The growing secularization of Israeli lifestyle and the increasing influence of foreign languages as manifested in the local media have given rise to new forms of language secularization. This article discusses and provides examples of the secularization of Hebrew, which has split modern Hebrew into two varieties--religious and secularized. (13…

Traces the development of English in the Commonwealth from colonial times to the present, examines the use of local varieties by English-medium African writers and discusses the conflicting roles of English. English is seen as answering the need for an official language that is also a language of wider communication. (20 references) (JL)

It is proposed that the study of the history of the French language would be enhanced by combining the methodology of linguistics with that of history proper, examining institutional, cultural, and social history as part of the evolution of a language. Distinctions between variation, innovation, shift, and change are examined. (Author/MSE)

Language choice (LC) for literacy must consider mother tongue, language of first sight, local lingua francas, and any readily accessible world language. Common but false assumptions regarding LC are noted: multilingualism as a barrier to development, the necessity of a world language, and the permanance of language patterns. (Contains four…

Examines linguistic data from peripheral areas of Mexico and suggests that the contemporary resistance of the final /s/ in Spanish is characteristic only of urban regions. The study also hypothesizes that Spanish final /s/ was once more generally weakened throughout Mexico. An indirect Nahuatl contribution is also postulated. (62 references)…

Investigated phonetic activation in reading a nonalphabetic script (Chinese) of 16 subjects who read in Cantonese and Mandarin and 16 subjects who read in Mandarin but not in Cantonese. Results are provided of a similarity judgment task based on pairs of Chinese words, pronounced the same or differently, in one or both dialects. (21 references)…

Suggests that, in countries where a particular nonnative variety of English is spoken, literary works used in English language teaching should be of this variety. It is argued that the integrative goal in language teaching, involving enhancement of sociocultural awareness, self-identity, and local community communicative competence, is more easily…

Observes the impact of gender and status on the communication of 26 same-sex and 13 mixed-sex dyads of college students. Suggests that differences in the use of certain linguistic features may be more a result of a power differential than of gender. Other characteristics of the speaker, however, must also be considered. (CJS)

Describes a morphosyntactic feature of the Xining dialect that is unique among all Chinese dialects: that is, the use of a preposition to express ablative nominal relationships. (Author/VWL)

Discusses West Africanisms in Limonese Creole (LC), an English based creole language spoken in Costa Rica that shows substrate influence from the Kwa languages of West Africa, in particular from Akan (spoken in Ghana). Substrate influence is demonstrated through a comparison of LC and Akan morphophonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon. (Author/VWL)

Various commentaries are included in response to an article on filler syllables and their status in emerging grammar. (Author/VWL)

Applies two tests--local acceptability and international intelligibility--to four varieties of Nigerian English. Only one variety passes both tests, one that is associated with the most highly educated or sophisticated Nigerian speakers of the language and is intelligible internationally. (JP)

Discusses the language situation in the region of Brittany in France, where the Breton language, a Celtic rather than Romance language, is dying out but a Breton ethnic identity is growing. (Author/JL)

A study identified second-person singular pronoun usage among Salvadoran speakers living in Houston, Texas, to see what changes, if any, have been caused by contact with other Spanish speakers with different speech patterns. Although the results confirm some linguistic behavior observed by others, some unexpected facts and diverging trends were…

Using Biber's multidimensional analysis (1988) to examine a large corpus of world English literatures written in Indian, West African, Britain, Anglo-American, and Mexican American varieties of English, examines whether quantitative analyses can also be insightful and useful in the examination of the influence of gender on language and in…