When acquiring the English plural, children correctly produce plural words long before they develop an understanding of morphological structure. When acquiring Sesotho noun prefixes, children are aware of the multiple constraints governing variation from a young age. Both of these cases raise questions about the Shin and Miller (2022) account of…

Discusses the falsehood of the standardly expressed rule of English that an attributive noun is singular, unless no singular exists. Modern English admits both singular and plural attributive count nouns; the selection of number of the attributive noun depends on the sense to be conveyed. This proof suggests that constructions of the (attributive…

Proposes that the theory of focus not only accounts for the definiteness restriction with respect to material extraposed from the noun phrase, but also contributes crucially to an explanation for the variable acceptability of sentences containing extractions from extraposed prepositional phrases. (58 references) (JL)

Develops Chomsky's proposal that the theoretical status of D-structure should be nullified in favor of alternation between Merger and Chain Formation, arguing that Merger has priority over Chain Formation in building A'-dependencies. Establishes a cross-linguistic correlation between wh-questions and quantification, discussing Chinese, Japanese,…

Discusses the noun-plus-adjective construction in contemporary German and problems in translating this pattern into English. (AM)

Explores the various meanings of the English nominal suffix "-ist" and their interaction with the concepts represented by the words to which the suffix is appended. Analyzes the meaning of specific words throught their semantic components, in order to discover the most suitable choice for a given context. (MES)

Found dissociations between regular and irregular inflectional processes in the formation of English past tenses, German noun plurals, and German participles. Children's inflectional errors include using regular patterns for irregular forms. Some linguistic processes, such as forming compound words, are sensitive to the distinction between regular…

Lidz, Waxman, and Freedman [Lidz, J., Waxman, S., & Freedman, J. (2003). What infants know about syntax but couldn't have learned: Evidence for syntactic structure at 18-months. "Cognition," 89, B65-B73.] argue that acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties of anaphoric one in English relies on innate knowledge within the learner.…

Discusses the differences between the English native and nonnative speaker's creation and use of nominal compounds. A comparison between English speakers and Japanese native speakers indicates that not only must nonnative speakers acquire rules in order to effectively compound words in English, but that rules must indeed exist, indicating that…

Examines the patterns of word formation as found in written English and written Chinese, contrasting the role of compounding, derivation, inflection, and word length as they relate to noun formation. Implications are drawn for the translator. (AM)

Reports four experiments examining subject-verb agreement errors in Spanish and English. Discusses cross-linguistic differences within the framework of the computational model of grammatical encoding proposed by Kempen and Hoenkamp. Suggests that languages differ in the extent to which the selection of the verb is controlled by features on the…