Demonstrates the importance of investigating language variation and change both within and across ethnic groups, especially those that have been relatively insular historically. Focus is on the variable patterning of /ay/ in the variety of English spoken by the Lumbee Indians in tri-ethic Robeson County, North Carolina. (Author/VWL)

Quantitative evidence is presented for a change in vernacular Black English (VBE) that appears to involve increasing similarities between VBE and other varieties. It is suggested that, although Black varieties and White varieties of English remain distinct and undergo certain changes separately, this need not be regarded as absolute divergence.…

Studies of (TD) and (ING) in King of Prussia (Pennsylvania) families show that children have matched their parents' patterns of variation by age seven, before many categorical phonological and grammatical rules can be established. Some dialect-specific and socially marked constraints are acquired before constraints with general articulatory…

The marking of past temporal reference in Black English Vernacular (BEV) and Trinidadian English is compared. Similarities in the patterns of variation according to verb type and phonological conditioning suggest that past marking in contemporary BEV preserves traces of an earlier shift from a creole pattern to one approximating the Standard…

Texas migration patterns have split the Anglo population into rural and metropolitan dialects. Evidence from a random-sample survey of Texas and state survey of high schools show young rural Anglos preserve two stereotypical features not found in urban Anglo speech. The difference, absent among adults, suggests in-migration from other parts of the…

A study analyzed four major classes of discourse marker in Brazilian Portuguese: "ne" and other requests for feedback; "ai," a sequential connector; "ah, bom," and other turn initiators; and "assim," a marker of explanation. Distribution in various discourse functions and sociodemographic conditioning, and…