Discusses two auditory comprehension studies that investigated the role of focus, as conveyed by a pitch accent, in the comprehension of relative clauses preceded by a complex noun phrase. Findings include focus attracts modifiers, and pitch accents for new phrases differ acoustically from pitch accents for contrastive phrases. (46 references)…

Argues that the position of the finite verb in Old English clauses reflects synchronic variation in underlying structure, INFL-medial versus INFL-final, and that the syntax of main and subordinate clauses is the same. Quantitative data analysis indicates that the frequency of INFL-medial structure increases at the expense of INFL-final structure…

Analyzes two variants of subject doubling in Ontario French: a non-doubled variant and a doubled variant containing a clitic agreement marker. It is proposed that the doubled variant is favored when the clitic's default features match those of the subject NP (noun phrase), while lack of matching favors the non-doubled variant.(Author/JL)

Examined the use of noun phrase morphology by preschool-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) who were also acquiring Swedish. Relative to typically developing same-age peers and younger peers matched according to mean length of utterance, the children with SLI had greater difficulty in the use of genitive inflections, indefinite…

Explores the relationship between formulaic language and creative construction in second language acquisition by examining the production of interrogatives in an extensive naturalistic corpus of second language French produced by early classroom learners. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the acquisition of English relative clauses by native Malay speakers, who are proficient in English, in relation to the issue of parameter setting. Tests a proposal put forth by Tsimpli and Smith (1991) and Smith and Tsimpli (1995). (Author/VWL)

Demonstrates how, by following the presumed and attested historical development of the German relative clause, students can be led through the formation of the structure in a simple three-step progression using familiar operations that impart the clause's various functions and meanings. (Author/CB)

The analysis of 2,369 finite clauses in 11 English-language academic articles on oceanography attempts to establish the semantic characteristics of "by" phrases as a step toward understanding the circumstances in which authors were likely to use the prepositional phrase following a passive verb form. (CB)

An account of the phenomena that transformational syntax handled by means of "raising" is formulated in the context of cognitive grammar. Raising is analyzed as a special case of the metonymy that relational expressions exhibit in regard to their choice of overtly coded arguments. The transparency of these constructions is explained. (83…

Locally free reflexives in British English are analyzed as intensified nonnominative pronouns, subject to a contrastiveness requirement and a requirement that the character referred to be more central than other characters in the set. The extent to which discourse prominence marking can mimic locality marking may explain conversions of intensives…

Examined the representation of phrase structure in early child German through the investigation of longitudinal data from seven German-speaking toddlers with respect to verb placement, verb inflection, negation, /wh/ pronouns, and complementizers. It is argued that children construct phrase-structure trees in a gradual fashion, on the basis of…

Discusses the development of phraseological machine translation based on the theory that in natural languages, phraseological units cannot always be reduced to words. Describes the phraseological translation process of computer software and machine dictionary systems that translate Russian into English and English into Russian. (JMV)

This paper deals with the clause structure of Old English. It is argued that the clause structure of Old English contains a head-initial functional projection whose head can be the landing site of verb movement in subordinate clauses. (41 references) (JL)

Investigates principles for assigning case to the Noun Phrases (NP) in the Part-Whole Construction in Korean. It is shown that the case marking on the part-NP is a function of the case-assigning properties of the matrix verb, even when this is lexically governed. (41 references) (Author/LB)

The need for formal, systematic instruction in spelling or word structure is discussed. The development of spelling knowledge in children is reviewed, and it is suggested that a formal program for spelling instruction be incorporated throughout the elementary grades. (Author/LB)