Code-switching (CS) patterns of bilingual English-Mandarin speakers underwent structural and functional analysis to reveal the interrelationship between form and function in bilingual CS discourse. Results indicate that certain syntactic forms are utilized to express certain functions in CS discourse and that interlocutor participation helps…

Some of the articulatory, theoretical, instrumental, and psycholinguistic evidence concerning the validity of the notion of ambisyllabicity in English is examined. Applications of the concept, including the notion of syllables being "half-closed" by ambisyllabic consonants, are considered. A set of rules is presented. (76 references) (Author/LB)

A variety of studies have reported that learners of English as a second language find subject relative clauses easier to produce and comprehend than direct object relatives, but it is unclear whether this preference should be attributed to structural factors or to a linear distance effect. This paper seeks to resolve this issue and to extend our…

Locative inversion, one aspect of word order in English discourse in which the positions of verb and noun phrase are inverted (e.g., "in front of the house is a tree"), is examined. It is argued that inversions after deictic adverbs and those after non-deictic, locative constituents are related, both representing devices: (1) expressing point of…

The working papers in this volume, written by staff and advanced students of the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of North Dakota, include the following: "The Antigone Constraint" (David Tuggy); "Clause Types in Southeastern Tepehuan" (Thomas L. Willett); "Sentence Components in Southeastern Tepehuan"…

An analysis of the nature of secondary predicates takes a comparative approach, using Italian and English. Distributional properties and extraction facts are accounted for, and an explanation for the fact that resultatives are not allowed in Romance languages is sought on the basis of Italian evidence. It is argued that the semantic distinction…

Discusses various definitions of markedness in terms of second language acquisition and describes a study testing one such definition which found that second language learners did not accept preposition stranding in the second language but did accept double object construction and suggested that transfer took place only with one of two marked…

Analyzes the overgeneralizations of bilingual children to determine whether the overgeneralizations of Spanish and English monolinguals would differ from those found in the speech samples of Spanish-English bilinguals and to reach a better understanding of speakers' preference for certain affixes and roots. (MES)

Argues that an important type of child knowledge about letters is knowledge of the phonological structure of the letters' names in English. Concludes that learning the alphabet forms the basis for generalizations about the structure of letter names. (22 references) (Author/CK)

Provides new evidence from Spanish and English self-paced reading experiments on relative clause attachment sites. Suggests that a principle like Late Closure is universally operative in the human parser. Proposes that a second factor is the principle of Predicate Proximity. Discusses the origins and predictions of the theory combining these two…

Examines the theoretical category in discourse analysis called "inferrable information" and challenges the implicit assumptions that lead Prince (1981) to distinguish between inferrable and invoked information. Four marked syntactic constructions in Farsi and English are examined that have previously been shown to be relevant to…

An examination of native and non-native speakers'use of zero anaphora in English production found a similar general discourse function across the groups, although the English was frequently ungrammatical by prescriptive standards. There were important quantitative and structural differences between speaker groups in use of the device. (Author/CB)

This article is derived from a lecture broadcast on the BBC World Service, in which the author takes the reader on a journey to visit selected features of contemporary English in use, with the intent of pointing out to the traveler some implications for the presentation of language in textbooks and other curriculum documents. (nine references)…

When it comes to explaining English verbs' patterns of regular and irregular generalization, single-network theories have difficulty with the former, rule-only theories with the latter process. Linguistic and psycholinguistic evidence, based on observation during experiments and simulations in morphological pattern generation, independently call…

Local inversion in English and Chichewa shows remarkable similarities that can be explained by hypothesizing the same underlying argument structures and principles for mapping argument structure roles into syntactic functions. However, profound typological differences between the two languages defy analysis within a widely assumed architecture of…