An analysis of pronouns in Zapotec languages looks at their behavior across the language family, noting where the languages are alike or different. Seven regional Zapotec variations are used for illustration, including: Isthmus; Yatzachi; Yalalag; Texmelucan; Atepec; Guelavia; and Xanaguia. A major conclusion is that the traditional division of…

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…

Posits two hypotheses arising from the great immigration to Sweden and the immigrants' use and learning of Swedish: (1) Swedish as used by immigrant children may show certain features, related to a creolization process; and (2) the Swedish language may in future show signs of influence from the varieties used by persons with immigrant background.…

This study presents evidence collected from basilectal texts that the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) mental predicates "think, know, want, feel, say, see, hear" have clear lexical equivalents in Hawaii Creole English (HCE), and that these HCE predicates occur, with minor qualification, in the syntactic configurations predicted by…

This study investigated the encoding of animate/inanimate distinctions in the pronominal systems of a variety of Bantu languages. Various encoding strategies are found to suggest that there is a strong syntactic opposition between animate and inanimate object markers in Bantu languages. Restricted positions and obligatory presence are particularly…

A study investigated the phonemic and morphophonemic patterning of the glottal stop in Agutaynen, a Meso-Philippine language, and some comparison with two northern Philippine languages. Agutaynen glottal stop has as its sole origin a neutralization of contrast rule, the operation of which can be noted in three different linguistic environments.…

Describes some of the current research on Brazilian Portuguese phonology. Various techniques are discussed that analysts utilize to investigate Brazilian Portuguese nasality. (49 references) (CB)

The dictionary for the Northern-Central variety of Thai is designed as a reference for use by Peace Corps volunteers assigned to northern Thailand. An introductory section gives an overview of the dictionary's content and design and of the use of the Central Thai alphabet (the old Northern alphabet is rarely used). Most of the words included are…

Four hypotheses explaining the origin of Berbice Dutch, a Dutch-based Creole language spoken in the county of Berbice in Guyana, are explored. The most likely explanation is that the language was first spoken by Berbice slaves as a means of expressing the identity of a newly created "ethnic" group. (Author/CB)

Tonal "flip-flop" (reversal of pitch value in which a direct exchange of value between two items is necessarily involved) can be found in a significant number of modern Chinese dialects, where an opposite pitch pattern is observed for the traditional Yin/Yang dichotomy of tones. (Author/CB)

Conversational data from a native speaker of European Portuguese from the island of Faial were analyzed to determine segmental and prosodic contexts favoring unstressed vowel deletion. Factors such as rhythmic preservation, syllable structure, and functional load are discounted in the analysis, suggesting vowel deletion is essentially a word-based…

An integrated analysis of the syntax and semantics of serial verb constructions (SVCs) in a group of West African languages is presented. With data from Dagaare and closest relatives, a structural definition for SVCs is developed (two or more lexical verbs that share grammatical categories within a clause), establishing SVCs as complex predicates.…

A study of Chinese logograph recognition investigated: (1) whether word-length effect is generalizable to Chinese readers in recognizing context-free logographic characters; (2) whether readers from mainland China would outperform readers from Taiwan when each group read its own familiar logograph version; (3) whether both groups would perform…

A study of the pronunciation of an adult male Swahili speaker, a native and long-term resident of Mombasa Old Town, supplemented with notes on other adult speakers, suggests a new account of glides and phonological change in this variation of the language. The asymmetrical distribution of the two glide types (palatal and labiovelar) is analyzed…

A study of dialectal variation in Mexican Sign Language (MSL), the primary language for a large segment of Mexico's deaf community, is presented. Signs used by nine different sources representing various locations, ages, and social groups are compared. The first section reviews a number of previous informal assessments of dialectal variation in…