In an effort to examine the hierarchical relations in the development of discourse topics, the narrative-descriptive essays of 55 university freshmen were analyzed in terms of L. Lautamatti's five sentence types. In type 1, the initial element is in the position of the grammatical subject, and is the topical subject. In type 2, the topical and…

Presents details of the linguistic modification in speech to children in the Mayan language, Quiche. Evaluates 17 features commonly cited for speech to children and notes seven additional features for Quiche: whispering, initial-syllable deletion, BT formed for verbs, a verbal suffix, more fixed word order, more imperatives, and a special…

Preliminary versions of the papers from the 1985 Summer Institute of Linguistics presented at the University of North Dakota session include: "Referential Distance and Discourse Structure in Yagua" (Thomas E. Payne); "A Note on Ergativity, S', and S'' in Karitiana" (Daniel Everett); "Some Aspects of Zapotecan Clausal…