As language technologies have become more sophisticated and prevalent, there have been increasing concerns about bias in natural language processing (NLP). Such work often focuses on the effects of bias instead of sources. In contrast, this paper discusses how normative language assumptions and ideologies influence a range of automated language…

Because many of the forms participating in inherent variability are not attested in the standard language, they are often construed as evidence of change. We test this assumption by confronting the standard, as instantiated by a unique corpus covering five centuries of French grammatical injunctions, with data on the evolution of spontaneous…

A morphological analysis of a French language corpus focuses on patterns of truncation, shortened versions of multisyllabic words, in modern spoken usage and in the language used in newspapers. Specific examples of truncation are included.(MSE)

A study investigated variation from certain morphophonological and phonetic features normally associated with familiar, popular, or vulgar speech as they occur in a prestigious variety of French (spoken on a French literary talk show). Phonostylistic variation in the speech of host and guests is examined. (Author/MSE)

The conciseness and "ease of use" often attributed to North American English relative to French in standard contemporary usage is explained in terms of English morpho-syntactic structure and of the values of the classical norm and rhetoric affecting French. (Author/MSE)

Argues that while much research on spoken Arabic uses Classical Arabic as the standard for measuring variation, the assumption leads to fundamental and persistent misunderstanding of the true situation. More careful examination of empirical data reveals that variation and change in spoken Arabic involves interplay between local varieties and…

An analysis of perfect verb forms in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) looks at the distribution of forms by semantic function and co-occurrence patterns in Samana English and ex-slave recordings. Results suggest that despite the overall rarity of this category in the general realm of past time, the most frequent forms used to mark it…

Findings about black language and speaking behavior may help increase understanding and accommodation of black students in education. While something is known about Black English as a medium of communication, little is known about the language itself. The teacher must learn to recognize basic linguistic and performance features of black English,…

Correctionist models of error, problem, and omission presume that Standard English (SE) is the sole language variety of America. America's classrooms, however, are neither culturally nor linguistically monolithic. Instead, they are diverse, and current teaching metaphors do not reflect the linguistic and cultural realities of the classrooms. This…

A study of the functions and structure of referential third- person pronominal chains in spontaneous English conversation as compared to those in written English is discussed. The study found the frequencies of these pronouns and of their chains to be generally much higher in the spoken corpus than in the written corpus. In the spoken corpus,…

The choice of a reliable authority for use in decisions of grammatical acceptability in English is discussed. It is argued that commonly-heard "rules" of English grammar offer advice that is either prescriptive or proscriptive, not descriptive, and often based on inaccuracies or flawed linguistic analyses. This is illustrated in the case of…

The standard spoken usage of a language is often referred to as the "educated" version of the language. This study investigated the degree to which this assumption applies to Hungarian. Data were drawn from the 1988 Hungarian National Sociolinguistic Survey of a stratified sample of 850 adult Hungarians. Subjects completed three major…

The nature of literary translation and ways in which it differs from other forms of translation are examined, looking at practical difficulties, challenges, and satisfaction in the profession of literary translation. The difficulties discussed include suggestions about how to get started, legal questions of copyright, and choice of text.…

The idea that "natural speech" as well as written discourse can be organized is now commonly accepted. There is also evidence that natural speech contains more coherence indicators than written texts do. This article proposes that one type of organizer, pragmatic connectives such as "therefore, then, thus, while, however, but"…

A comparison of the linguistic contexts of Scotland and Taiwan focuses on three aspects: (1) existence of two linguistic codes belonging to the same language family; (2) the status of one of those languages as the standard set by a larger, more powerful neighbor from whose perspective any other variety is likely to look like a dialect; and (3) the…