In a study designed as a pilot project to test a taxonomy of noun phrases (NPs) and indicate results to be expected from a larger subsequent survey, 13 essays from a basic writing class and 10 essays from an advanced composition class were analyzed for four NP types: (1) those requiring earlier text information for full interpretation, (2) those…

An attempt is made to overcome the shortcomings in Robinson's model of generative grammar by modifying her dependency rules and adding semantic specifications to the dependents of V, taking into account some of the considerations that led Fillmore to make up his cases. (Author)

This textbook aims to enable pupils to master writing good English rather than teach theory of style and criticism. The contents are divided into five parts. Part I covers construction and combination of sentence and provides a variety of practical exercises. Part II focuses on varying the structure and phraseology of sentences. Part III is an…

Three experiments were conducted to test the psychological relevance of objectively quantified word collocations. The first experiment showed that perceived frequency of word combinations roughly followed the objective count. Another recurrent quality of words, constructional tendency, was supplemented as independent variable in the two following…

This paper examines how tagmemics can be equipped with a notational mechanism to account for significant variability phenomena in language. A brief history of variation theory is followed by a proposal for a tentative notational system for marking variants. An illustration of this system is provided through application to various levels of…

This report presents an effective, integrated learning strategy program emphasizing a connection technique that uses paraphrasing. Components were derived from a review of the educational and psychological literature and from an analysis of responses to the learning strategy inventory, which were conducted during this same research effort. (See SO…

Fieldwork with a Hydaburg resident yielded this descriptive paper, which focuses on Haida syntax, and especially predication. The verbal word in Haida is of three distinct types--active, stative, and neutral--the first two of which may occur in either SOV or OSV word order. Neutral verbal words are relatively rare and take active pronouns plus a…

The paper proposes, on the basis of a study of relative clauses and WH-interrogative constructions, to reflect the time-oriented character of the sentence by replacing neutral expressions like "#" with explicit time references like "beginning" and "end." These boundaries are to be universally associated with all…

The theory that reduction transformations provide speakers with the option of deleting redundant information when communicating to a topic-cognizant audience is supported. In the experiment, college physiology students were provided with deep structure proximal sentences (base propositions), and asked to communicate them to different audiences,…

Presents checklists of the more common grammatical patterns in spoken Mandarin for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students. Most of the patterns include an example with an English gloss. (Author/LMO)

Investigates the availability of surface representations for the interpretation of verb-phrase ellipsis. Results show that an elliptical verb phrase is most easily interpreted if its antecedent is in the immediately preceding sentence and that this can not be explained in terms of the unnaturalness of the passages with distant antecedents. (MM)

The German preposition "bei" has several meanings and uses. If the basic meaning of "bei" is taken as "abstract setting," the analysis can be extended naturally to account for the more concrete locational uses such as references to activities or specific circumstances. (CB)

Discusses the possessive constructions in English, in particular, the postponed construction. (An example of the postponed construction is "a book of John's," contrasted with "John's book," the preposed construction.) The study contrasts the possessive "of" with the "of" in other constructions and concludes…

Revised version of a paper supported by a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship. The universal base hypothesis states that all natural languages utilize the same base component in their transformational grammars. (DD)