This article describes the development of a tense and aspect identifier, an online tool designed to help learners of English by harnessing a natural language processing pipeline to automatically classify verb groups into one of 12 grammatical tenses. Currently, there is no website or application that can automatically identify tense in context,…

This paper presents an electronic dictionary and translation system for the Australian language Murrinh-Patha. Its complex verbal structure makes learning Murrinh-Patha very difficult. Design learning materials or a dictionary which is easy to understand and to use also presents a challenge. This paper discusses some of the difficulties posed by…

Unlike English, Standard Arabic has two forms of subject pronouns: Independent such as "?na" ("I"), and a pronominal suffix that is an integral part of the verb such as "katab-tu" ("I wrote"). Independent subject pronouns are commonly used in nominal sentences, not verbal sentences. Use of independent…

The articulation in recent years of Optimality Theory (OT) has paved the way for a reanalysis of linguistic phenomena that were previously accounted for by derivational theories through various modes of rule interaction. The theory has been shown to offer insightful accounts of various processes involving segmental and prosodic structure and has…

This study examines the use in Japanese of verb forms containing -(r)are in syntactical expressions. The meaning and function of the adversative passive and its behavior vis-a-vis the non-adversative or plain passive is discussed, and the related non-derived constructions and their relationships to the adversative passive are analyzed. Finally the…

A study of the Samoan "-cia" suffix is presented. It argues that, contrary to prevailing theory, Samoan does have an active/passive contrast but that it is indicated by a difference in word order rather than by verbal morphology. It is shown, however, that "-cia" is similar to a passive suffix in that passive involves the…

An analysis of relative clauses in Navajo looks at a paradox that is rooted in the assumption that in Navajo, as in English, argument positions not occupied by some free lexical item must be occupied categorically by an EC. It examines patterns of and constraints on nominals with relation to the relative clause, theory concerning argumental…

Some of the problems inherent in a word-based hypothesis asserting that the word/stem is taken as the minimal sign not only for syntax but also for morphology are examined in an analysis of a polysynthetic language, Koyukon, an Athabaskan language of Alaska. Data from the Central dialect is considered in the analysis. A brief sketch of the verbal…

The morphological and lexical bases of Dravidian complementation are explored by proposing a series of rules that govern the distribution of finite predicates in the Dravidian sentence. The distribution of two verbs, "a-" ("become") and "en-" ("say"), is shown to be correlated with the distribution of finite predicates. These predicates are…

The effect of formal instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL) on the pidginized speech of a second language learner was studied. The subject was a 76-year-old Italian woman residing in the United States since the age of 37. Four one-hour tapes were made of the subject's speech in April of 1976, and during the last five months of a…

An analysis of Amuzgo, a language within the Otomanguean family of Mexico, suggests that it is an active-static language with patterns similar but not parallel to those of Chocho. In the report, data on the characteristics of Chocho are summarized, theory and research on active-static languages is reviewed, and the data on Amuzgo are presented.…