The paper interprets Whorf's notion by turning to his original writings. Specifically, the paper makes a detailed analysis of Whorf's notion from anthropological linguistics, which largely deals with his famous distinction between overt category and covert category and his detailed description of the American Indian language Hopi; contrastive…

Language communities differ in their stock of reference frames (coordinate systems for specifying locations and directions). English typically uses egocentrically-defined axes (e.g., "left-right"), especially when describing small-scale relationships. Other languages such as Tseltal Mayan prefer to use geocentrically-defined axes (e.g.,…

Tested claims by Lucy (1992a, 1992b) that differences between the number marking systems used by Yucatec Maya and English lead speakers of these languages to differentially attend to either the material composition or the shape of objects. Replicated Lucy's critical objects' classification experiments using speakers of English and Japanese.…

Suggests that children follow different paths into learning verbs, and that there are several forces guiding the learning process: cognitive as well as language specific matters, such as morphology, semantics, and discourse. Sketches the basic characteristics of verbs in Tzotzil and examines two children's productions at the end of their…

This study focuses on the research literature available in the United States on the evolution of language policy and planning issues involved in bilingual education programs in Mayan communities in Guatemala. I begin with general comments regarding language policy and planning for bilingual programs for ethnic groups within the borders of…

This analysis shows how the Government and Binding (GB) framework of Chomsky may be extended to the focus antipassive construction in K'iche', a Mayan language spoken in the central highland region of Guatemala. The GB model previously has been successfully extended to a number of Romance languages and has shown that a wide range of differences…

The term ethnoreconstruction has been coined to refer to a strategy by which a speaker of one language or dialect attempts to speak a related language or dialect by systematically transforming the elements. The process is discussed with reference to several languages. (CHK)

Six papers resulting from the fieldwork projects of members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics program at the University of North Dakota include: "A Relational Grammar Approach to Kera Syntax" (Janet K. Camburn), a syntactic study of an Afroasiatic language; "Clitic Doubling and M-Chains in Piraha" (Dan Everett), examining…

Seven original research papers by faculty and students of the Linguistics Department and other related departments of the University of Kansas are presented. The titles and authors are as follows: "Particles in Tojolabal Mayan Discourse" (Jill Brody); "One Hundred Years of Lakota Linguistics (1887-1987)" (Willem J. de Reuse);…

Eight original research papers on Native American languages by faculty and students of the Linguistics Department and other related departments of the University of Kansas are presented. The titles and authors include the following: "Comanche Consonant Mutation: Initial Association or Feature Spread?" (James L. Armagost); "The Alsea…

Selected papers include: "From Core to Periphery: A Study on the Directionality of Syntactic Change in Japanese" (Kaoru Horie); "On the Extension of Body-Part Nouns to Object-Part Nouns and Spatial Adpositions" (Yo Matsumoto); "Noun Classes: Language Change and Learning" (Maria Polinsky, Dan Jackson);…