Research supported by the Princeton University Council on Research, the Duke University Research Council, the Duke Endowment Fellowship Fund, and the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society. (DD)

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)

Offers an optimality theoretic account for the phonological process of across-word regressive assimilation (AWRA) in Picard, a Gallo-Romance dialect spoken in the Picardie region in Northern France and Southern Belgium. Focuses on the varieties spoken in the Vimeu region of France. Examines one particular topic in the analysis of AWRA: the…

A sociolinguistic analysis of pronunciation patterns of postnuclear occlusive consonants in northern peninsular Spanish resulted in (1) understanding of the vitality of the use of distinct allophonic variations; (2) characterization of sociolinguistic usage tendencies in relation to speakers' demographic characteristics; and (3) identification of…

Explores the semantic distinctions and tonal behaviors of four types of "lai" in Taiwanese. It is concluded that some types cannot be fully understood without reference to the underlying structure, the surface structure being often insufficient for determining the tonal shape of the syllable in utterance. (CLK)

Analysis of a dialect's phonological change over time compares the vowel systems of individual speakers in 1971 and 1984. Subjects were four speakers of Montreal French. Two were born between 1910 and 1920, and two between 1944 and 1950. One individual in each pair was upper middle class and one was not, and no change of social status occurred…

The text covers the phonology and grammar of the variety of Inupiaq, an Eskimo language, spoken in northwestern Alaska. A introductory section explains and maps the geographic distribution of Inupiaq dialects. Subsequent chapters address these topics: pronunciation; phonological processes in Inupiaq; Inupiaq morphology; intransitive verbs;…

Twenty texts in the Chinese dialect of Shanghai city are presented as a tool for those familiar with some dialect of Chinese who are learning this variety. The texts, recorded as spontaneous speech, were originally collected for grammatical analysis and have been revised somewhat for print form. They are arranged in approximate order of…

One dialect of Yi spoken in Meigu County in the southern part of China's Sichuan Province is analyzed for its tone patterns, based on data provided by a bilingual native speaker. Consonant and vowel inventories are provided. Three contrastive tones are found. One has three allophones, which are conditioned by the preceding tone. Tonal allophony is…

This dictionary is designed for students of the Inupiaq language, a form of Inuit spoken in Alaska. The dictionary has three main sections. The first contains Inupiaq noun and verb stems with English translations, the second contains Inupiaq postbases with English translations, and the third has English words with Inupiaq translations. There are…

Ongoing research conducted by the Welsh Language Research Unit of Cardiff, Wales is described. This research has concentrated mainly on recording and describing the phonology of some varieties of Welsh spoken in South-East Wales, particularly as it is associated with geographic areas and affected by population changes resulting from industrial…

A study investigated the relationship between sex and social class in the spontaneous speech of 16 individuals from Newcastle upon Tyne (England). Specifically, the study examined the frequency of glottalized variants of three voiceless stops, and treated variation by sex as separate from, not a byproduct of, variation by class. Subjects were four…

This study examines the lexical and phonological features in the speech of 27 native informants of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama which show distinctive regional or social distribution. The questionnaire used in the study is based on the short work sheets of the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada, and the methodology is similar to that…

The dictionary for Central and E-Saan varieties of Thai is designed as a reference for use by Peace Corps volunteers assigned to northeastern Thailand. An introductory section gives an overview of the dictionary's content and design. Most of the words included are functional vocabulary, and the usage is illustrated in sample sentences written in…

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…