For years, French language instructors in Alberta have wondered about the possibility of coordinating in a better way their students' transition from last year of secondary education to first year at the university level. At the end of a university year, errors were found in the French compositions of 34 randomly chosen students (out of 68), which…

Any theory of stylistics sets itself the task of accounting for choices made by a speaker/writer among theoretically available and more-or-less equivalent linguistic structures. This task is a stumbling-block in the way of most attempts to construct a theory of style because there is no consistent method of defining 'available structures' and…

The first volume of this series is divided into reports, studies, and preliminary results of work in progress. All were presented at a meeting on contrastive linguistics held in Romania. The project is intended to reveal the specificity of the structures and systems of Romanian and English with a view to comparing them and, on that basis,…

The sixth volume of this series contains eight contrastive studies in the syntax and semantics of English and Romanian. They are: "Criteria for the Contrastive Analysis of English Nouns," by Andrei Bantas; "Adjectives as Noun Modifiers in Post-Verbal Position," by Ioana Poenaru; "Towards a Semantic Description of 'Tense'…

This memorandum is a systematic listing and description of the salient features of English phonology and morphology, accompanied by a listing of parallel features in nonstandard dialects that account for the difficulties the speakers of nonstandard speech experience in the acquisition of standard English. The dialects considered are English as…

A review of traditional and transformational studies on the phenomenon of sentential complementation (noun clauses) reveals many areas of agreement. Although some adherents of generative grammar may have occasionally obscured this aspect because of the offensive nature of their criticism of other modes of analysis, it is seen that, in several…

This is the first of seven interrelated volumes comprising "Contemporary Cambodian". Other texts in the series include introductory lessons, four topic-oriented textbooks, and a comprehensive Cambodian-English English-Cambodian glossary. This volume is a description of aspects of Cambodian grammar and usage. Chapters concentrate on phonology,…

Investigations designed to eliminate ambiguities in the Andre and Kulhavy procedure and to investigate the effects of noun modifications and sentence voice in the category clustering of sentences were conducted. Two experiments were carried out; both employed a mixed factorial design and were prepared in dittoed booklets. The Ss were run in…

A study was conducted to test various explanations of the error of unmarked noun plurals made by first generation Italian immigrants. The error appeared to be "fossilized" or not eradicated over a period of time. (SW)

Investigation of native English-speaking adults' and native Spanish-speaking children's acquisition of noun gender and its function in Spanish revealed significant differences in first- and second-language acquisition, suggesting a developmental progression in acquisition of noun gender for both groups. (Author/CB)

A sentence interpretation experiment conducted with university-age native English speakers, Japanese English as a second language (ESL) speakers, and native Japanese speakers (N=12 per group) suggested caution in attempting to typify languages on the basis of processing strategies drawn from probabilistic tendencies evident in grouped data.…

Reports on a study investigating the unlearning of null subjects and null objects by Chinese students (n=159) of English as a Second Language. Results show an asymmetry in Chinese learners' English, which is opposite to that found in native English. (70 references) (Author/CK)

Examines why learners of Mandarin use overt nouns and pronouns to a greater extent than native speakers. Findings indicate that no single syntactic structure is a significant contributor to the different rates of optional ellipsis but that some learners use ellipsis only in syntactic contexts permissible in English and most use it in a narrower…

Presents a framework for dealing with errors in natural language sentences within the context of automated second-language teaching. Using a feature grammar, it is possible to describe various types of errors in a uniform framework, clearly define an error, and analyze the error source. (24 references) (Author/CK)

Examines how second-language learners compensate for their target language deficiency in communication using the One to One Principle of interlanguage communication. Results indicate that target language aspects not adhering to one-to-one mapping between semantic and surface elements are problematic to the learners and are seemingly acquired late.…