The nature of grammatical relations such as subject and object are examined. The ways in which subjects differ from language to language are described and the way in which a language can do without a subject relation is revealed. Three primitive functional properties of sentences which underlie the syntactic relations of subject and topic are…

The factors which influence a speaker's decision to use one categorization for an object as opposed to others that are available are analyzed. The categories that are most used in speech are basic level categories established at the most abstract level at which the category members: (1) share a number of physical and functional attributes, (2)…

This paper describes a study on the nature of the linguistic information presented in children's television programs which was conducted to compare the verbal communication features of different types of programs, determine whether there were adjustments of linguistic information that would facilitate young children's linguistic processing, and…

THIS PAPER PROPOSES SOME INSIGHTS INTO THE PROBLEMS FACED BY SOMEONE ABOUT TO EMBARK ON A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR OF AZERBAIJANI. IT IS NOT A SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS, BUT A SAMPLING OF IDEAS PERTINENT TO SUCH AN ANALYSIS. THE PROBLEMS DEALT WITH ARE (1) GRAMMATICAL DEPTH IN AZERBAIJANI BASED ON VICTOR YNGVE'S DEFINITION OF "DEPTH"--A NUMBER OF SENTENCES OF…

THE LANGUAGE OF THE HAUSA TRIBE AND A LINGUA FRANCA FOR MANY INHABITANTS OF NIGERIA'S NORTHERN REGION, HAUSA IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT LANGUAGE OF WEST AFRICA AND HAS MANY DIALECTS. THIS TEXT IS BASED ON THE KANO DIALECT AND IS INTENDED AS A PRELIMINARY STUDY TO A MORE THOROUGH ANALYSIS OF HAUSA MORPHOLOGY, SYNTAX, AND…

RESEARCH ON THE TEACHING OF VOCABULARY WAS COLLECTED, AND THE VALIDITY OF SUCH INFORMATION WAS EXAMINED TO IDENTIFY SUCCESSFUL APPLICATIONS OF THE TEACHING OF VOCABULARY IN SCHOOLS. SOURCES BEARING ON THE SUBJECT OF THIS STUDY WERE INVESTIGATED IN DETAIL. THE INITIAL SURVEYING AND REPORT READING LED TO THE SECURING OF 80 STUDIES THAT WERE…

A TRANSFORMATIONAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN FRENCH GRAMMAR IS SIMILAR TO THE "RULE OF CACAPHONY" PROPOSED BY PORT-ROYAL GRAMMARIANS TO AVOID BAD PRONUNCIATION. BY MEANS OF CERTAIN REWRITE RULES, THE CORRECT USAGE OF THE PARTITIVE (DE) CAN BE TAUGHT AND EXPLAINED MORE SIMPLY THAN WAS POSSIBLE USING THE TRADITIONAL METHOD. THE RULE OF CACAPHONY…

CERTAIN FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS ON DIFFERENCES IN LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION WERE STUDIED IN A PRELIMINARY PROJECT. DURING A 5-MONTH PERIOD, 75 EXPLORATORY AND 25 SUPPLEMENTARY TAPE INTERVIEWS WERE CONDUCTED. INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP INTERVIEWS WERE RECORDED FOR PREADOLESCENT, ADOLESCENT, AND ADULT NEGRO SUBJECTS. THE INTERVIEW SCHEDULE WAS…

THIS REPORT CONTAINS FOUR ARTICLES REPRESENTING THE FINAL EFFORTS OF A COMPREHENSIVE EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM IN SPEECH CONTROL. THE ARTICLES ARE TITLED (1) "THE BEHAVIORAL BASIS OF THE POLARITY PRINCIPLE IN LINGUISTICS," (2) "MODELS OF LEARNING AND METHODS OF TEACHING," (3) "RETENTION OF VOCAL TOPOGRAPHY," AND (4)…

THIS PAPER WAS PRESENTED AT A TWO-PART CONFERENCE ON PLANNING AND OPERATING LANGUAGE LABORATORIES. DISCUSSED WERE PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF CONSTRUCTING TESTS OF ORAL PRODUCTION. TEST EXAMPLES WERE GIVEN IN FRENCH. METHODS FOR DEVELOPING MORE OBJECTIVE TEST PROGRAMS WERE PRESENTED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PART OF A SERIES, ED 003 919-ED 003 924, AND ED 003…

Noting that the mental health practitioner needs highly developed linguistic and communicative skills in order to precipitate therapeutic changes, this paper discusses the nature of the contexts of therapeutic interaction. It examines verb tense as a linguistic context marker and shows how various schools of therapy can use it. In addition, it…

Data on four infants between the ages of 12 and 20 months were collected to answer two questions about children's communication behavior. (1) Is there a correspondence between communicative intentions expressed in gestures and vocal utterances? If both spring from common organismic tendencies, it should be possible to discern an "indicating"…

An annotated bibliography of materials that are useful in studying developmental pragmatics is presented. Two areas of pragmatics which are not included are referential communication and sociolinguistics. The annotations are brief and are intended to indicate the general content of the entry, but not experimental results or overall quality. Some…

This study addressed four questions raised in syntactic acquisition studies conducted by Carol Chomsky and others. Specifically, questions concerned the nature of syntactic structures in children's language repertoires, the uniformity and rate of acquisition of particular structures, the generalizability of the minimal-distance principle, and the…

This report proposes that people often plan their speech acts to affect their listeners' beliefs, goals, and emotional states and that such language use can be modeled by viewing speech acts as operators in a planning system, allowing both physical and speech acts to be integrated into plans. Methodological issues of how speech acts should be…