Investigated the ability to discriminate the middle and low tone contrasts in Thai in two groups of native English speakers and a control group of native Thai speakers. The first group were native English speakers who had no prior experience with Thai, the second group were experienced learners of Thai. Variables included experience with Thai,…

Investigation of native Chinese speakers' acquisition of French suprasegmental features found that the subjects not only perceived the different directions of pitch but also placed them in the right categories, in spite of the differences between the use of pitch in tonal and intonational languages. (34 references) (CB)

This set of instructional materials for Shona, a Bantu language, consists of lessons designed to be used with audiotape recordings (not included here), lesson notes, written exercises, and vocabulary. The first "book" contains 24 language lessons on a variety of grammatical topics, with line drawing illustrations. The second book contains…

This Lao language textbook is the second draft of a book developed for teaching Lao to United States Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) and is designed to be used with a Lao language instructor familiar with competency based curricula. It is not designed for self-instruction, although after some hours of use, students may be familiar enough with the…

Five papers on linguistics contained in this issue include the following: "Tones for Profoundly Deaf Tone-Language Speakers" (Teresa Y. C. Ching), a study using a simplified speech pattern approach to enhance perception of tonal contrasts in Cantonese; "Word Formation and the Limits of Analytic Equivalence" (Peter Crisp), a…

This book is intended as a practical introduction to the study of the Gwari language. Therefore, the descriptive analysis of the grammar of Gwari is made without recourse to technical language. The book is divided into 5 sections, dealing with: (1) phonology; (2) the noun phrase; (3) the verb phrase; (4) the sentence; and (5) vocabulary, in the…

This introduction to elementary Yoruba is divided into two parts. The first section is on sound drills, and the second section concerns Yoruba greetings. The first part includes exercises to enable the student to master the Yoruba sound system. Emphasis is on pronunciation and recognition of the sounds and tones, but not memorization. A tape is…

This guide is intended to familiarize Americans with the basic structure of Hmong sentences and with words or phrases that may be useful with Hmong refugees. Hmong is represented in the Romanized Popular Alphabet. Following a general discussion of pronunciation and tone in Hmong, the structure of basic, compound, and complex sentences is…

This Haida-English dictionary introduces the Alaskan Haida alphabet and gives Haida words with English translation and the English equivalent pronunciation. The first half of the dictionary is an introduction to the sound system and grammar of Haida. Short discussions of the following topics are included: vowels; consonants; semivowels; rounded…

A completely revised edition of "A Modern Grammar of Spoken Amharic," this book is presented as a practical text for the student of the language. The 43 chapters of the text present a descriptive analysis of the sound system and grammar. Except for verbal prefixes and suffixes and partially Semitic vocabulary, the structure of Amharic is…

This analysis of Ibo is not intended as a definitive work, but rather represents a novel approach to the description of the phonology and grammar of this language. The analysis is organized under the following headings: (1) "Sounds"; (2) "Tones"; (3) "Words Beginning in a Consonant"; (4) "Plurals"; (5) "Possessives"; (6) "As To"; (7) "Numerals";…

This textbook presents the study of Chinese through the use of English grammar in the hopes of moderating the extremes of the direct method and of structural analysis. It is intended to cover a one-year course, or six semester hours of introductory Chinese. The book contains 16 lessons, of which the first seven use romanized phonetic forms and…

Representatives from major institutions teaching African languages convened to discuss the design of African language textbooks and to propose guidelines for the writing of new textbooks and evaluation of existing ones. Conference papers include: "Language Acquisition Theory and Materials Construction" (Stephen Krashen); "The Structures of Verbal…

This instructional guide for Sesotho (spoken in several areas of Africa by about 6 million people) is designed for the training of Peace Corps volunteers in Africa. The first two chapters outline Sesotho phonology (phonetics, articulation, and speech sounds and patterns not present in English) and tone and length, grammatical structure (class and…

This is an introductory text for the Swazi language, siSwati. Spoken by nearly a half million people in Swaziland, siSwati is one of the Nguni languages of the southeastern branch of the Bantu languages. Each of the 25 lessons in this text covers one or more basic grammatical structures. The first five lessons present the sound system in detail,…