The tracing of the origin of the name of a Tidewater, Virginia, group of watermen who spoke a distinctive dialect illustrates the power of language in marking the group's social parameters and distinguishing that group from other area watermen. (34 references) (CB)

Considers the frequently indefinable distinctions between descriptive and prescriptive English grammars, using examples of standard English and dialects to illustrate the uses of each. (Author/CB)

An examination of linguists' attempts to characterize the variety of English used in various articles and novels found that, although they used different criteria for classification, the linguists almost equally (about 30 percent of the time each) either could not identify, correctly identified, or incorrectly identified the variety. (14…

Briefly explores the usage patterns of American English words, terms, or expressions such as "y'all" and other second plural pronouns, English conditionals, "greasy' by East-Central Pennsylvanians, who or whom, the genderless "-person" suffix, and Russianisms. (CB)

Discusses theories and findings concerning the status of the present perfect in American Spanish. In Spain, the present perfect is preferred to the preterite whereas the simple preterite is more frequently used in South America. The lessened usage of the past perfect parallels the narrower usage of the present perfect in Latin America. (Author/LMO)

This article reviews the cultural and linguistic background of Asian Indians in the United States. It highlights some of the phonological, grammatical, semantic, and vocabulary usage peculiarities of the variety of English called Indian English spoken by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. (Author/DB)

Posits two hypotheses arising from the great immigration to Sweden and the immigrants' use and learning of Swedish: (1) Swedish as used by immigrant children may show certain features, related to a creolization process; and (2) the Swedish language may in future show signs of influence from the varieties used by persons with immigrant background.…

Describes the high Italian speech variety commonly used by Italian Americans, based on a study of 39 Italian Americans that included interviews and questionnaires. Dialectal characteristics, convergence with English, and language maintenance and language shift in the Italian-American community are discussed. (CB)

Four hypotheses explaining the origin of Berbice Dutch, a Dutch-based Creole language spoken in the county of Berbice in Guyana, are explored. The most likely explanation is that the language was first spoken by Berbice slaves as a means of expressing the identity of a newly created "ethnic" group. (Author/CB)

Examination of the West German language and society suggests that the notion that the West German indigenous working class is separated from the middle class by a linguistic barrier is invalid. (Author/CB)

Some of the problems inherent in a word-based hypothesis asserting that the word/stem is taken as the minimal sign not only for syntax but also for morphology are examined in an analysis of a polysynthetic language, Koyukon, an Athabaskan language of Alaska. Data from the Central dialect is considered in the analysis. A brief sketch of the verbal…

Summarizes contact-linguistic research on the Samis and Finns, the northernmost minorities in Scandinavia. The monolingual view of northern Scandinavian languages in the past is complemented with a multilingual perspective of the interaction between minority and larger languages. Among contact patterns discussed are North Germanic-Sami,…

Current research supports the notion that language users make both unconscious and conscious choices when accommodating their language for public use, incorporating regional and social distinctions as well as notions of correctness and acceptability. Such decisions occur at the level of communicative competence and become part of the communicative…

Detailed analysis of frequencies of the primary auxiliary verb "be" in Scots dramatic texts leads to consideration of the typological relationship said to exist between different varieties of Scots and between them and standard English. (Author/CB)

The quantification of communication network integration provides valuable information for the study of language change in very small rural communities such as Grossdorf, Austria. The approach is particularly relevant when study of aggregate group behavior has failed to yield results due to small sample size or group internal inconsistency. (26…