As the inexperienced writer becomes aware of the issues involved in the composition of effective descriptive prose, he also develops a consistent control over his materials. The persona he chooses, if coherently thought out, can function as an index of many choices, helping him to manipulate the tone, intent, and mood of this style; to regulate…

Bipartite and tripartite Russian proverbs are analyzed in terms of devices of repetition. Major attention is given to formulaic devices, including correlative, contrastive, and conjunctive formulas. Grammatical and phonetic devices are also discussed. An argument is advanced for the basic binary division of the Russian proverb, since even…

This paper presents background information on the development of the folk oral tradition of black American literature. It then examines seven types of black literature that are basically oral: black folk tales, black folk sermons, black ballads, black American spirituals, black nonreligious or secular songs, black American blues, and Afro-American…

Any theory of stylistics sets itself the task of accounting for choices made by a speaker/writer among theoretically available and more-or-less equivalent linguistic structures. This task is a stumbling-block in the way of most attempts to construct a theory of style because there is no consistent method of defining 'available structures' and…

In the French verb phrase, negation is often marked twice, by a proclitic element (ne) and by a second negative (such as "pas" or "rien"). Until the seventeenth century, the first element was obligatory, while a second negative was optionally added for emphasis or precision. Subsequently, the second negatives lost their…

Over 14,000 high school seniors were studied with respect to sociocultural differences on cognitive test item responses. Six different cognitive tests and ten different groups were analyzed. The tests were: vocabulary, picture-number, reading, letter-groups, mathematics, and mosaic comparisons. The groups were: American Indians, blacks,…

The lexicon of present-day English is changing rapidly and regularly, and a description and explanation of this change is necessary for any comprehensive diachronic theory. An examination of a corpus of 500 new words collected during 1975 provides the basis for a typology of lexical change that both supports and suggests modifications for the…

This paper surveys the principles and findings from the field of linguistics that have been brought to bear on questions dealing with learning to read, the analysis of the reading process, and the sources of reading failure. It is intended to guide the reader through the significant areas in the literature and to note specific works. Section 1…

This book contains studies of seven non-English languages spoken in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, as well as a final chapter based on data obtained from Swedish-English bilinguals in Massachusetts, Illinois, and Minnesota. The individual studies are: Lurline H. Coltharp, "Invitation to the Dance: Spanish in the El Paso Underworld"; Janet B.…

The experiment discussed in this report investigates cross cultural ability to decode emotive meaning in extra-verbal vocal expressions of mood. The principal expectation of the study is that primitive mood expressions are understood in much the same way in all the countries tested. The moods depicted in the study--angry, sad, happy, flirtatious,…

The underlying assumptions of the study described in this report are that language change in process is revealed through language variation and that variation is rarely random. With these two ideas in mind, the author studies the presence of "r" in Hawaiian English and considers its appearance in various environments. The study also…

In an underdeveloped country such as New Guinea, the viability of the economy depends on the ability of the inhabitants to supply the skilled manpower to compete in a technological world. The key to this is largely the mastery of a world language--in this case, English. Mastery must cover the vocation of the worker, since English in a vocational…

This experiment deals with a test of auditory discrimination between standard Black English and nonstandard Black English. The test consists of two sections, one emphasizing phonological variables and the other emphasizing grammatical variables. It was administered to 83 black and 71 white children who were second, fourth, and sixth graders in…

Analyzes bilingual dictionaries from eastern bloc countries. Reviews the problems inherent in different treatments of English pronunciation in various bilingual dictionaries. (LMO)

Standardized tests rely on communicative behavior. Incongruities between the language of the test giver and the test taker can result in bias. Data on communications should be consulted so that tests allow for linguistic and cultural differences. This is the only way the abilities of Blacks can be accurately assessed. (VM)