Linguists have increased their documentation efforts in response to the sharp decline in the number of languages. Greater awareness and new sources of funding have led to an upsurge in language documentation. While individual languages make unique contributions to the world's linguistic heritage, language families, by virtue of their shared…

In addition to providing an account of the empirical facts of language, a theory that aspires to account for language as a biologically based human faculty should seek a graceful integration of linguistic phenomena with what is known about other human cognitive capacities and about the character of brain computation. The present discussion note…

Local inversion in English and Chichewa shows remarkable similarities that can be explained by hypothesizing the same underlying argument structures and principles for mapping argument structure roles into syntactic functions. However, profound typological differences between the two languages defy analysis within a widely assumed architecture of…

Discusses and critiques the ideas presented in Joseph H. Greenberg's 1987 book, "Language in the Americas." The book has been greeted with dismay by many specialists in Amerindian linguistics. (38 references) (JL)

Deals with how phonological changes occur and why. Presented as a response to "how" is the idea of lexical diffusion with focus on the temporal and lexical dimensions of sound changes. Evidence has been gathered from various languages to support this theory. Actuation is presented as occurring for physiological and perceptual reasons. (SC)

Research supported by grants from the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health. (DD)

This article examines the variable absence of the verb in "as far as" constructions, which serve as qualifiers or topic restrictors in English. (46 references) (Author/CK)

Comparison of the moribund dialects of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, and Smith Island, Maryland, demonstrates that valuable insight into the patterning of variation and change in language death can be obtained by investigating moribund varieties of healthy languages. Discusses comparative investigation of two kinds of linguistic decay:…

The manifestation of time, space, and person reference in American Sign Language is described and discussed. The effect of the modality of communication on the language system is studied. (Author/RM)

Preliminary version of this paper was given at the 1968 winter meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, New York City, based upon work supported by the Office of Education as a Cooperative Research Project. (VM)