This dissertation studies the acquisition of verb argument structure in the basilectal subvariety of Jakarta Indonesian (henceforth, bJI). There are two characteristics of bJI that potentially affect the acquisition of verb argument structure. First, bJI sentences can surface not only in the full frame but also in truncated frames. Second, the…

Describes the development of a sign that was understood only by certain members of a group. The stages of evolution are studied from its original gross pattern to a refined, simpler sign. The sign had only two years to develop and was influenced by phonological and social-environmental constraints. (PJM)

This paper suggests an explicit way of integrating sociolectal and dialectal facts in the overall description of a language. Phonetic, morphological, syntactic and semantic units of the whole language are defined. (CK)

An extrinsic relationship between generative semantics and dialect geography should be exploited because contemporary transformational grammarians have too easily ignored the work of the dialectologist and have been too readily satisfied with what might be called armchair evidence. The work of the dialect geographers needs to be taken into…

This analysis encompasses graphemic, phonological, lexical and syntactic variations of Chicano Spanish from standard Spanish and the functions of the vernacular within the speech community. (RM)

Using two informants and the questionnaires of the "Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Colombia," a linguistic corpus of Pamplona, Colombia, was derived. Regional speech characteristics are discussed here, including use of vowels and consonants, reversing sound position, elision, and lexical anomalies. (Text is in Spanish.) (CK)

In a comparative study of American English speakers and British English speakers, it was examined whether segmental effects can be used in speech production as cues to syntactic structure. American speakers could use the segmental cues in syntax perception, while British speakers could not. Speakers of British English who were long-term residents…

Abstracts of 23 addresses given at the Sixteenth Annual Conference on Linguistics are presented in this report. The papers given at the conference deal with French, American English, English, Japanese, Cantonese, Latin, and Proto-Indo-European and cover a wide variety of topics, including dialectology, form classes, grammar, and semantics. The…

Misinformation and ambiguity as features of social communication in Northern Thai villages are examined. The questions of how well Northern Thai villagers understand each others' verbal communications, and how accurate their statements actually are, are considered. (Author/RM)

This study investigates the relationship between social class membership and certain syntactic variables within a generative-transformational linguistic framework. Fourteen syntactic items are considered. Linguistic performance is more variable and complex within the higher ranking groups. (TL)

Traces the history of sociolinguistic studies in West Germany from the early nineteenth century with Humboldt and reports on the state and purposes of sociolinguistic studies in present-day Federal Republic of Germany. Available from Liber Laeromedel, Box 1205, S-22105 Lund, Sweden (Text is in German.) (TL)

Some 26 abstracts of papers presented at the Conference are compiled in this report. Topics include papers by noted specialists on: (1) programed language instruction (2) Milivox, (3) individualized instruction, (4) Spanish phonetics, (5) linguistic analysis, (6) semantics, (7) the comparative in English, (8) inflectional and derivational…

Describes the connective suffixes used in Coast Tsimshian and Southern Tsimshian. (AM)