Discussion of the languages" that comprise living French, including sociolects, technolects, regional dialects, literary vocabulary, and argot. (RS)

The author presents this monograph as essentially a "prise de position" with regard to certain of the central questions in current debates over the nature of human linguistic systems and techniques of analyzing and describing them. While it is presumed that the reader is already acquainted with the issues being debated in linguistics in the…

Describes a study showing how a linguistic pattern of alternation affecting an entire speech community is realized in individual idiolects; an example representative of colloquial Helsinki speech is used. Results support observations already presented by Labov, according to which linguistic change is linguistically structured to a very high…

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…

Special issue on "Changing Linguistics." (DD)

This is a study of tense variation in "si"-clauses in Buenos Aires Spanish which basically consists of the substitution of the conditional for the imperfect subjunctive. The highest frequency of imperfect subjunctive shows up in +Contrary examples, while the conditional substitutes much more often in -Contrary examples. When the…

From the beginnings of English grammar in the early sixteenth century, our language has been described by men, and the usage promulgated as the "standard" has been that of men. Because men have been able to effectively control English through their control of the communications media and educational institutions, they have made our language an…

In the contemporary standard Warsaw Polish of educated Poles, there is evidence of a system of gender-marking whereby masculine-gender nouns are being substituted for feminine professional names, working titles and surnames. The current usage is attributed to the change of status of the modern woman, or, more precisely, to her increased…

This is a presentation of the Slovene language, one of the three official languages of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the official or administrative language of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. The presentation covers the following topics: (1) description of the language, the speech area, and contemporary standard Slovene; (2)…

Develops analytical techniques to determine "borrowability," the ease with which a lexical item or category of lexical items can be borrowed by one language from another. These techniques are then applied to Spanish borrowings in Bolivian Quechua on the basis of a set of bilingual texts. (29 references) (MDM)

A discussion on the nature of language argues the following: (1) the concept of a closed and finite rule system is inadequate for the description of natural languages; (2) as a consequence, the writing of variable rules to modify such rule systems so as to accommodate the properties of natural language is inappropriate; (3) the concept of such…

This paper discusses Esperanto as a planned language and refutes three myths connected to it, namely, that Esperanto is achronical, atopical, and apragmatic. The focus here is on a synchronic analysis. Synchronic variability is studied with reference to the structuralist determination of "marginality" and the dynamic linguistic…

The seven papers in this volume cover varied topics in the field of current linguistics. The first paper, on underlying phonological representations, is written to show that, on the basis of syllabification, vowel quality is a redundant aspect of English phonology and that stress assignment can also be based on syllabification. The second paper…