A notable feature of developing interlanguage grammars is the apparent optionality in those areas of grammar where optionality is not characteristic of stable state grammars. In the Valueless Features Hypothesis, it is proposed that the appearance of apparent optionality in the very early stages of interlanguage development is due to the partial…

Investigated the effects of the number of tokens in the conceptual representation of the to-be-uttered subject noun phrase in experiments in Dutch and French, in which subject-verb agreement errors were induced. Findings revealed a distributivity effect in both languages, supporting an account in which neither null nor post-verbal subjects are the…

Discusses the presence and significance of linguistics in Italian departments at universities in Australia and worldwide against the background of multiculturalism, the politicization of the Italian population in Australia, and the emergence of Italy as a major economic and political power. Argues that the boundary lines between linguistics and…

Analyzes essays and responses to cloze passages by second language learners to determine how speakers of various backgrounds establish a past-time discourse frame. Argues that speakers of Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, and Japanese may conceptualize time domains differently from English speakers and that students must learn that objective time and…

The difficulty with which native English-speaking adults learning French control the distinction between verb aspects has prompted study of the neurological processes that may affect this learning process. It is concluded that it may not be possible to change these basic perception patterns of adult learners. (MSE)

Calls into question the data of grammaticality judgment tasks on which several GB-based studies on the second-language acquisition of accusative verbs by Japanese learners of English base their arguments and reports the results of a pilot study. (Author/VWL)

Describes a case study and a follow-up comparative study that focused on expert foreign language teachers' professional knowledge as it was reflected in their spoken and written discourse. Both studies provide evidence indicating that professional knowledge can develop via its verbalization in reflective-narrative discourse from personal…

Research by the staff and advanced students of the North Dakota Summer Institute of Linguistics is presented. In "Verb Agreement and Case Marking in Burushaski" (Stephen R. Willson), an overview of Burushaski morphology and syntax is presented, with special attention to verb agreement and case marking. "A Backwards Binding Construction in Zapotec"…

A survey of 34 professors teaching English as a second language in 20 Japanese universities elicited information about common errors in student writing. In open-ended questions, respondents identified 40 student error types, which were grouped into 18 categories. The most common problem category was sentence development, and other high-frequency…

This document consists of the four issues of "Notes on Linguistics" published during 1990. Articles in the four issues include: "The Indians Do Say Ugh-Ugh" (Howard W. Law); "Constraints of Relevance, A Key to Particle Typology" (Regina Blass); "Whatever Happened to Me? (An Objective Case Study)" (Aretta…

The grammar is designed to be used as a reference for addressing structural problems in Czech. The guide is organized into 11 chapters. The first describes the pronunciation of written Czech and explains spelling conventions. Aspects of the language covered here include the alphabet, arrangement of words in the dictionary, vowels, diphthongs,…

This issue of the journal includes these papers on contrastive linguistics: "Violations of Frege's Principle and Their Significance for Contrastive Semantics" (Dafydd Gibbon); "Writing the Contrastive Grammar of English and Dutch. The Treatment of Modal Notions" (Flor Aarts and Herman Wekker); "The Theory and Methodology…

Student papers presented at a sociolinguistics conference include: "La variation phonologique [d'une voyelle] a Hull"; "La force illocutoire des pronoms personnels 'je' et 'tu' en tant qu'insignes des places d'ou parlent les femmes et les hommes"; "L'emploi des modes indicatif et subjonctif dans le francais parle de la…

A study of the relationship between patterns of use of the verb "to be" and reading comprehension had as subjects 103 college freshmen in a developmental program, including 53 black and 50 white students. The students' use of Black English constructions of the verb on a writing skills test and their errors in response to a reading comprehension…

This issue of the OMLTA Journal includes the following papers: "Helping Teacher Teach: A Foreign Language Collaborative in Southeast Ohio" (Barry G. Thomas); "Bilingual and Group Poetry in the Foreign Language Classroom" (Evelyn F. Brod); "So You Want To Be in Pictures: Videotaping in the Foreign Language Classroom" (Connie L. Bowman); "Theatre as…