Following a brief summary of Trubetzkoy's views of Russian word roots, a statistical analysis is performed on a short literary passage in seeking to examine whether all types of roots merely coexist in modern Russian or whether there is an expansion of certain types and a contraction of others. Results point out statistical and semantic…

Data from 33 teachers, responding on 12 semantic differential scales to 80 speech samples from 16 different kinds of children, were collected in a study of teacher evaluation of children's speech as related to race, sex, social status of the child, and topic of discourse, as well as to teacher race. A factor analysis was accomplished by use of a…

These transcriptions of children living in a suburb of Paris represent and illustrate linguistic behavior and interests of the average nine-year-old French child. Seventy-nine children in groups of three were recorded in 30-minute periods of free conversation and 10-minute periods of play. Analysis reveals more than 30 centers of interest which…

This is the first of five volumes of recorded, transcribed conversation of 150 Spanish children from Madrid. Some 25 hours of normal, unrehearsed conversation serve as a linguistic corpus illustrative of vocabulary development at a specific age level. Half-hour recording sessions were made in groups of three, consisting of boys or girls from the…

This is the second of five volumes of recorded, transcribed conversation of 150 Spanish children from Madrid. Some 25 hours of normal, unrehearsed conversation serve as a linguistic corpus illustrative of vocabulary development at a specified age level. Half-hour recording sessions were made in groups of three, consisting of boys or girls from the…

This book explores the workings of language, explains the operation of language as a coherent system, and examines instances of effective as well as ineffective communication. Chapters deal with (1) a "meaning" approach to language and the relation of semantics to the communicator, (2) how language works and what makes it work, (3) how language…

A study was undertaken "to determine the extent and nature of change, if any, in the speech of two New England communities" since the fieldwork for the "Linguistic Atlas of New England" (LANE) was completed in 1932. Two rural communities, Granby and Deerfield, Massachusetts, were re-visited in order to interview the same three…

A teacher's developing awareness of his college students' dependence on jargon as the expression of their culture is portrayed with the aid of quotations from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Parallels are drawn between Prufrock's attitudes and student language in the classroom. (AF)

Since behaviorist conceptions fail to account adequately for the individual's unique reorganization of knowledge and his generation of original sentences, this study was intended to produce a conceptual structure to describe the systematic processes of high-order language events as a basis of a theory of language and teaching practice. It…

An analysis of part-of-speech membership was made utilizing certain mechanisms that have been proposed to explain the nature of word classes. It was proposed that words of the same form class constitute "verbal habit families" on the basis of either a common grammatical meaning response, a common affix, or a common label (e.g., "verb"). One…

The first of six papers included in this collection--"What is English?"--calls for a greater integration of language, literature, and composition, with special emphasis on the use of grammar as a key element in both composition and literature study. The second paper, "The Voice of the Writer," describes the gap between experience, the role of the…

Teachers of culturally different students should not ridicule or verbally abuse their students, but should try to show them how the characteristics of formal English differ from urban Black English. They must be able to explain the appropriateness of standard English usage in certain situations, while they still maintain respect for the students'…

In laying the groundwork for a co-operative scientific inquiry in the field of learning sciences the following five areas of access to the study are considered in this introductory inquiry statement: 1) genetic sociology (symbolic systems and early socialization); 2) experimental ethnography (the effect of literacy on the structure of skill and…

This study investigated the role that differing speech patterns play in effective communication between teachers and students. Third grade students were tested for listening comprehension of materials presented by teachers. The students were also tested to determine the relationship between racial attitudes and sound of speech and the relationship…

This issue is devoted to first language acquisition. It includes twelve papers concerning: the acquisition of liquids ("1" and "r"); creative errors in the written syntax of deaf children; theoretical and methodological problems in the acquisition of phonology, illustrated from Greek and English: the basis of articulation; the philosophy of…