Subject relative clauses (RCs) have been shown to be acquired earlier, comprehended more accurately, and produced more easily than object RCs by children. While this subject preference is often claimed to be a universal tendency, it has largely been investigated piecemeal and with low-powered experiments. To address these issues, this…

While there is overall consensus that narratives obtained by means of visual stimuli contain less natural language than free narratives, it has been less clear how the naturalness of a narrative can be measured in a crosslinguistically meaningful way. Here this question is addressed by studying the differences between free narratives and…

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language. Strong cross-linguistic tendencies in syllable size and shape are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure, a type which is also privileged in abstract models of the syllable. Syllable patterns such as those found in Itelmen "qsa?txt??"…

The Center for Applied Linguistics, in its function as a clearinghouse for linguistic information, maintains a set of language files, limited to some 300 languages which have been selected from among the 3,000 to 4,000 in the world for their socio-political importance from an American point of view. The present list, compiled from these files,…

This issue of Exploratorium Magazine is devoted to languages as a systematic means of getting across ideas. Contents include: (1) "Where Do Languages Come From" (Merrit Ruhlen); (2) "English in Transition" (Rupert Peene); (3) "The Making of English" (Judith Brand); (4) "Try This!"-Become a Word Historian and One Poem-Three Poems" (Kurt…

An alphabetical working list of about 1,000 languages that have appeared in the linguistic research of the Center for Applied Linguistics in the last 15 years is presented. A standard name for each language is provided, with an indication of alternative names for the language and the geographic location of the native speakers. An explanation for…

Identifies the languages and language groups in the Nilo-Saharan family (Songhai, Saharan, Mabau, Fur, Coman, and Chari-Nile). (DS)

Advocates the teaching of etymology and increased emphasis on vocabulary instruction by English teachers. (RD)

This document discusses problems and methods of language classification, especially with regard to questions of information storage and retrieval in connection with an information network for the language sciences such as that envisioned by the LINCS (Language Information Network and Clearinghouse System) Project at the Center for Applied…

This survey of languages of the world begins with a chart of about 500 languages, organized in 21 language families. Within each family are listed subgroups and the major and minor languages within those subgroups. The chart is followed by a brief description of each language family. This in turn is followed by individual descriptions of the more…

Conference held April 23-25, 1970 in Washington, D.C. with support from the U.S. Office of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities. (VM)

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…

Condensed, slightly revised version of an article which appeared in the Chinese Year Book, Shanghai, in 1937. (VM)

Conference held August 1-8, 1970 at Burg Wartenstein, Austria, with support from the Wenner-Gren Anthropological Foundation. (VM)

A discussion of American Sign Language looks at its history in the context of deaf education and its increasing acceptance as a complete natural language both among linguists and in the college curriculum. (MSE)