Data drawn from videotapes of children aged 20 to 32 months were analyzed for patterns in the use of various self-reference forms at an age when children rarely refer to others compared to their use at an age when children more regularly refer to others as main participants. First, the distribution of the forms…

Verb agreement, rules, and their application in Lakota, a Siouan language, are examined in the framework of relational grammar. It is argued that certain relational grammar concepts, especially the notions of level and working 2, provide the necessary theoretical apparatus for formulating concise rules of verb agreement in Lakota. The rules…

An examination of children's sentence structure in Korean argues for a verb phrase (VP) constituent in child grammar, but suggests that this does not necessarily support its existence in adult Korean grammar. Korean children, it is noted, generally restrict their sentences to one word order, subject-object-verb, despite the existence of another…

AN EXPERIMENT WAS CONDUCTED, OVER A 2-YEAR PERIOD, AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL TO TEST THE POSSIBLE EFFECTS OF A STUDY OF A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR ON STUDENT COMPOSITIONS. IN ADDITION TO THE REGULAR CURRICULUM, AN EXPERIMENTAL CLASS OF 50 NINTH-GRADERS (AND 10TH-GRADERS THE FOLLOWING YEAR) WAS REQUIRED TO LEARN TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE…

In a sentence containing a conjunction "when,""once," or "as soon as," the events in the main and the subordinate clauses are understood as occurring closely together in time. This paper endeavors to uncover the subtle differences which nevertheless exist among them. Clauses headed by "when" can refer to a…

The classes and class members of function words are examined in detail in this paper in order to determine those which are most basic and most important to comprehension at the kindergarten through first-grade level. Noun determiners and pronouns, verbal determiners, and prepositions were found to be of importance, as were a small number of…

To determine the effects of two facets of the adult's input in a child's acquisition of syntactic structures and vocabulary, fifteen classrooms of kindergarten, first, and second grade children from four middle socioeconomic class schools were assigned to either a literature group (which provided exposure to reading rich in varied syntactic…

The thesis of this paper is that the "do so" test described by Lakoff and Ross (1966) is a test of the speaker's belief system regarding the relationship of verbs to their surface subject, and that judgments of grammaticality concerning "do so" are based on the speaker's underlying semantic beliefs. ("Speaker" refers here to both speakers and…

The author considers the rule of negative transportation in English and discusses his ideas about such a rule in contrast to the theories set forth by Robin Lakoff. The rule of negative transportation allows the shifting of a negative, under certain conditions, from a lower clause into a higher one. The discussion centers around the occurrence of…

Following a review of related work on intonation, both phonetic and phonemic descriptions of intonation in Italian are presented. Using recordings of radio broadcasts as data, a system of assigning pitch levels to syllables was devised, based on four pitches. The close relationship between stress placement and pitch level was considered. In order…

The cognitive levels of 60 children from grades one, three, and five were compared with their linguistic performance on selected examples of similes and metaphors. Cognitive level was measured using Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices; a new instrument was developed to assess children's linguistic performance. Results indicated a significant…

Proposes a reexamination of the ellipsis within the framework of discourse grammar, as opposed to a grammar of sentence structure. (AM)

The partitive genitive and other types of genitive are examined to show that despite Latin's rigid, well-defined case system, irregularities in the functioning of the system occur. This allows the system to maximize structural characteristics to offset potential ambiguities. (PMJ)

Ninety children between the ages of three and six described objects which differed on three simultaneous dimensions, using adjective combinations appropriate to the dimensions. Each child performed an imitation, comprehension, and production task. (Author/CFM)

Sentences were constructed in which the terms "before" and "after" were embedded in logically constrained and logically reversible sequences. The preschool children in the study found the constrained sentences easier to comprehend. (Author/CFM)