Supports the assertion that pedagogical grammar must be a marriage of syntax and pragmatics through consideration of the different characteristics of "yes/no" questions and of how input from both syntax and pragmatics is needed to explain these characteristics. (Author/CB)

Explores an Optimality-Theoretic approach to account for observed cross-linguistic patterns of code switching that assumes that code switching strives for well-formedness. Optimization of well-formedness in code switching is shown to follow from (violable) ranked constraints. An argument is advanced that code-switching patterns emerge from…

Describes syntactic variation in West African English with examples from West African English literature and identifies and describes subjectless sentences, deletion of the -ly morpheme in manner adjuncts, omission of function words, reduplication, tag questions, substitution of prepositions in idiomatic usage, and focus constructions. (53…

Analyzes 10 edited essays written by freshmen native and nonnative speakers of English who are novice writers of English. Both groups produced approximately the same number and kinds of sentence level deviations from standard written English, but nonnatives produce fewer faulty structures and more coherent essays with clearer illocutionary guides.…

Discusses the birthday notices that appear in the advertising section of the Papua New Guinea "Post Courier." The texts of these notices are analyzed from a sociolinguistic perspective, and their context is considered as a register of the variety of English that has become known as Papua New Guinea English. (Author/OD)

A study of code switching attempts to validate the equivalence constraint on intrasentential code switching on the basis of natural speech data from two typologically different languages, Finnish and English. All informants are fluent native speakers of Finnish who emigrated to Canada as adults. (25 references) (Author/OD)

Examines competition between conflicting principles in Kenyan English (animacy hierarchy and discourse pressure to place given information before new), manifested in news discourse. Results suggest some differences between spoken and written Kenyan English pointing to a tendency toward a more standard native-speaker variety in news discourse, and…