A generative semantic model for a componential analysis of prepositions in Italian sentences is described and critiqued. According to the model, a sentence is analyzed in terms of a "predicate" plus one or more "arguments." The model emphasizes the semantic role of prepositions and regards this role as the basis for a syntactic…

This book of Italian-English phrases intended for Italian-speaking immigrants is divided into two main sections. Part One contains the grammatical section, a pronunciation guide, and basic words and phrases a newly arrived Italian-speaking person would need to get along in an English speaking environment. Grammatical notes in Part One indicate…

All modern Romance languages except Rumanian have a class of causative + infinitive construction in which the infinitive subject surfaces as an agentive. This article investigates the question of how agentivization of the infinitive subject is to be handled in these languages. (DS)

An analysis of long-distance anaphora, a binding phenomenon in which reflexives find their antecedents outside their local domain, is presented, using data from English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Icelandic, and Italian. It is found that no approach deals with long-distance anaphors exclusively and elegantly. The binding domain…

Compares the results from monolingual children with object omissions in bilingual children who have acquired two languages simultaneously. Claims that the difference between monolingual and bilingual children is due to crosslinguistic influences in bilingual children. (Author/VWL)

Comments are provided by ten authors in response to an article on language separation and crosslinguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

Responds to comments by various researchers on an early article presented in the same issue of this journal, claiming that language separation and crosslinguistic influence coexist in bilingual first language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

This paper reports on a project examining the relationship between program model, sociolinguistic factors, and linguistic outcomes in a small sample of school languages other than English (LOTE) programs in Victoria. The languages are Chinese, German, Greek and Italian. Issues under consideration include: content-based versus language-object…

Six papers dealing with crosslinguistic generalizations are summarized and discussed here. Two of them were about question structure: "Language Universals and Sociocultural Implications in Deviant Usage: Personal Questions in Swedish" by C. Paulston and "Valley Zapotec: Identical Rule for Both wh Question Movement and Relative Clause Constituent…

This catalogue, written in German and French, lists 24 tape recordings of German, French, Italian, English, and Spanish instructional tapes. The contents of the tapes include exercises in grammar and phonetics. Bibliographical data includes author, title, level of instruction, length, price, and source of availability. A brief description of each…

Analysis of the spontaneous speech of English- and Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment indicated that word-final consonants adversely influenced Italian subjects' tendency to use articles. There was no evidence of syntactic differences between the language groups. (Author/CB)

Supports claim that linguistic and psycholinguistic accounts based on study of English may prove unreliable as guides to sentence processing in even closely related languages such as German and Italian. Results of a test of sentence interpretation indicate that English-speaking Americans rely overwhelmingly on word order, Germans rely on both…

The purpose of this study was to attempt to verify the theory of Taeschner and Volterra (1976) that bilingual children pass through three distinct phases while becoming perfectly bilingual. The 12 subjects were English-Italian bilingual children between the ages of 1.6 and 4.6. (CFM)

Data from 34 children suggest that a range of Italian grammatical morphemes reach the level of mastery by age 3;6-4;0. In the period between 2;6 and 3;0, as use and comprehension of morphemes are being consolidated, homonymy and informativeness seem not to play a role, though number continues to exert an influence. Some form classes of Italian are…

Examined cross-linguistic similarities and differences in early lexical and grammatical development among English- and Italian-speaking preschoolers. Parents completed surveys on vocabulary size, vocabulary composition, and grammatical complexity. No cross-linguistic differences surfaced in the composition of vocabulary in this age range. There…