourdieu's theories are applied to the colonial and postcolonial language situation in Nigeria. (JP)

The proceedings of a 1992 French conference on the structuralist approach of linguist Lucien Tesniere are reviewed, focusing on the recent evolution of this approach in French linguistics. Topics discussed include the origins of Tesniere's theory, his model of dependency, flat phrastic structure, fusion of the lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic…

The family size of the constituents of compound words, or the number of compounds sharing the constituents, has been shown to affect adults' access to compound words in the mental lexicon. The present study was designed to see if family size would affect children's segmentation of compounds. Twenty-five English-speaking children between 3;7 and…

Many studies have shown that listeners can segment words from running speech based on conditional probabilities of syllable transitions, suggesting that this statistical learning could be a foundational component of language learning. However, few studies have shown a direct link between statistical segmentation and word learning. We examined this…

Studies the linguistic conception of the laboratory exercises on intonal expressivity included in the audio-visual method for advanced students: "Express Yourself as a Specialist In..." (Text is in French.) (PMP)

Noting that current theories of comprehension are based on the assumption that cognitive patterns (schemata) are structural constructs and that credit for the structural assumption is generally given to F. C. Bartlett, this paper suggests that problems concerning the phenomenal nature of the patterning aspect of cognition may be more readily…

This paper is a syntactic analysis of standard French negation. The following expressions are described in detail: (1)ne...pas(point), (2)nullement (aucunement), (3)plus, (4)jamais, (5)pas encore, (6)guere, (7)rien, (8)personne, (9)aucun(e), (10)nul(le), (11)ni...ni..., (12)nulle part, (13)que, (14)pas un(e), (15)nul. The negative expressions are…

This book, a revised and expanded English version of the author's Italian work "La Linguistica strutturale" (1961), is a survey of the main trends in structural linguistics intended not only for the linguist but for specialists in other fields and the general reader as well. The initial chapter, "Introductory Notions," discusses general linguistic…

This volume explores objectively the essential characteristic of nine twentieth-century linguistic theories with the theoretical variant for discussion based on one closely representative of work within a given approach or usually associated with the name of the theory. First, the theory of Ferdinand de Saussure is discussed based on his book,…

This paper presents a method of encoding geometric line-drawings in a way which allows sets of such drawings to be interpreted as formal languages. A characterization of certain geometric predicates in terms of their properties as languages is obtained, and techniques usually associated with generative grammars and formal automata are then applied…