This article uses cognitive measures previously developed within linguistic relativity research to explore the thinking patterns of Yucatec Maya-Spanish bilingual children in the Yucatan peninsula. These measures were designed to detect cognitive patterns associated with specific language patterns. Here, these measures are used to test whether 12…

The Pueblo People of the Southwest face numerous challenges with reference to language issues. A substantial number of Native American students are placed into special education possibly due to different linguistic abilities. The over-identification of Native American students for special education programs may be due to the lack of knowledge as a…

To understand the interactions between production patterns common to children regardless of language environment and the early appearance of production effects based on perceptual learning from the ambient language requires the study of languages with diverse phonological properties. Few studies have evaluated early phonological acquisition…

The Aymara of the Andes use absolute (cardinal) frames of reference for describing the relative position of ordinary objects. However, rather than encoding them in available absolute lexemes, they do it in lexemes that are intrinsic to the body: "nayra" ("front") and "qhipa" ("back"), denoting east and west,…

Metalinguistic skills may develop differently in multilingual and monolingual children. This study investigated effects of immersion in Cherokee as a second language on young children's (4;5-6;1) skills of noticing morphological forms/patterns in English, their first language, by comparing English past tense skills on two nonword and two real-word…

Examines Kamsa ritual language and describes a model (based on accessibility, formalization, and efficacy) for specifying its semiotic constitution. (EKN)

Kutenai has an obviation system reminiscent of the systems found in Algonquian languages, in which at most one third person nominal in a clause is proximate and others are obviate. Although the behavior of proximate nominals within clauses and within texts reflects a special status for proximates as having some sort of "higher rank" than…

The Bella Coola suffix "-m" has been analyzed in the literature as two or even three separate morphemes, based on the variable effects it has on the transitivity of its base. The segment is argued for here as a single morpheme with a unified meaning, specifically as a marker of a special case of one definition of the middle voice,…

Social meaning includes evaluation of languages themselves. Linguists often say all languages are equal. This is true in regard to potential, not true of actual state. All varieties of language share with pidgins and creoles the condition of being the result of a particular history of use, specialization, elaboration, and loss. A conversational…

A salient characteristic of the morpho-lexical systems of the Salish languages is the widespread use of reduplication in both derivational and inflectional functions. Salish reduplication signals such typologically common categories as "distributive/plural,""repetitive/continuative," and "diminutive," the cross-linguistically marked but typically…

This research suggests a possible diachronic explanation for the emergence of OVS (Object-Verb-Subject) as basic sentence word order in Carib languages. The application of afterthought grammaticalization patterns to explain diachronic change in the position of subject necessitates some modification of Hyman's and Venneman's hypotheses. Neither…

A study of verb agreement and clause structure in Karaja, a Brazilian indigenous language of Macro-Je stock, discusses the subject and object agreement systems with relation to the Feature Specification Constraint. Implementation of the SOV order in Karaja is then analyzed and evidence is presented for the existence of a single functional phrase…

As part of a training program for Native Americans in speech and hearing sciences, University of Arizona speech-language pathologists conducted speech-language screenings of 583 Papago Indian Reservation children. This report presents screening results, describes patterns of English usage among this population and discusses the differentiation of…

Uses eight languages in five distinct linguistic areas to examine two hypotheses regarding text generation and analysis and to illustrate their reciprocity relative to narrative discourse. Demonstrates how these hypotheses yield salience schemes and constituent analysis which mutually corroborate and correct each other. (KEH)

The morphological structure of the nouns in Yupik Eskimo is highly complex. Past attempts at its classification are recapitulated, and a new analysis is proposed within the theoretical framework of generative phonology. The new classification is informative: it reveals the innate structures underlying the various noun types, and also provides…