This study introduces a typological model of the "conceptual language-specific approach" to the L2 research on the acquisition of tense-aspect. The model is based on the typological notion of prominence, classifying languages into tense-prominent and aspect-prominent (Bhat 1999) and the L1 research proposal that language-specific…

An analysis of semantically ergative languages begins with a description of the essential results of research on ergativity to date, and an outline of the assumptions and conceptual apparatus on which the analysis is based. Subsequently, data from 20 Daghestanian languages, primarily Archi, are examined for evidence of the syntactic features of…

The author suggests an evolutionary typology of languages and a way to integrate the concept of linguistic modernization with a theory of language problems. (Author/PM)

Persian Languages is one of the widespread branches of Indo-European languages that for long have comprised several important languages. The importance of these languages which lies in the strength of Median, Achamenian, Parthian, and Sasanid Empires during different eras caused a number of researchers to increase their studies about these…

This study examines how Keenan and Comrie's (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) intersects with the typological characteristics of Korean in the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs). Korean has two types of RC constructions: head-external and head-internal. The head-external relative has its head to the right of the RC, whereas the…

The relationship between written words and their pronunciation varies considerably among different orthographic systems, and these variations have repercussions on learning to read. Children whose languages have deep orthographies must learn to pronounce larger units, such as rhymes, morphemes, or whole words, to achieve the correct pronunciation…

The three mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) are so closely related that the speakers mostly communicate in their own languages (semicommunication). Even though the three West Germanic languages Dutch, Frisian and Afrikaans are also closely related, semicommunication is not usual between these languages. In the present…

The language of three year old children is examined to discover whether existing classifications of language functions account for all the ways in which language is used. One mode of classification is used to compare the language used by three year olds from different groups. (Editor)

This volume of the Languages of the World Series contains: "(1.5) Unified List of American Indian Languages aboriginal to Latin America" (pages 1-120), and "(1.6) Classification of American Indian languages" (North, Central, and South America, pages 121-50). For each language, language family, or other group, information is…

This study assesses and characterizes lexical relationships among the major urban Syro-Lebanese varieties of Arabic. To achieve this quantitative analysis of degrees of similarity or differentiation, an analytical procedure based on lexical compatibility was developed. Secondarily, a classification of these varieties is presented as a by-product…

The study of folk speech, which traditionally included only regional dialects, has evolved to include cultural and generational dialects. This article discusses how folk speech study has come to include a range of dialects and a variety of sociolinguistic trends. (JL)

Third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders who received training in recognition of context clues performed significantly better than controls on tests of reading skills. (GW)

Classifies authoring languages for computer assisted instructional lessons according to a taxonomy based on the hierarchy commonly used for computer languages--the lowest level being the code used by the machine itself and higher levels successively more removed from the machine language. (Author/JJD)

Describes the work by Silvio Ceccato regarding machine translation systems and procedures, exploring such aspects of his work as functional philosophical approaches to machine translation, notional spheres, correlational analysis, and type classifications. Ceccato envisioned many of the methods that are now being applied in machine translation…

Describes a new data compression technique that utilizes the common morphological structure of languages. Topics include classification of languages and their morphological structure; structured text compression; the algorithm and an example using Turkish; theoretical implications; and implementation. (LRW)