The present work presents a critical assessment of claims in recent literature that moribund language varieties exhibit accelerated language decay, and that attrition in individual grammars has a causational relationship with language shift to the majority language. We show these claims to be unfounded. Based on two empirical points taken from…

Language in touchscreen apps could be useful as an additional source of children's language input, alongside child directed speech (CDS) and books. Here we performed the first analysis of language in apps, as compared with books and CDS. We analysed language in 18 of the most popular educational apps targeting pre-schoolers and compared their…

This paper explores two prominent strands of inquiry within new materialism -- Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage thinking and Karen Barad's agential realism -- and situates them in relation to language studies. While a singular definition of new materialist scholarship is not feasible, we argue that the selected approaches have potential to come…

Successful language use requires the ability to process nonadjacent dependencies (NADs) that occur in linguistic input. Learning such structural regularities seems therefore crucial for children, and researchers have indeed proposed that language problems in children with developmental language disorder (DLD), especially problems with grammar, are…

This text critically examines traditional methodologies for teaching grammar in the context of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL). It proposes an alternative, eclectic approach, which can be used in any foreign language. Drawing on evidence from research and pedagogical practices, it highlights areas for improvement in current approaches, such…

Language play occurs when people manipulate language in some way, often for fun and always for impact. Alliteration, unexpected vocabulary, phrases that deliberately provoke thought each have impact and appear in all types of writing, whether factual, literary or persuasive. Language play is evident throughout life too: from simple word repetition…

It is sometimes claimed that teaching grammar is elitist. This article contends that in actual fact, far from being elitist, grammar is a vital ingredient in the English language teaching mix. Since the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics there has been a school of thought in the English speaking world that the formal teaching of grammar is…

This research paper explores much of the basic and background knowledge of English and Bangla sentence patterns or structures as well as tries to compare and contrast between these two very languages, English and Bangla at the sentential levels. As it is known the concept of basic sentence structures is necessary for classroom teaching and…

This article traces the history of college writing and suggests a different way ahead. To show why we need this approach, the article historicizes the start of postsecondary English as a paradoxical one, committed to egalitarian ideals while privileging narrow and exclusive English usage. To offer an alternative approach, the article synthesizes…

Platonic "paideia" is a mainstream concept in traditional philosophy and humanistic circles generally. It is closely connected with social progress brought about by the dynamics of enlightenment and self-fulfillment, symbolized by the allegory of the cave. The main contention of this paper is that the philosophical grammar of this simile…

The present paper looks in detail at the process of codification, i.e. how a single variety is altered in such a way as to become the publicly accepted, stigma-free variety of a country or major region. There is both implicit and explicit codification. For Haugen it would seem that he was referring to the latter process in which there is formal…

The concepts of plurilingualism and translanguaging are explained and distinguished, showing how each has contributed to transformations in the study of bilingualism and multilingualism. The terms have introduced different epistemologies related to multilingual speakers. The two concepts have different socio-political grounding, a difference that…

This paper looks into the dilemma of what counts as a grammatical 'learner error' in ELT on the basis of recent results from English variationist research and English as a lingua franca research. Examples from these studies show that features often perceived as 'errors' for EFL speakers also occur in ESL production--where they are called…

This paper analyzes some of the ambiguities that arise among statements with the copular verb "is" in the mathematical language of textbooks as compared to day-to-day English language. We identify patterns in the construction and meaning of "is" statements using randomly selected examples from corpora representing the two…

This paper uses Bernstein's concept of grammar to illuminate aspects of educational research. The relationship between internal and external languages of description in the production of disciplinary knowledge is examined. This leads to a reflection on the various factors both internal and external to the discipline of educational studies that…