Children's acquisition of agent nouns within a framework of morphological structural principles is explored. Language acquisition has been conceptualized as a process of parameter setting in which the learner is richly endowed with a vocabulary of primitives and rule schemata. Exposure to the primary data will be filled in from the range of…

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A study of tonic placement in various types of English noun phrases used as elements of clause structure. The notion of nominal compound is broadened; reflection of grammatical relationships by stress and tendencies concerning tonic placement in noun phrases as these are related to the Headword are noted. (AMH)

A close appositive syntagme is defined as an unhyphenated noun combination which is semantically congruent. The new type under discussion consists of a noun with a proper noun, as in die Expedition Spitzbergen'' for die Expedition fuhrt nach Spitzbergen.'' (RS)

Part of a continuing series on teaching French grammar. (DS)

This paper reports an investigation into the ability of a group of primary grade children to produce plural forms of selected types of real and nonsense words. (Authors)

Investigates the following questions: 1) Is there improvement in second language (L2) German learners' understanding of German pluralization as the level of German study advances; and 2) What second language acquisition tendencies can be observed in L2 German production of plurals? ( (Author/VWL)

In a corpus of the most frequent French words, phonetic rules relating the end of a noun to gender are simplified, and morphological rules governing the gender of suffixed nouns are illustrated. The stratified presentation is offered to teachers for classroom use. (Author/MSE)

Develops Chomsky's proposal that the theoretical status of D-structure should be nullified in favor of alternation between Merger and Chain Formation, arguing that Merger has priority over Chain Formation in building A'-dependencies. Establishes a cross-linguistic correlation between wh-questions and quantification, discussing Chinese, Japanese,…

Offers a detailed analysis of the English suffix "-ee" (employee, refugee, etc.) based on 1,500 naturally occurring tokens of 500 word types. Argues that certain semantic constraints, taken together, amount to a special-purpose thematic role that actively constrains productive use of derivational morphology. (Author/MSE)

To examine effects of input and learner characteristics on morphology acquisition, 60 adult English speakers learned to inflect masculine and feminine Russian nouns in nominative, dative, and genitive cases. By varying training vocabulary size (i.e., type variability), holding constant the number of learning trials, we tested whether learners…

The acquisition of German plurals has been the focus of controversy in the last decade. In this paper we claim that degree of productivity (i.e. the capacity of nouns to form potential plurals) plays a key role in determining pace of acquisition. A plural elicitation task was administered to 84 Viennese German-speaking children aged 2;6 to 6;0.…

The Welsh verbal noun, a form spanning two grammatical categories much as the English "-ing" form does, is examined from the points of view of its dual role in Welsh grammar; its occurrence in the history of the Celtic language family; periphrastic tense constructions with "bod" ("be"), "gwneud"…

The formation of plurals in the three classes of nouns in 'Afar is discussed, as well as vowel changes in particular environments. (SC)