Scholars of language development have long been challenged to understand the development of functional categories. Traditionally, it was assumed that children's language development initially relies on lexical elements, while functional elements become accessible only at later periods; and that it is lexical growth which bootstraps grammatical…

This paper addresses the complicated issue of attribution of gender in French nouns. Firstly, it presents a range of views on how native speakers address noun gender allocation, plus some insight into why they are accurate with most, but by no means all, gender attributions. Secondly, the paper explains some of the inconsistencies in noun gender…

Notes that contemporary French contains a number of nouns of double or doubtful gender. Suggests that non-standard usage is especially prone to fluctuation and that mysterious, contradicting established patterns in expressing noun gender are extant. The question of zero gender and neutralization is raised. (49 references) (Author/CK)

A relatively common way to establish a new verb is to give verbal form to a noun, but it also exposes some irregularities of the language, and the rules that govern it. Although this is largely a phenomenon of the twentieth century, evidence of it appears in Rabelais' work. (MSE)

Describes a computer-based connectionist-type network model that correctly identified the gender of a set of French nouns, relying solely on information inherent in the nouns' structures, in the absence of explicit rules for evaluating nouns, through discovering criterial gender-specific features through examples of masculine and feminine nouns.…

Discusses the grammatical effect of inserting the pronouns, "ce" and "ca" in the position originally occupied by the subject noun. Suggests that this insertion can alter the interpretation of the syntax of the subject noun and explains this problem by discussing the inherent properties of pronouns and the properties resulting from their insertion…

Presents a comparative semantic analysis of English, French, and Dutch transitive constructions that takes into account the entity that sets the event in motion, the object it affects, and the process that links both. (18 references) (Author/CK)

Provides teachers with answers to questions frequently asked by beginning French students relating to gender, infinitive use, placement of adjectives, the existence of so many irregular verb forms and different tenses, conjugation with "avoir" and "etre," the frequency of silent consonants, and the source of words that are…

Test results for final-year French students in Canadian universities show they have not mastered the gender of some of the most frequent French nouns. Two recommendations are to continue to seek simplification of the learning of gender and to require students to use the full range of syntactic transformations. (MSE)

Examines inalienable possession in French and Mandarin with the aim of bringing out typological affinities. In particular, two unresolved issues are re-examined: Haiman's Iconicity Hypothesis and the question of the protypical semantic categories of iposs. (32 references) (Author/CK)

Focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the production of homophone confusions in writing. The article overviews five experiments demonstrating that the homophone effect can be experimentally induced in French adults. Findings are interpreted in the framework of an activation model. (45 references) (Author/CK)