Observation of child language development is just one way to study how language changes over time. Developmental psycholinguistics shares much common ground with historical linguistics and with studies of languages in contact and the evolution of pidgins and creoles. By studying the way language changes, this paper focuses on clarifying the…

This document describes a four-year program designed to develop and test a method for teaching standard English to nonstandard dialect speakers in the first four grades of elementary school in Hilo, Hawaii. Chapters in this first volume are (1) Introduction, (2) Project Site and Evaluation Strategy, (3) Instrumentation, (4) Development of Lesson…

Examines the effect of adult recasting in sign language on the acquisition of specific syntactic-semantic structures by deaf children aged 9 to 76 months. Results indicated that recasting triggered the acquisition of new syntactic-semantic structures in American Sign Language and English, evident in the spontaneous production of previously…

This paper examines the belief that as English rapidly infiltrates Native American cultures, school programs for teaching and maintaining native languages are not working. It suggests that Native American children who learn English first and their heritage languages second have difficulty learning the structures of their ancestral languages…

Error frequency and language competence of bilingual grade 6 students were analyzed to determine the effect of language comprehension in errors made in solving mathematical word problems. Results provide support for the linkage of comprehension errors to measures of language competency. (29 references) (MDH)

Language policy and language usage trends in Nigerian education are examined, particularly as they concern the role of Anglo-Nigerian Pidgin (ANP), an inter-ethnic lingua franca. Language policy and practice for official and native languages both before and since Nigerian independence are chronicled. Results of a survey of 240 individuals in six…

Research on the language development of children in immersion programs has uncovered a certain amount of data. Immersion students have less well developed productive skills than their francophone peers and passive receptive skills which approach those of francophones. Error analysis studies have found that immersion students reach a plateau in…

Papers include: (1) "Language Acquisitional Universals: L1, L2, Pidgins, and FLT" (Henning Wode); (2) "Language Acquisition, Language Learning and the School Curriculum" (Norman F. Davies); (3) "Language Teaching and Acquisition of Communication" (Kari Sajavaara, Jaakko Lehtonen); (4) "On the Distinction between…

Analysis of basilang speech (in terms of word order, reference to time, and reference to space) of Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese speakers of English as a second language indicated that oriental subjects tended not to use prepositions and that Spanish-speaking subjects tended to use "in" to express most locative meanings. (Author/CB)

The source of the similarities and differences produced by pidginization is a central question studied in Pidgin-Creole linguistics. Several explanatory approaches are discussed that have guided research in this area, including simplification, substratum, independent innovation, and universals. (27 references) (Author/OD)

A prefatory section discusses the background of Cameroonian pidgin English and presents the pidgin sound and alphabet. Fifteen lessons cover: greetings and leave-taking expressions; present, future, immediate future, unspecified past, simple past, conditional, and compound tenses; subject, possessive, emphatic, object, and relative pronouns;…

Foreigner talk is the register used by native speakers to make themselves understood by foreigners whose competence in the language is limited. Published studies on foreigner talk have dealt with phonetic variation sparingly and impressionistically. This may be due to the difficulty of imposing experimental constraints on natural linguistic events…

The Standard English Repetition Test (SERT) is an instrument designed to measure the Standard English (SE) performance of young Hawaii Creole English (HCE)-speaking children. HCE is colloquially referred to as "pidgin English." Details of the test's construction are given; test-retest and alternate form reliability and validity studies…

The following papers are included: (1) "Some Common Goals for Second and First Language Acquisition Research" by Kenji Hakuta; (2) "Research on the Measurement of Affective Variables: Some Remaining Questions" by John W. Oller, Jr.; (3) "The Effects of Neurological Age on Nonprimary Language Acquisition" by Thomas…

The effect of formal instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL) on the pidginized speech of a second language learner was studied. The subject was a 76-year-old Italian woman residing in the United States since the age of 37. Four one-hour tapes were made of the subject's speech in April of 1976, and during the last five months of a…