Argues that the i-within-i condition (Chomsky, 1981) is both empirically inadequate and theoretically incoherent. A definition for circular chains, a condition on the interpretation of the reference of free pronominals and anaphors, is proposed that adequately accounts for the data involving referential circularity that had been previously…

A critical analysis explores the strictly logical aspects and pragmatic claims of a presupposition and negation theory (Burton-Roberts, 1989). Other clearly relevant facts, not previously considered, are used to show that the theory preempted empirical issues on invalid a priori grounds. (23 references) (Author/CB)

Discusses the automatic construction of abstracts from the texts of documents. Automatic sentence extraction is examined, including syntactic criteria and semantic relational criteria; textual cohesion is discussed, including the recognition of anaphors and noun phrases; text structure is addressed; and the concept of abstract-frames is described.…

The nature of case-coding strategies for relative clause formation is explained, focusing on why languages use such strategies and the forms such strategies can take. Language-specific illustration in Modern Welsh is provided to support proposed redefinitions of hierarchy and case-coding strategies. (22 references) (Author/CB)

Summarizes various linguistic approaches proposed for document analysis in information retrieval environments. Topics discussed include syntactic analysis; use of machine-readable dictionary information; knowledge base construction; the PLNLP English Grammar (PEG) system; phrase normalization; and statistical and syntactic phrase evaluation used…

Reviews theories on discourse and sentential anaphora. Levinson's general, extralinguistic pragmatic theory contrasts with the author's specifically linguistic, cognitive theory. Levinson cannot account for many anaphoric patterns actually found in natural discourse, whereas the author's accessibility theory accounts for both types of problematic…

Argues that publishers of simplified versions of literary texts accessible to the language learner give inadequate guidance to their simplifiers regarding grammatical simplification, leaving them to rely on their intuitive feel. The article outlines and demonstrates a system of grammatical simplification based on fundamental syntactic…

Analyzes the case marking structure of Japanese. It is proposed that the Case particle has its projection, the Kase Phrase, and that its head, Kase, receives case and a thematic role from an external source, and assigns them to the noun phrase.(36 references) (JL)

A review of the literature reveals that increased syntactic maturity is developmental growth properly associated with elementary and junior high school students and that measuring this maturity will not prove that an individual writer is skilled or unskilled. Improved style, unlike increased syntactic maturity, is not quantifiable growth, though…