Focus on his biography and his performance in the media has long been the basis of interpretation of Bob Dylan's identity. This has resulted in the accepted critical theory of Dylan's identity as mercurial and lacking a central ipseity. However, as Michael Strachan argues, rock biography is an unstable genre because it treats its subjects as…

Computer-based multidimensional scaling techniques are used to determine the dimensionality of grammatical variation in three large sets of data: Ross' (1973) Noun Phrase and fake Noun Phrase data; Sankoff's (1974) complementizer "que"-deletion (Montreal French) data; and Cedergren's (1973) syllable-final S-reduction (Panamanian Spanish) data. (DB)

This article outlines a model of the two basic components of a text, namely, the system of formal linguistic rules, and the realization of these rules into concrete discourse, by means of particular transformations. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

The results of a project which investigated the speech of black respondents enrolled in the intermediate grades are described. From the data, materials and audio tapes were developed that could be used in helping preservice and inservice teachers identify morphological and syntactic features of black dialect. The concepts used in developing the…

To determine the variety of syntactic patterns that potential English teachers would normally use and the possible differences in their oral and written discourse, 1000-word oral and written language samples were collected from 21 student teachers. These samples were divided into T-units and classified according to 23 sentence patterns based on…

Two lower socioeconomic groups (one black and one white) from the inner city and a third group of white children from a middle socioeconomic suburban area of Chicago were studied to delineate and compare the usage of selected language structures among children of different social and ethnic backgrounds. Usage of each of the test structures was…

Right dislocations are expressions of the following form: (1) "They told the Grand Jury a number of lies, the Nixon men." (2) "We find we have to limit our social schedule, my husband and I." (3) "Mary always wears a frown, the ugly witch." They are found also almost exclusively in the spoken language. This paper…

The oral and written language of 10 students expressing themselves on the same subject was observed to determine (1) whether an "oral style" could be identified and (2) what relationship existed between cognitive processes and methods of expression. Six girls and four boys were placed in two situations: an "oral" situation in…

Recent studies suggest that the language deficiency often attributed to disadvantaged children, especially disadvantaged black children, is not a language deficit so much as a difficulty in dialect switching. The disadvantaged child's language patterns are different from the language patterns of the child from the mainstream of American society. A…

Current patterns of Patois (introduced by West Indian Creoles) as used by young Jamaicans in England is presented. Forty-five British-born individuals, aged 16 to 23, whose parents were Jamaican immigrants, participated in a study structured to elicit a wide range of speech patterns. Subjects differed greatly in educational background and in…

This paper reports on a study in which the speech and the writing of college freshmen were compared. Spoken samples were gathered from classroom discussion; written samples were taken from pieces written on the discussion material in a later class session. Spoken and written samples from an "A" student, a "B+" student, a "B" student, and a "C"…

The purpose of this study was to determine statistically significant linguistic features of oral and written discourse rated quite high or low by teachers, and to make recommendations based on these findings to supplement existing guidelines for teaching composition. Fifty-five paired oral (tape-recorded) and written compositions were elicited…

Examines the role of "routines" and grammatical patterns in first and second language acquisition by children and adults, specifically with regard to syntactic structures. (Author/AM)

This paper gives the results of a controlled experiment on word association. The purpose was to establish norms of commonality of primary descriptive adjective responses to common nouns. The stimuli consisted of 203 common nouns selected from 10 everyday topics of conversation, approximately 20 from each topic. There were 350 subjects, 50% male,…

Investigators agree that mothers employ a variety of request forms and that children seem to be able to respond to these forms with a remarkable degree of accuracy. It is suggested that the speech of mothers to their children is filled with requests which are really not requests at all. It is shown that many of what appear to be adult requests to…