The three types of stresses namely "word stress," "compound stress" and "phrasal stress" are the key elements to determine the exact means of conveying a specific intent in an utterance. Therefore during perception and production of such meaning carrying codes, being able to use the right stress pattern is vitally…

Linguist Rosina Lippi-Green concludes in her book, "English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States," "Accent discrimination can be found everywhere in our daily lives. In fact, such behavior is so commonly accepted, so widely perceived as appropriate, that it must be seen as the last back door to…

The variety of English spoken by about half a million people in the Canadian province of Quebec is a minority language in intensive contact with French, the local majority language. This unusual contact situation has produced a unique variety of English which displays many instances of French influence that distinguish it from other types of…

Many teachers lack the linguistic training required to build on the language skills that African American students from dialectally diverse backgrounds bring to school. When students correctly use the language patterns of their communities, such teachers may diagnose language deficits and attempt to teach them the "right" grammar. Research has…

The formation of French neologisms by combining two words is not a recent phenomenon but appears in Rabelais' work and has become more apparent in recent years. The trend marks a kind of evolution in the French attitude toward language, and thus merits considerable attention. (MSE)

Analyzes two descriptions of Nigerian English and discusses their implications for ESL teachers in Nigeria. (EKN)

The history of "Verlan," a form of French word play involving inversion of syllables with varying degrees of complexity, is described and its phonological and morphological patterns are outlined. Appropriate and inappropriate contexts for use of Verlan, extralinguistic functions, and the results of lexicalization of verlanized words are…

This brochure discusses, in lay terms, how computers process language and why they may have difficulty in processing English. The brochure points out that English is a more difficult language to process than most people think, and that the brain is far more complex than the computer in its ability to decipher meaning. The examples of the word…

The relationship between Eastern and Western languages is explored. Possible origins and the spread of language over the Eurasian land mass are discussed. (CW)

This brochure discusses, in lay terms, how languages change and how English in particular has gone through much alteration over the ages. It explains that languages change because: the needs of its speakers change; individual experience differs, and, therefore, the uses of language differ; new words are brought in from other languages or created…

Though diversity serves as a valuable source for rhetorical inquiry, expressivist instructors who privilege diversity writing may also overemphasize the essential authenticity of their students' vernaculars. This romantic and salvationist impulse reveals the troubling implications of eighteenth-century Natural Language Theory and may,…

This paper discusses factors contributing to differing translations of the same source text, arguing that translation occurs on a continuum rather than having absolute criteria and procedures. Issues examined include the formal properties of the text, the text's "invariant core of meaning," stability in the semantic elements of the text, the text…

Describes the phonological and phonetic features of English as spoken in Pakistan and shows such distinctive patterns as anglicized, acrolectal, mesolectal, and basilectal varieties of Pakistani English. (45 references) (CB)

Notes that few phonemes exhibit greater variance in the membership of phonemes that make up an equivalency class than the phoneme represented by /r/. Points out that the relationship between the auditory features of the speech signal and phonetic classification provides insight into a language's encoding and decoding system. (23 references)…

Language choice (LC) for literacy must consider mother tongue, language of first sight, local lingua francas, and any readily accessible world language. Common but false assumptions regarding LC are noted: multilingualism as a barrier to development, the necessity of a world language, and the permanance of language patterns. (Contains four…