Contradicts a previous assertion by C. Tanz that children commit substitution errors usually using objective pronoun forms for nominative ones. Examples from Dutch and German provide evidence that substitutions are made in both directions. (CHK)

The use of "yige" in various situations in Chinese is discussed. "Yige" resembles English "a/an," but its primary function is to highlight the presence of a following noun phrase and the qualities it represents. This paper aims to illustrate how seemingly irregular sentences can further understanding of the language. (CHK)

Demonstrates that a comprehensive account of inverted structures in English encompasses more diversity of structural types than is generally recognized and is possible in a constraint-based grammar with monotonic multiple-inheritance and no overridable default specifications. The article points out that the existence of such an account shows the…

Results of 3 sentence-interpretation experiments involving 180 preschoolers suggest that very little explicit syntactic knowledge is needed to give children some structural clues to verb meaning. Sentence structure appears to have a meaning of its own that can be applied by analogy to the child's conceptual representation. (SLD)

Examines the relationship between form and use of the reformulation sequence signalled by "c'est-a-dire" in written French and describes this sequence's various functions. The article attempts to show how a modular approach consisting of structural, semantic, pragmatic, and textual components contributes to a new and accurate description of…

Focuses on an exceptional instance of nonadult positioning of clitics in early Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Greek with specific language impairment. Attributes misplaced clitics to children's incomplete knowledge concerning properties of the inflectional (Infl) particles, which interact in crucial ways with finite verb movement to mood. (Author/VWL)

Analyzes the "easy to be V" structure in terms of the semantic features of sentences with this structure. These sentences can be classified into types, ranging from the "prototype" with the most features contributing to its transparency, to the "peripheral" with the fewest of such features. (Author/CB)

Discusses the different types of word order in Latin and the rules governing the choice of which form to use by focusing on how mechanisms in English can be used to capture the significance of differential Latin word order. (DJD)

Examines research on the interpretation of ambiguous sentences and the presence or absence of contextual override effects. This study also examines the requirements placed on computational models of word-by-word incremental processing. The emerging picture is of a multiple constraint-based system in which knowledge ranging from lexical through…

Paratactic constructions sometimes compete with coordination, sometimes with subordination, for the same semantic niche in language. The case of complex sentences in English containing the degree adverbs "so" or "such" is analyzed. (Contains 37 references.) (LB)

In a study of binding relations of reflexive anaphors, it is suggested that a nonsyntactic aspect of language plays a role; i.e., viewpoint in sentence processing. This notion may help specify the type of evidence that can trigger learners' progress in the acquisition of the English reflexive. (Contains 33 references.) (Author/LB)

Study of verb-copying in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on its relationship to the thematic structures of verbs and on phrase structures, shows that the function of verb-copying is to highlight the quantity element in a sentence. (21 references) (Author/CB)

Evaluation of the adequacy of 11 metrics for measuring linguistic complexity of language samples obtained from 60 to 90 year olds indicated that, although most of the metrics adequately accounted for age-group and individual differences in complexity, the amount and type of embedding proved to predict how easily sentences are understood and how…

Argues that the Guided Induction presentation is superior to a deductive one for the teaching of certain grammatical structures to beginning foreign language students. A study is presented that compared both approaches when applied to the learning of French grammatical structures by beginning level U.S. college students. (25 references) (GLR)

Discussion of graph-drawing algorithms compares and evaluates five algorithms for generated automatic graphic display of sentence dependency structures that have been implemented in the TEXTNET text structure management system. Evaluation criteria are discussed, and a test of the algorithms with a database of newspaper articles is described. (16…