Spanish heritage speakers in the United States exhibit a wide range of linguistic profiles due to a combination of political, social, and educational factors. Most of them acquire Spanish at home without formal instruction in writing. Although previous research has explored the main challenges faced by these learners in Spanish writing courses, no…

This comparative study, conducted in multicultural London, investigates the occurrence in interviews with a researcher and in constructed same-sex peer conversations of five linguistic features characteristic of London English in the speech of two groups of British-born adolescents: ethnic Bangladeshis and ethnic Chinese of Cantonese heritage. The…

Investigation of data regarding the use of "so'n" in authentic German speech situations suggests that speakers used the form as a hedging expression indicating uncertainty or discomfort, enabling them to indicate their attitudes about various aspects of the speech situation. (21 references) (Author/CB)

Analysis of the structural, semantic, and textual aspects of a corpus of 330 English examples of the postpositive conjunctions "though,""as," and "that" focuses on concessive clauses, clauses of reason, clauses of manner, and clauses with postpositive conjunctions and normal clauses. (CB)

Discusses phonic shifting or sound shifts through an examination of Grimm's Law, or the Germanic Consonant Shift. The discussion includes comments on why the phonic shift developed and its pattern. (10 references) (GLR)

Reviews and comments on the major points made in Albert Gessman's paper, "Grimm's Law: Fact or Myth?" Through the evaluation of the paper's 13 points, several ideas are pointed out that are believed to be crucial to Gessman's arguments. (29 references) (GLR)

Examines 11 types of uses of the English word "with," demonstrating that speakers who use the word have an implicit knowledge of its multiple meanings and uses, which far exceeds their explicit knowledge of the word. (CB)

Reviews a wide-ranging formal analysis of Chinese syntax that explores the role of case theory in the phrase structure of Chinese. (15 references) (CB)

Examines the syntactic and semantic relationship between verb forms I and II in modern standard Arabic. The main function of form II verbs was causative/factitive, with the core elements of the causative including (1) agent-subject, (2) action-process verb, and (3) patient-object. (CB)

Describes a computer-based connectionist-type network model that correctly identified the gender of a set of French nouns, relying solely on information inherent in the nouns' structures, in the absence of explicit rules for evaluating nouns, through discovering criterial gender-specific features through examples of masculine and feminine nouns.…

Data are presented from Amele and other Papuan languages to show how the medial verb form is marked for a binary distinction of realis versus irrealis modality. It is demonstrated that in these languages realis-irrealis distinction interacts with categories of tense and mood marked on the final verb to divide them into domains of realis and…

Comparison of the 1970 and 1984 editions of a Spanish dictionary regarding the accommodation of female counterparts of traditionally male occupations found such adjustments as use of the feminine article "la" and the suffixes "-a" and "-nta." Other nouns proved to be particularly resistant to such accommodation. (CB)

Analysis of the syntactic properties of Spanish prepositions, postpositions, and substantives supports the argument that a three-way categorical distinction exists among the three elements. (CB)

Studies the variety of Arabic imperative sentences seen as a result of interrelated sets of choices from a limited number of binary systems, and accounts for their occurrence in certain situations. Relevant features of Arabic imperative structures are compared with their nearest English equivalents. (CB)

An investigation of the sociolinguistic features that govern contemporary use of the Italian formal ("Lei") and informal ("tu") forms of address suggests that teachers of Italian must help students become aware of the complex factors underlying the choice of form, rather than just drill them in usage. (12 references) (CB)