Examines phonological changes illustrating the changing nature of Hong Kong Cantonese (HKC). The article describes the historical development of syllable-initial consonants, such as nasals, affricates and coronal fricatives, and also the syllable-final stops and nasals in HKC. (24 references) (Author/CK)

Describes the process of acquisition in learner varieties with respect to reference and referential movement in the domain of modality. Findings are based on data from the longitudinal ESF and P-Moll projects and on cross-sectional data of Italian learners of German. (Author/VWL)

Analyzes the rightward movement of noun and prepositional phrases in the Early Old English poem "Beowulf." Evidence is provided for heavy noun phrase shift, with a characteristic major intonational boundary between the main verb and the postponed noun phrase, and preposition phrase extraposition, where the intonational boundary was much…

Discusses two phonological features of standard French, mid-vowels and mute e, with respect to their formal description. The wide variation involved in the use of these features by native speakers is presented, and the way that this variation adds to the complexities of language learning and teaching is examined. (JL/Author)

Discussion of the Arabic version of "Sesame Street" addresses the choice of a simplified modern standard usage as the series' language, definition of this language variety in terms of its distinguishing linguistic characteristics, and the implications of this choice for the future of Arabic and Arabic language instruction. (Author/MSE)

Examines the less obvious differences between British and American English in regard to semantics and grammar. A comparison is made, to see how American and British styles differ for public notice, in an experiment in which speakers of American English were asked to paraphrase notices from a British public utility office. (Author/OD)

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)

Examines the various strategies by which Gaelic has been employed in the newspaper press in Scotland. The prospect for a monolingual or bilingual newspaper is considered and a comparison with the uses of Gaelic on radio and television is made. (eight references) (Author/CK)

Examines a computer-based corpus that provides the data for a comprehensive investigation of clitic climbing in written and spoken modern Spanish. The results are based on nearly 15,000 tokens with 32 different main verbs from a computer corpus of 3.5 million words from ten countries. Clitic climbing is more common in spoken than in written…

Using the case of a vernacular variety spoken on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, this article demonstrates how linguistic-systemic principles such as remorphologization, psycholinguistic principles of perceptual saliency, and sociolinguistic processes of symbolic identity converge to account for the development of leveling in this community.…

This article describes "language" use in a religious domain where the very notion of 'language' must be defined in a qualitatively special way. It is suggested that within the traditional Islamic educational system, Arabic among the Kanuri of northeast Nigeria is first acquired as a "graphic," an invisible whole that, by its…

Provides an overview of current research on grammatical, phonological, semantic, and pragmatic development in African American English child language, as opposed to adult or adolescent language, and discusses the implications of these findings for professionals involved in second-dialect instruction, speech-language assessment, or intervention…

Suggests using literary texts as a means of enhancing learner participation in English language classes in southern Spain. Literary texts may be employed to develop participation in reading, increase learner's awareness of communicative strategies, and increase the awareness of formal resources used by authors to reinforce texts. (25 references)…

Examination of the pattern of word stress in Nigerian Standard English suggests that progressive stress shift is the primary cause of the difference in stress assignment between Nigerian Standard English and British Standard English. (13 references) (Author/CB)

Argues that native speakers of English should not seek to overexploit its position as a world language; they should respect nonnative usage as expressing other peoples' identities and should be prepared to modify native usage to become more efficient international communicators. (JL)