The functioning of any language is regulated not only by linguistic rules, but also by norms of social and cultural life. Nowadays, development of lingua cultural approach in worldwide education is conditioned by a re-construal of culture phenomena as a specific form of human existence. Until now, we have been dealing with an absence of sufficient…

This study presents findings resulting from a comparative analysis of the system of nominal morphological markers attested by various researchers in the Surgut dialect and in the badly described Salym dialect. The analysis focused on the morphological markers that form paradigms of three nominal categories: case, number and possession. It aimed at…

It is proposed that there are cultural universals in the use of language and that these universals have implications for language acquisition. The model rests on three hypotheses: (1) there are culturally universal tendencies in the linguistic marking of four dimensions of language (epistemic and affective stances, social acts, social activities,…

An analysis of subjacency in Russian focuses on relative clauses, and on the movement of the Russian pronoun "kotoryj." The properties of relativization in English are compared and contrasted with those in Russian, and a theory predating the formulation of bounding theory and the subjacency condition is tested with data from Russian. A…

The nature of semantic roles and grammatical relations are explored from the perspective of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). It is proposed that unraveling the relational aspects of grammar involves the recognition that semantic roles fall into two types, thematic relations and macroroles, and that grammatical relations are not universal and are…

A study examined pragmatic routine and indirection as regularly-used strategies for accomplishing linguistic action that, while conventional, can pose problems for non-native speakers. Two kinds of conventionalities are distinguished: conventionality of means (kinds of semantic structure that have acquired a standard illocutionary force, such as,…

The so-called deviant character of a set of non-native texts is examined by looking closely at how sentence syntax realizes and affects textual functions. Two broad groups of syntactic phenomena are considered: subordination and "marked structures," such as passives and clefts. Emphasis in this paper is on the following four ways in which syntax…

This examination focuses on the idea that child language acquisition is constrained by the same principles that have been found to hold on syllable structure across languages. First, a recently-proposed constraint on syllable structure, the Sonority Cycle, is outlined, and the way that it accounts for syllabic structure across languages is…

A study investigated the acquisition of the phonemic feature/voice/ and, more specifically, voice onset time (VOT), in Hindi and English. Subjects were 20 monolingual children aged 2 to 6 from each of the 2 language groups, divided into 5 age groups, and 10 adults from each language group. Flash cards depicting minimally contrasting sets of words,…

A discussion of agency looks at cross-linguistic evidence concerning the place of volition, animacy, and person in a model of agentivity. Two views of agentivity are presented as complementary rather than mutually contradictory. Data from Lhasa Tibetan that support a less restrictive notion of agency than is often assumed are presented. In this…

The vowel system of the educated rural sedentary dialect of the West Bank (Palestine) is analyzed from a generative phonological point of view and in relation to three phonological processes: monophthongization, centralization, and pharyngealization. The results of the analysis are compared with Mark Cowell's broader 1964 analysis of Syrian…

An analysis of the nature of secondary predicates takes a comparative approach, using Italian and English. Distributional properties and extraction facts are accounted for, and an explanation for the fact that resultatives are not allowed in Romance languages is sought on the basis of Italian evidence. It is argued that the semantic distinction…

A study examined the applicability of the Ordering Hypothesis to Japanese suffixes. The hypothesis, which claims that affixes that trigger phonological rules (cyclical affixes) do not appear external to affixes that do not, is found to be an inappropriate assumption in Japanese. Examples in English and Chamorro support this finding. It is…

A variable rule of /s/ deletion that operates in many varieties of Spanish is examined. A descriptive apparatus is posited that may be helpful in systematizing quantitative data from studies of phonological variability. Empirical data from the speech of informants show that ordering relationships among constraints on variable phonological rules…

Different languages code messages in different ways and use different channels for sending messages; thus there are many places for misinterpreting and mishearing messages in an intercultural context. To move from one language to another requires a description of the total language communication system, one that has its universals in social and…