Among the many ways in which sounds alternate in the world's languages, changes in the order of sounds (metathesis) are relatively rare. Mutsun, a Southern Costanoan language of California which was documented extensively before the death of its last speaker in 1930, displays three patterns of synchronic consonant-vowel (CV) metathesis. Two of…

Karbi is a Tibeto-Burman (TB) language spoken by half a million people in the Karbi Anglong district in Assam, Northeast India, and surrounding areas in the extended Brahmaputra Valley area. It is an agglutinating, verb-final language. This dissertation offers a description of the dialect spoken in the hills of the Karbi Anglong district. It is…

This dissertation is a grammatical description of several features of the morphology and phonology of the Mocho' language. Mocho' (Motozintleco) is a moribund Mayan language spoken in the Chiapas region of Mexico near the border of Guatemala. This dissertation, based on data collected during several field trips and supplemented with unpublished…

The oldest form of Sanskrit has a class of expressions that are in some respects like asyndetically coordinated syntactic phrases, in other respects like single compound words. I propose to resolve the conflicting evidence by drawing on prosodic phonology, stratal optimality theory, and the lexicalist approach to morphological blocking. I then…

THE LANGUAGE OF THE HAUSA TRIBE AND A LINGUA FRANCA FOR MANY INHABITANTS OF NIGERIA'S NORTHERN REGION, HAUSA IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT LANGUAGE OF WEST AFRICA AND HAS MANY DIALECTS. THIS TEXT IS BASED ON THE KANO DIALECT AND IS INTENDED AS A PRELIMINARY STUDY TO A MORE THOROUGH ANALYSIS OF HAUSA MORPHOLOGY, SYNTAX, AND…

This article discusses the various types of expression of emphasis used for nominals in a variety of languages: raising or alteration of the voice, word order, use of a morpheme for an emphatic function, and nominalization of a part of the sentence not being emphasized. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This is an outline of the major characteristics of sentences like "Ali alikuwa mwalimu" (Ali was a teacher), "Ali ni mwalimu" (Ali is a teacher), and the numerous pattern variations demonstrated by such sentences. Constructions of this kind are traditionally called copula constructions, and have been classified in terms of (1)…

This paper is a report of two studies of the relationship between intonation and syntax. An analysis of intonation was used to decide whether the pivot-like two-morpheme constructions of a one- and one-half-year-old girl were single lexical items or two separate lexical items. Further, the intonation contours connected with her linguistically…

A detailed, spectrographic analysis of two lectures, given by Diego Rivera and Margaret Mead, which were chosen for their realistic naturalness, permits a graphic presentation and description of the patterns of three types of intonation within the declarative sentence in Spanish and American English. They include a minor continuation (A), major…

This study of 15 Hebrew-speaking preschool children with specific language impairment and 2 comparison groups tentatively supported the notion that grammatical morphemes were less difficult for subjects if they take the form of stressed and/or lengthened syllables and if they appear in a language in which nouns, verbs, and adjectives must be…

This paper discusses interrogative structures, based on the results and conclusions derived from comparing the interrogative systems of 79 randomly selected languages. The paper begins by listing a number of generalizations about interrogative structures based on disparate observations in the field. These generalizations constitute the basis for…

This paper examines the problem of whether tonal representation should be considered segmental or suprasegmental. Woo's hypothesis that tone features are to be specified segmentally is discussed as well as Leben's statement that in some languages tone is suprasegmental. The following are criteria suggested as a basis for tonal representation:…

Too often in teaching English to speakers of other languages, the patterns of intonation, stress, and juncture are neglected; as a result, the student's comprehension and power of expression are reduced. After the basic suprasegmental patterns are taught, the teacher should continue to teach the patterns which are useful in distinguishing meanings…

An extreme view of language acquisition sees base structures as innate, and acquisition of the grammar of a particular language as a process of learning the transformation rules needed to get from base structures to surface structures of adult native speakers. Base structures are understood to most resemble simple-active-affirmative-declarative…