Variation occurs in sign languages, just as in spoken languages. Lexical variation is very common and has been related to individual schools for the deaf, so-called "schoolization," rather than only to region or other common sociolinguistic factors, such as gender, social class, etc. (Baker et al. 2016). This study investigates lexical…

The Language Strand of the Australian Curriculum: English (Australian Curriculum, Assessment & Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2016b) includes the sub-strand of "Language Variation and Change". This sub-strand is a marked space for discovery and discussion of the history and politics of language use. As such, this sub-strand points to…

Previous language attitude studies indicated that in many countries all over the world, English language learners perceived native accents, either American or British, more positively than the non-native accents such as the Japanese, Korean, and Austrian accents. However, in Malaysia it is still unclear which accent Malaysian learners of English…

This dissertation establishes the utility and reliability of a statistical distance measure for syntactic dialectometry, expanding dialectometry's methods to include syntax as well as phonology and the lexicon. It establishes the measure's reliability by comparing its results to those of dialectology and phonological dialectometry on Swedish…

Illustrates substrate reinforcement in the development of three current dialects of Melanesian Pidgin. Evidence of earlier variability is presented and the sociolinguistic conditions that later led to greater stability are described. Grammatical features that differentiate the dialects are examined. For each feature, it is shown that at least two…

Describes the lexical characteristics of South African Indian English, focusing on its similarities with English in India, pidgins and creoles, and other expatriate Indian Englishes. (Author/CB)

Discusses dialectal differences in the aggregate. Employs a dialectometric technique that provides an additive measure of pronunciation difference: The (aggregate) pronunciation difference. Sampled Dutch towns and villages, where the variation ranges between 56% and 81%, lending credence to the dialect continuum view. (Author/VWL)

Assesses phonological continuity and change in the last stage of the moribund dialect called "Negerhollands" in the Danish West Indies (DWI). The article contrasts earlier and current views of this dialect, sketches language contact in the DWI, examines the last speaker's language history and vowel systems, and assesses variation in a…

Discusses the rise of Mexican Spanish as a distinct variety of Spanish and describes the regional and social dialects of contemporary Mexican Spanish. Although countless similarities exist between Mexican Spanish and the Chicano Spanish spoken in the southwestern United States, Mexican Spanish shows greater variability. (GR)

This dictionary is a composite of four Philippine Creole Spanish dialects: Cotabato Chabacano and variants spoken in Ternate, Cavite City, and Zamboanga City. The volume contains 6,542 main lexical entries with corresponding entries with contrasting data from the three other variants. A concluding section summarizes findings of the dialect study…

Explores the status of the Zamboangueno dialect, discusses the various stages of decreolization in the direction of Spanish, and suggests possible avenues for the continued introduction of elements from an acrolect which, for all intents and purposes, is no longer generally available to residents of Zamboanga, Philippines. (Author/CB)

Examines a pattern of end-of-word deletion in Faetar, a Francoprovencal dialect spoken in southern Italy, and considers synchronic variants. The article uses the word "deletion" as a synchronic description of the fact that speakers do not always phonetically produce everything in the input form. Optimality Theory accounts for such…

Discusses the major language shift in Singapore from the familial use of varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin towards the languages of education, English and Mandarin. An ethnographic study is presented of a Singaporean Chinese family that has moved from Cantonese to English, and the underlying pressures leading to this shift are examined. (19…

A study of dialectal variation in Mexican Sign Language (MSL), the primary language for a large segment of Mexico's deaf community, is presented. Signs used by nine different sources representing various locations, ages, and social groups are compared. The first section reviews a number of previous informal assessments of dialectal variation in…

A lexical comparison of four native speakers' spontaneous discourse in the Acadian French spoken in a southern Nova Scotia village with standard spoken French is described. This study is part of a larger study of four regional variations on Nova Scotia Acadian French and has as its objectives both linguistic analysis and improvement of standard…