The "Southwest" dialect, previously isolated in San Antonio, Texas, has been isolated south of that area. Data were drawn from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) and interviews with ten lower-middle/upper-lower class informants. Seven communities were represented by seven female and three male English speakers (four…

The objectives of this study were to investigate the effect of four different reading programs on the decoding and comprehension skills of second and third graders. One reading program used a basal reading series which exercised little control over the grapheme-phoneme correspondences presented in the vocabulary. The second program used a basal…

This paper presents a diachronic phonological analysis of French in order to show that Kiparsky's (1972) argument against formal (or language-specific) notation is based on a small sample of phenomena and is therefore not valid. Examples of vocalic tension in French are given, and the process from tension to relaxation is described. This tension…

This paper investigates some of the underlying assumptions prevalent in much of the research concerning the language patterns of black children and compares two competing research approaches: the deficit model, which assumes that black children from the ghetto hear very little language, much of it ill-formed, and that they are impoverished in…

An overconcern with the niceties of usage can undercut English teachers' efforts to eliminate public doublespeak. (JH)

Inner city teachers who had received special inservice training had significantly different attitudes toward nonstandard black dialects than did other inner city teachers. (Ed.)

This article discusses the importance of oral communication in remedial programs for culturally different college students. The use of Non Standard English as a credit course in college academic programs and its implications are presented. (Author/HLM)

Current research supports the notion that language users make both unconscious and conscious choices when accommodating their language for public use, incorporating regional and social distinctions as well as notions of correctness and acceptability. Such decisions occur at the level of communicative competence and become part of the communicative…

Code switching is analyzed as part of a "familylect," which is code switching as it occurs in the spoken language of a multilingual family with four members. Seven different language codes are involved. Through a linguistic and extra-linguistic analysis, an attempt is made to answer three questions connected with code switching: when,…

Examines ways in which modern varieties of English around the world differ in eight specific aspects of relative clause formation, focusing on the theoretical implications of some of the phenomena, their likely origins, and possible explanations for cases in which features are shared by apparently unassociated varieties. (Author/MSE)

This investigation reports average length of communication units (C-units) in words and in morphemes for 95 African-American boys and girls (ages 4-6) from lower-income, urban homes. Mean C-units increased across the age span and syntactic complexity of the children's language samples correlated positively with increases in C-unit length.…

An analysis of perfect verb forms in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) looks at the distribution of forms by semantic function and co-occurrence patterns in Samana English and ex-slave recordings. Results suggest that despite the overall rarity of this category in the general realm of past time, the most frequent forms used to mark it…

This dictionary covers the Central Yup'ik Eskimo language spoken in southwestern Alaska. An introductory section provides notes on Yup'ik phonology and orthography, outlines the volume's format, discusses several special issues in translation and phonology, and describes a number of dialects. The main section of the dictionary lists base words,…