The textbook provides an intensive introduction to recent work in syntactic theory within the minimalist framework. The approach taken is to presuppose no background knowledge of syntactic theory or historical linguistics. Rather than compare English with other languages, illustrations are drawn from varieties of English from around the world.…

A sociolinguistic analysis of pronunciation patterns of postnuclear occlusive consonants in northern peninsular Spanish resulted in (1) understanding of the vitality of the use of distinct allophonic variations; (2) characterization of sociolinguistic usage tendencies in relation to speakers' demographic characteristics; and (3) identification of…

A study describing Finnish phonetics and analyzing prosodic properties is reported. Subjects were two female 17-year-olds, speakers of standard Finnish and well acquainted with each other. Data were drawn from two sources: a conversation between the two, in which one described a picture so the other could draw it, and one a set of stories narrated…

Based on previous research showing five examples of verb reduplication in Majang, a member of the Nilo-Saharan language family, this paper presents more specific examples of verb reduplication, its different uses, and the phonological rules governing it. Examples of possibly reduplicated forms from other parts of speech are also given, and data…

This paper examines nominalization and serial verb construction (SVC) in Dagaare, a West African language. It discusses nominalization theory and its relation to Germanic languages such as English, German, and Dutch, using insights gained from the study of these languages to help illuminate nominalization in Dagaare and other similar West African…

The study presents a grammar of Eastern Bontoc, an Austronesian language of the northern Philippines that includes five village dialects and has about 8,000 speakers. Data are from transcribed recordings of primarily one dialect, gathered in 1977-80. The discourse-oriented grammar is outlined in six chapters: an introduction to the language, its…

Investigated the potential correlation of agreement marking with the expression of pronominal subjects in the speech of 10 Spanish speakers from Puerto Rico and 10 from Spain. The results show not only similar patterns of pronominal expression but also similar rankings of constraints on pronominal expression in both dialects. (MDM)

This report discusses the stress patterns of Bengali as spoken in Bangladesh. One of the findings indicate that every word has stress in the first syllable, with additional stress in the first syllable of the first word of the phrase. The Bengali language does not have penultimate and antepenultimate stress. Because there is no rule for changing…

Develops analytical techniques to determine "borrowability," the ease with which a lexical item or category of lexical items can be borrowed by one language from another. These techniques are then applied to Spanish borrowings in Bolivian Quechua on the basis of a set of bilingual texts. (29 references) (MDM)

Foreign Workers' German (FWG) refers to the acquired German language skills of workers from various countries who were recruited to West Germany between 1955 and 1973 to fill menial, undesirable jobs. Contact between these workers and native German speakers was limited because of the nature of the foreigners' work, the tendency toward residential…

A discussion on the nature of language argues the following: (1) the concept of a closed and finite rule system is inadequate for the description of natural languages; (2) as a consequence, the writing of variable rules to modify such rule systems so as to accommodate the properties of natural language is inappropriate; (3) the concept of such…

The discussion of case in grammar focuses on the ways relationships between words in sentences are marked. It describes the familiar systems of suffixes, from languages like Latin, and also the roles of prepositions, postpositions, and the use of the pronominal elements on verbs. One feature of case, the recurrence of apparently idiosyncratic…

Papers on typology and dialects of the Romani language include: "Athematic Morphology in Romani: The Borrowing of a Borrowing Pattern" (Peter Bakker); "Towards a Morphology-Based Typology of Romani" (Viktor Elsik); "The Typology of Case Relations and Case Layer Distribution in Romani" (Yaron Matras); "Object…

The textbook is designed to introduce beginning students of linguistics to the variety of languages of the world. It assumes the reader has mastered the basic principles of linguistics, but seeks background information in the broad range of language phenomena found in the world's languages. Chapters address these topics: classification of…

An analysis of Amuzgo, a language within the Otomanguean family of Mexico, suggests that it is an active-static language with patterns similar but not parallel to those of Chocho. In the report, data on the characteristics of Chocho are summarized, theory and research on active-static languages is reviewed, and the data on Amuzgo are presented.…