In dealing with the differences between the school and non-school language of Black children, the author uses a contingency grammar," which considers all speakers of a language to have the identical linguistics competence but includes a level of systematic performance" to account for dialectal and other systematic differences. (FB)

The McCaig article appears in this issue, pp. 612-18. (RD)

Reviews the grammatical, semantic, and stylistic difficulties in translating English passive constructions into French. (AM)

This dissertation reports development and validation studies of a Web-based standardized test of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL), designed to measure learners' off-line grammatical and pragmatic knowledge in multiple-choice format. Targeting Japanese majors in the U.S. universities and colleges, the test is designed to explore possible…

"Writeability" is concerned with helping writers and editors produce materials on easier readability levels. A major input of most readability formulas is vocabulary difficulty. One way to increase readability is to use simple vocabulary or shorter words since word frequency studies show that more common words are shorter. The other…

A theory of style called the doctrine of synonymity argues that the separation of form from content allows the possibility of alternative phrasing. This theory led to the conception that during the writing process, writers consider different ways of phrasing and settle on the formulation that best expresses the meaning intended. However, the…

Research by Martin Joos and John J. Gumperz to develop a perspective for rhetorical analysis. Carter's final remarks in his Playboy interview are shown to reflect an ineffective sociolinguistic code shift to a stylistic level inappropriate to Carter as public personality and as presidential candidate. (JF)

A linguistic analysis of 30 political speeches by de Gaulle is presented. The speeches are compared with regard to pronouns, verb tense, ways of referring to France, length of phrase, and total length of speech. The speeches are then characterized as electoral/non-electoral and evolution/crisis. (Text is in French.) (MLA)

Telegraphic conciseness is possible because of three processes: simplification of utterences by eliminating modal and functional words; recourse to semantics outside of any syntactic context; and recourse to a shared context. Telegraphic syntax is simply a slightly different usage of language rules. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Criticizes the modern style of Spanish writing, in correspondence, the press, and official communications. Rules of grammar and correct vocabulary are often ignored or perhaps never learned. (Text is in Spanish.) (CHK)

Revealed a statistically significant difference between alcoholic and nonalcoholic oral syntactic performance, with alcoholic subjects committing greater numbers of syntactic and semantic errors than nonalcoholics. Indicated a deficiency in the integrative and descriptive aspects of alcoholics' oral language performance. (RL)

An analysis of the syntax particular to newspaper writing, with emphasis on the use of the nominalization of verbs. The possible pedagogical uses of such an analysis are discussed. (Text is in French.) (TL)

Discusses, with many examples, a new Russian dictionary by D. Rosental and M. Telenkowa which is considered excellent for advanced students of Russian because it not only provides information on spelling, punctuation, stress and grammar but also on the levels of usage of both words and constructions. (Text is in German.) (FB)