In 1999 the issue of grammar and its teaching re-emerged in Singapore as a topic of great intensity in a government-managed media debate. As studies in other educational contexts have shown, debates about grammar in political discussions and in the media typically proceed in terms of a discourse of crisis and falling standards. More specifically,…

Suggests that, in some Fujian Southern Min dialects, the patterns VP-neg and Adv-VP are mutually exclusive, presenting data from Xiamen to show recent innovations in the yes-no question pattern. Describes this innovation, explaining how the origin of the innovative patterns and limitations on their further development are influenced by…

Presents an analysis of the two passive (or passive-like) constructions in Singapore English which exhibit substrate influence from Malay and Chinese. The paper shows that while substrate languages contribute to the grammar of Singapore English, the continued prestige of standard English exerts normative pressure and mitigates the effect of…

Examines features that make Wole Soyinka's poems bilingual and bicultural. Four linguistic strategies revealing features used in Yoruba poetic discourse are identified across Soyinka's four anthologies: literal translation, creative translation, transference, and stylistic translation. The study reveals that the native language and literary…

Investigates whether inflectional morphology is rule-based or whether the assumption of pattern association is more adequate to account for the facts, arguing for the latter based on analysis of acquisitional data. Review of earlier literature on the subject examines experiments with German- and English-speaking children and supports the schema…

Examines the field of Spanish linguistics over 100 years, subdividing Spanish linguistics into several subdisciplines: historical grammar, descriptive phonetics, Spanish phonology, contrastive structures, descriptive grammar, Spanish syntax, specific Spanish dialectology, Spanish in Africa and Asia, sociolinguistics of Spanish-speaking societies,…

Examines the rationale behind the British government's method for raising standards in writing at Key Stage 2, noting a renewed drive to teach discreet units of sentence grammar and a fresh commitment to shared and guided writing. Argues that these new measure ignore research on the ways children learn to write and will not lead to a rise in…

A Swedish language teacher's experiences with recent developments in language teaching technology such as videotext, teletext, microcomputers, and videotapes and videodisks are presented. His conclusions regarding this new technology include the following: videotext is suitable for self-testing and distance education because it is interactive, but…

At irregular intervals, beginning in 1977, Swedish-Finnish conferences on contrastive and applied linguistics have been arranged in Stockholm and Turko/Abo. This volume presents most of the papers given at the 1982 conference. Papers include: "Free Recall of Mixed Language Lists. Error Patterns in Bilingual Memory" (Karin Aronsson, Anja Metsola,…