Endangered languages, or languages on the verge of becoming extinct, are discussed in relation to the larger process of loss of cultural and intellectual diversity. This article summarizes essays presented at the 1991 Linguistic Society of America symposium, "Endangered Languages and Their Preservation." (11 references) (LB)

Proto-Siouan "one" is reconstructed in two versions from two separate cognate sets, both of which are defective in that each has been entirely lacking from one or another of the major Siouan subgroups. One of the sets for "one" is found in Mississippi Valley Siouan, and it contains the same root as the indefinite article that…

There was a time in the Americas when many different languages were spoken by the diverse native peoples. This situation changed rapidly as waves of Europeans arrived, containing and controlling the native peoples, often forcing them to forfeit language and culture. Today remnants of some Native American tribes are striving to find ways to…

This document is an attempt at a comprehensive bibliography of all published and unpublished materials relevant to the Lakota (Teton Dakota or Teton Sioux) language with comments for most items. The period covered is from 1887 to 1987, the date of the publication of James Pilling's "Bibliography of the Siouan Languages" (1887). Items in…

In a brief analysis of Hopi consonant gradation, residual exceptions to Heath's generalizations about i-ablaut in Uto-Aztecan languages from Hopi are examined. In Heath's (1977, 1978) reconstruction of Proto-Uto-Aztecan verb morphophonemics, a consonant gradation is reconstructed when a final vowel of a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) root…

In an attempt to determine some of the shared phonological traits among Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest, this paper compares the sound systems of Pueblo languages. The languages within the scope of this research are Zuni, Keresan (Acoma and Santa Ana), and Tanoan (Sandia, Taos, Jemez, and Santa Clara). It is noted that Pueblo Indians have…

The word order in Klamath, a Penutian language of southern Oregon, has been described as almost completely "free". The language is examined in terms of the effect of the relative topicality of arguments on their position preceding or following the verb. The database used for this study consisted of seven Klamath texts from Barker (1963):…

This analysis shows how the Government and Binding (GB) framework of Chomsky may be extended to the focus antipassive construction in K'iche', a Mayan language spoken in the central highland region of Guatemala. The GB model previously has been successfully extended to a number of Romance languages and has shown that a wide range of differences…

Based on the unsubstantiated conclusion of many Hualapai analysts that the glottal stop is one of the phonemes of the language, this paper argues that the glottal stop is for the most part predictable. Data are presented to show the instability as well as the predictability of the glottal stop, and rules are presented, based on the Sound Pattern…

Analyzes the interaction of text and context in a multimedia Quechua-language program and makes suggestions for teaching foreign languages through multimedia technology. (Author/VWL)

In the context of the works of African writers Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, the complexity and controversy surrounding the adoption of English in African literary texts is discussed. The appreciation of English as a means of international communication is reconciled with the desire to preserve the languages and cultural identities of the…

Although English shares official language status with French in Vanuatu, enrollments in English-language schools have increased dramatically at the expense of French-medium schools. Bislama, an English-derived pidgin, has become a compromise language between the two colonial languages that have divided the country. (Author/CB)

Focuses on personal pronouns in business discourse, using data from four business meetings: formal and informal, in Dutch and in Italian. The article focuses on the pronouns "I" and "we," commenting on the frequency of Dutch inclusive "we," absent from the Italian data. The article also discusses indexical and…

A phonemic orthography poses serious problems for students from oral cultures, in part due to the very structure of such orthographies and in part due to negative transference from English spelling habits. A syllabic orthography minimizes the structural problems at the level of decoding, but is an obstacle to morpheme recognition and grammatical…

Describes the functions of a verbal derivational suffix found in the Ngayarda languages of Western Australia. This suffix has a general "collective activity" meaning, but may be used to indicate the existence of a particular kin relationship between participants involved in the action described. (Author/LMO)