A number of studies on the order of adjectives in the English noun phrase are reviewed. Analysis of the studies and examples used in them indicates that almost any order of adjective seems to be possible depending on the intended meaning of the speaker or the situation in which the speaker frames an utterance. To see if in fact the ordering of…

Discusses word familiarity, an attempt to measure the degree of importance people attribute to words, and its role in preparing a basic word-list for the teaching of English as a second or foreign language. Word familiarity ratings for 192 nouns are presented. (FB)

Argues that grammatical errors in English-as-a-Second-Language learning are interpretive conflicts that involve meaning as well as form. Noun number errors, or the incorrect use of the plural "-s," are used to illustrate that errors result from two different noun number conceptions: the optional, free-floating -s and the ever present, two-member…

Reports on two studies examining the effects of object size, container size, sex, and language group on the use of counts in prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Results indicate that people's selection of noun forms in a measure partitive noun phrase is influenced by nonlinguistic factors, such as their gender and the food size relative to…

Addresses the difficulty of article acquisition by examining the perception of noun countability by native speakers of English and Japanese speakers of English, testing whether native and nonnative speakers have different perceptions of countability. Results suggest a possible link between the indefinite versus zero article suppliance by Japanese…

A central issue in bilingual research concerns the extent to which linguistic representations in the two languages are processed independently of each other. This paper reports the results of an empirical study and a model stimulation, which provide evidence for the interactive view, which holds that processing is not independent. Specifically, a…

The study investigates the relationship between input, UG (Universal Grammar) parameter values, and the native language in the acquisition of a purely semantic property that is superficially unrelated to its syntactic trigger, The Bare Noun/Proper Name parameter (Longobardi, 1991; 1994; 1996; 2001; 2005). On the one hand, English and Italian bare…

The ability of English as a second language (ESL) readers to comprehend different types of nominal compounds in English technical literature was investigated. College students were asked to recover the meaning of 73 nominal compounds in two technical English language articles on occupational health and safety. The intermediate and advanced ESL…

Examines the rules that determine presence or absence of the definite article with place names in English. To help students of English-as-a-Second-Language learn when to use the definite article, a prototype concept is proposed based on the notions "at home" and "on the road." (23 references) (OD)

Examined effect of word class (nouns vs. verbs) on second language pronunciation accuracy of Korean-English adult bilinguals whose age of arrival in the United States ranged from 6 to 23 years. Transcriptions of their productions of English indicated they were more accurate in pronouncing verbs than nouns and were more accurate in detecting…

For over 20 years, SLA research has been investigating the role of negotiation in second language acquisition. While much attention has been given to an examination of the conditions that are necessary for acquisition and the factors that can facilitate opportunities for negotiation, limited attention has been given to a longitudinal study of the…

A system for teaching advanced English as second language students how to use "a,""an," and "the" in writing is described. In deciding whether to use a definite or indefinite article, the student is taught to ask three questions about the context and nature of the noun: (1) has it been mentioned before in the composition, (2) is there anything…

Explores the creative power of nominal compounding in English and proposes a method for the presentation of the compounding system to learners of English. See FL 507 969 for availability information. (TL)

This report, the sixth in a series of working papers issued by the Project on Applied Contrastive Linguistics (PAKS) at the University of Stuttgart, contains theoretical and practical discussions relevant to contrastive linguistics in general and to German-English contrastive linguistics in particular. Papers are: Karl Heinz Wagner, "The…

This article proposes use of one aspect of transformational-generative grammar as a simple explanation of the use of English articles. In this method, nouns are analyzed to determine their definiteness and whether they are countable, as tests for using "a" and "the." (CHK)