This book addresses what kind of analysis of spoken language is appropriate to the assessment and fostering of fluency at the various stages of a student's development. It is easy to define fluency in general terms, but it is difficult to discern what linguistic and paralinguistic options are involved. This book begins by exploring perceptions of…

This study investigates the phenomenon of "Locative Inversion" in Cantonese. The term "Locative Inversion" indicates that the locative phrase (LP) syntactic process in Cantonese and the appears at the sentence-initial position and its logical subject occurs postverbally. It is demonstrated that this Locative Inversion is a…

The structures of quantifier phrases in Thai are studied in the X-Syntax framework. Syntactic and semantic arguments are provided to prove that this model remedies the deficiency of traditional and early transformational grammar as it provides insightful analyses based on distinctions between intermediate level nodes that display internal…

This paper discusses Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), which is a structuralist-formalist theory of grammar. RRG grew out of an attempt to answer two fundamental questions: (1) what would linguistic theory look like if it were based on the analysis of Lakhota, Tagalog, and Dyirbal, rather than on the analysis of English?; and (2) how can the…

This paper presents some aspects of polyphonic theory, which contests the idea of the unique speaking subject and claims that several voices can be manifest in one utterance. The theory is related to the analysis of a coherent text consisting of several utterances. The notions of enunciator, speaker, enunciation, and utterance are defined in…

This paper proposes an explanation for the limited possibilities of realized conjunctions in multitermed coordinations. It argues that conjunction "&" heads a fully articulated phrase (&P), which can iterate &P shells, similar to "V" in Larson's (1988) VP-shell hypothesis. This structure enables a single & to unify any number of conjuncts, and…

A discussion of the phenomenological approach to text translation first analyzes the deconstructive approach, contrasts the two, and then describes the elements of the phenomenological approach that offer promise for the improvement of translation. The deconstructive theory, which draws on the insights of post-structuralism on the question of…

Analysis of Japanese numeral expressions provides evidence that their two semantically distinct functions, attributive and partitive, can be associated with distinct syntactic positions within the noun phrase (NP). The attributive numeral phrase occupies the position of a modifier and is a complement to N or N'. The quantifier (partitive) numeral…

The standard treatment of object pronouns in Latin American Spanish assigns a direct-object function to "lo" and "la" and an indirect-object function to "le." This study challenges this descriptive attribution in light of the contradictory and refractory evidence in Spanish morphosyntax. It is suggested that more…

The dependency approach to grammar, in which it is assumed that grammatical relations can be described in terms of a relation between two element types, a head and a dependent, is discussed in the context of Arabic. Operational criteria used for defining the notions of head and dependency are reviewed, and claims for the usefulness of recognizing…

The development of a new grammar of English for machine translation systems at Weidner Communications Corporation is described. Although the project began with the intention of simply modifying the grammar rules already in use in the translation system, the reorganization of the grammar was deemed necessary for providing a principled manner of…

Evaluates alternative methods of teaching "troublesome" Russian verbs in present and future tenses. Approaches to finding consistent and simple methods of explanation are discussed. Two techniques include memorizing the third person plural and infinitives, or memorizing the single form (the single-stem system). Problem verbs and their stems are…

Reviews concepts from discourse analysis and translates them into instructional techniques that can be used in the classroom to improve reading comprehension. (FL)

Ross Winterowd responds to Gary Sloan's "Transitions: Relationships among T-Units," by exploring the flaws in an earlier article by Winterowd that Sloan appeared to have missed in his criticism, particularly distinguishing between cohesion and coherence in writing, and between the writer's and the reader's cognitive processes. Includes a…

No one has ever been able to look into the language space, nor has anyone been able to measure the phenomenon of consciousness without the interference of an observer. This article changes the situation, showing that from now on it is possible to produce measures of consciousness without the presence of classical observation devices. The…