This dissertation is a description of Xinaliq, a Northeast (Nakh-Daghestanian) Caucasian language spoken primarily in the village also called Xinaliq, which lies at an elevation of 7,000 feet in the Kuba district of Azerbaijan, near the border with Daghestan. Currently there are approximately 1,500 residents in the village. Most of them are…

The study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative-absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in…

This paper argues that due to the facts of accent shift, Japanese accent should itself be interpreted as pitch rather than as a diacritic on the basis of which pitch patterns are imposed by rule. The solution offered is tentative and concerns only Tokyo Japanese. It is suggested that consideration of accent in non-Tokyo dialects will strengthen…

A study examined the phonological status of laminal sibilants in Chamicuro, a Maipuran Arawakan language spoken in the Amazonian lowlands of eastern Peru. The phonemic inventory of these sibilants shows a very strong symmetry of three affricates and three corresponding fricatives. However, when the laminal alveolar fricative is considered, the…

Provides a sociolinguistic account of the forms of address used in present-day Iranian Persian. The shift from power to solidarity as a result of the Islamic Revolution has resulted in a sociolinguistic simplification of address forms. (Author/CB)

This paper provides an analysis of the manual and non-manual pronouns identified in Mexican Sign Language (MSL) used by a female speaker in 1993, discusses syntactic uses of each type, and examines pronoun deletion. MSL has two distinct modes of expressing pronominal relationships: manual pronouns (including indexical, incorporated, classifiers,…

Many of the Zapotecan (Mexico) languages have a unique way of signaling co-reference between the subject and the possessor of the object: the subject is null. Analysis of such a construction is problematic to current theories of anaphoric construction. In this analysis, the construction is described and the theoretical problem is underlined by…

Mestreechs, the dialect of Dutch spoken in Maastricht, the Netherlands, is analyzed for patterns of phonological duration or quantity. Two forms of prosody, hard (H) and slurred (S), are distinguished and their distribution is examined, making reference to previous research on Dutch phonology and on the realization of prosody in Northern European…

A study compared translations of biblical passages into different languages in Papua New Guinea. The study looked for evidence of balance between literal and free interpretation in translation style in the gospel of Mark, which is narrative and didactic material, in 12 languages, and the mainly hortatory genre in translations of 4 epistles:…

The Macedonian verb form corresponding to the form ending in "-l" in French is examined, focusing on the active past participle, which represents the past indeterminate or non-testimonial tense. Special attention is paid to aspectual, modal, temporal, and prosodic values, and all examples are drawn from the two languages. (MSE)

Classical phonemic accounts of Cuzco (Peru) Quechua posit three distinct types of stops: plain, aspirated, and glottalized. A later analysis argued instead for a root-level feature of laryngealization governed by a small number of formal mechanisms. This latter analysis is taken one step further, showing that even greater explanatory power may be…

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 study examined the pattern of formation of glides in a sample of 18 Niger-Congo languages that have substantial glide formation. It is noted first that four basic pattern dualities exist, with language-specific variations, determine by whether or not: (1) glide formation applies to both front and round first vowels or round first vowels only;…

An analysis of the phonological phenomenon of "isinkalakahliso" or palatalization in Xhosa, a Bantu language, is presented, focusing on its occurrence in the passive form of verbs. First, earlier theories about the phenomenon are discussed and compared, and a new analysis is offered. It is concluded that this conceptualization of…

In both French and Macedonian there are constructions that are reminiscent of the passive but their meaning is active. In French this occurs with participial statements that appear to have either an instrumental relationship or be a chronological marker (e.g., "le dejeuner fini,..."). In Macedonian, one only adds a marker showing…