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Harris, Roy – Language Sciences, 1993
Discusses Saussures's "Cours de linguistique generale," which was published in 1916, and devotes specific attention to the significance of Part VI, which is devoted to linguistic geography. (16 references) (Author/VWL)
Descriptors: Geography, Language Variation, Linguistic Theory

Peng, Fred C. C. – Language Sciences, 1979
Examines current theories of language change, and proposes the theory that language change can be observed and captured while in progress, and that language change can be considered a manifestation of human change in general. (AM)
Descriptors: Diachronic Linguistics, Grammar, Japanese, Language Variation

Dinnsen, Daniel – Language Sciences, 1977
Argues that the mechanism of rule ordering, although sufficient to account for certain facts about linguistic change and variation, is not necessary. Different sequences of identical rules needed to account for dialectal facts in Catalan can be predicted by two independently motivated universal principles. (CHK)
Descriptors: Dialect Studies, Language Patterns, Language Variation, Linguistic Theory

Traugott, Elizabeth Cross – Language Sciences, 1980
Several hypotheses are developed concerning the semantic-pragmatic shifts that take place in the development of grammatical markers such as prepositions, auxiliary verbs and sentence connectives. Over time, grammatical markers shift from being primarily referential to more pragmatic meanings, from propositional to textual to attitudinal. (PMJ)
Descriptors: Diachronic Linguistics, Function Words, Grammar, Language Patterns

Manczak, Witold – Language Sciences, 1980
The size of linguistic elements (morphemes, words or word groups) varies proportionately with their frequency. Because word frequency is unstable, this balance can be disturbed. When elements become too long in relation to their frequency, they are reduced. Examples from Latin illustrate the theory. (PMJ)
Descriptors: Diachronic Linguistics, Language Patterns, Language Variation, Latin

Chen, Rong – Language Sciences, 1995
Uses Firbas' theory of communicative dynamism to analyze the ordering of the subject, verb, and object in Mandarin Chinese. The author demonstrates that the word order of Chinese is not so much determined by syntactic considerations as by information structuring constraints. (30 references) (Author/CK)
Descriptors: Cognitive Processes, Communication (Thought Transfer), Discourse Analysis, Language Variation

Picard, Marc – Language Sciences, 1990
Argues that the most important constraints on any proposed sound change are naturalness and minimality. Examples from Western Romance languages are provided to show how these principles can be applied to the best advantage, and a new solution is proposed to the problem of /erk/ from *DW in Armenian. (27 references) (Author/JL)
Descriptors: Armenian, Diachronic Linguistics, Error Analysis (Language), Language Variation

Stanwood, Ryo – Language Sciences, 1997
This study presents evidence collected from basilectal texts that the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) mental predicates "think, know, want, feel, say, see, hear" have clear lexical equivalents in Hawaii Creole English (HCE), and that these HCE predicates occur, with minor qualification, in the syntactic configurations predicted by…
Descriptors: Creoles, Discourse Analysis, English, Language Patterns