Why do children from some minority groups and children living in poverty do poorly in school when compared to white middle-class children? Researchers have offered a large number of different answers to this question. One of the most popular answers has been based on the notion of "decontextualized language." This article argues that…

We reanalyzed the data in Drai and Grodzinksy (2005), considering individual patients' responses to different sentence types to be non-independent events. The analyses revealed effects of two of the three factors identified by Drai and Grodzinsky-constituent movement and passive mood. The result is inconsistent with the trace deletion hypothesis;…

Examines the question of the transitivity of the part-whole relation in grammar, in the context of the sentence and its semantic structure. (AM)

This paper proposes that resultative verb-particle constructions (VPCs) have an underlyingly different structure from idiomatic VPCs; both structures differ from the Small Clause analysis of R. Kayne (1985) et al and the verb-particle complex analysis of K. Johnson (1991). Empirical support for the new proposal comes from anaphor deletion facts…

Examines the distribution and function of the French conjunctions "ou,""soit," and "tantot." (AM)

Describes and compares restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses and shows that, when studying their superficial differences, there is no need for construction-specific stipulations that distinguish between them. All the superficial differences between the two are derived from the single basic difference that one is a modifier and the other is not.…

This article focuses on the structural and semantic analysis of the sentences containing the pronoun "it" as a formal object. Although at first sight "it" seems to have no meaning whatsoever, it actually plays an important role in the semantic structure of the sentence. The formal object "it" changes the…

Presents a functional description of punctuation as a delimiter of words, sentences, and paragraphs, and as a semantic and extralinguistic indicator. (AM)

A defense of the passive voice against charges that it is wordy, obscure, and ineffective. (DD)

Analyzes the distribution of information in so-called "synonymous" sentences in the context of a semantic perspective. (AM)

Describes the interaction between disjunct constituents and sentential structures and argues for an extension of the theoretical apparatus intially postulated in autosegmental phonology to represent complex syntactic structures containing disjunct constituents with a number of independent phrase markers that intersect at the linear axis. (66…

Examines research favoring the use of active voice over passive voice verbs and the influence of active voice on sentence length and position and emphasis. Discusses the implications of this rule on technical writing. (HTH)

Discusses the use of the comma in Spanish and gives examples of its use in Spanish literature. (NCR)

Demonstrates the role of punctuation in relation to the syntax, communicative value, and semantics of the French sentence. (AM)

Discusses the uses of the comma in Spanish and shows a poem that can be interpreted in different ways with different punctuation. (NCR)