A three-tiered statistical model for predicting the temporal structure of French, as produced by a single, highly fluent subject at a fast speech rate, is outlined. The first tier models segmental influences due to phoneme type and contextual interactions between phoneme types. The second tier models syllable-level influences of lexical versus…

An analysis of the structure and functioning of Modern Greek gerundival constructions is presented. First, it is argued that there are clear differences between gerunds and participles. Issues concerning the temporal interpretation of gerunds are considered, and an account is given that postulates the existence of a covert temporal operator like…

In discourse analysis, connectives have been widely suggested as linguistic markers to indicate the logical linkage between utterances. However, the understanding of the interactions among various kinds of connectives in discourse has been limited. A method of quantifying the overall correlation between different kinds of connectives occurring on…

Since the emergence of the concept of communicative competence, the language teaching field has focused on teaching appropriate language use in addition to general linguistic elements. Speech act studies have contributed to providing appropriate models for second and foreign language learners. In this paper, the effort toward the creation and use…

A study examines the language contact phenomenon of Irish in which a native morpheme combines with a borrowed morpheme that has become, over time, fully assimilated. One variety of this blending in Gaeltacht Irish is the substitution of "-eir" for the English-bound "-er/-ar/-or," which is then combined with nativized borrowed…

A revisionist account of the development of ideas about semantics in modern theories of language is presented, focusing on the rift between Noam Chomsky and Generative Semanticists about the concept of deep structure, or the role of meaning in grammar. The discussion re-appraises the paradigm that has dominated American linguistics since the…

The serial verb construction (SVC) in Edo (Bini), a language spoken in Nigeria, is examined, and an analysis that systematically characterizes the notion of functional relationship of verbs within these constructions is proposed. It is argued that the verbs in series are sensitive to different semantic and grammatical phenomena and are therefore…

A discussion of diary studies, research on second language learning and teaching that uses student journals about the learning experience, defines the method, reviews a number of such studies, and examines the pros and cons of this approach. It is noted that diary studies are first-person case study research, a form of empirical (data-based)…

The structure of the grammar of Shabo, a little-known and unclassified Nilo-Saharan language of south-central Ethiopia, is described briefly. An introductory section describes the geographic area in which the language is used and reviews previous research on Shabo. Subsequent sections explain basic features of Shabo phonology (consonants,…

Memory research has recently moved from looking at performance in highly artificial laboratory tasks to examination of tasks in everyday life. One consequence is the development of the concept of "working memory." For the learner, foreign language comprehension makes great demands on working memory capacity. Comprehension of a message requires…

A proposal that further generalizes a rule in Government and Binding theory (Chomsky, 1981) is examined for its implications for acquisition of verb movement. Mark Baker's proposal extends the Move-alpha rule to posit that the head of any phrase may be moved to become incorporated into the head of any phrase that properly governs the phrase where…

An often-noted contrast between child and adult language is that young children produce sentences both with and without lexical subjects even if subjects are obligatory in the adult system. However, in Dutch, there is no such structural difference between the earliest stages of Dutch child grammar and the adult stage where subjects are concerned.…

This analysis looks at the humorous use of second-speaker repeats to initiate conversational repair. It is proposed that consideration of joking repeats forces reanalysis of the organization of conversational repair. The preference analysis theory is rejected in favor of a locally governed analysis of conversational repair in which participants…

A study investigated the use of tag questions in the private conversations of Swedish men and women. Conversations took place in single-gender dyads (six with two men and six with two women) and six mixed-gender dyads. Informants were aged approximately 25 or approximately 50, of different social classes, chosen by random selection, and asked to…

A study examines various Huastec clause types that are reflexive in some sense, including ordinary reflexives, which involve co-reference. Two mutually exclusive morphosyntactic devices are used in Huastec: reflexive pronouns and verbal morphology. In this way, Huastec is like various European languages. Clauses involving reflexive pronouns and…