Traces history of Jewish languages and interlinguistics through non-Jewish languages with which Jews came into contact. Proposes a typology of Jewish language phenomena, formulates research tasks in comparative Jewish interlinguistics and assesses contribution of Jewish language study to general linguistics. (Author/BK)

Discusses Saussures's "Cours de linguistique generale," which was published in 1916, and devotes specific attention to the significance of Part VI, which is devoted to linguistic geography. (16 references) (Author/VWL)

The acknowledgment of world Englishes highlights the need for engendering greater linguistic flexibility among students and educators. Pertaining to listening, such flexibility can be addressed partially through materials and experiences providing increased familiarity with varieties of world Englishes. Examples of world Englishes should be…

This dissertation compares the phonetic and phonological features of adult non-speakers' productions of words in an endangered Native American language, Oregon Northern Paiute (also known, and hereafter referred to, as Numu), to productions by fluent speakers. The purpose of this comparison is two-fold. The first purpose is to examine the…

This dissertation project examines the language contact situation of Chipilo, a Veneto-Spanish bilingual community of immigrant origin in central Mexico, focusing both on the social motivations for the sustained bilingualism observed and the linguistic outcomes in the Spanish of the community. Chipilo is a unique community in that Veneto, a…

Using a grounded theory approach, this investigation addresses how an interdisciplinary research (IDR) team negotiates meaning and struggles to establish and sustain a sense of collective communication competence (CCC). Certain communication processes were foundational to building CCC, such as spending time together, practicing trust, discussing…

This article presents an adaptation of a position paper written by Da Pidgin Coup, a group of concerned faculty and students in the Department of Second Language Studies (SLS). In fall 1999, the group became concerned about a statement made by the chairman of the Board of Education implicating Pidgin in the poor results of the students of Hawai'i…

This article proposes an instance-based theoretical framework to account for the influence of both contexts and definitions on learning new word meanings and reports 2 studies that examine hypotheses about learning from context. One is that variation in contexts is important for allowing core meaning features of a word to emerge. The second is…

This article explores variation in the use of the pronouns "nous" and "on" for first-person plural reference in a substantial corpus of French-language Internet chat discourse. The results indicate that "on" is nearly categorically preferred to "nous," which is in line with previous research on informal spoken French. A qualitative analysis of…

The uniquely human capacity of using arbitrary signs to transfer concept and experience over great distances in time and place is what we call language. We use language with a purpose, and we use whatever features are at our disposal to achieve our ends, regardless of the fact that some speakers think that certain features should be held together…

This paper examines the problem of a curriculum which promotes a standard linguistic variety in a context where non-standardisms are common in the learners' milieu. There have been curricula which try to incorporate the non-standard and have its function discussed; some have considered the non-standard a stepping-stone towards the standard; and…

The two authors conducted a small empirical study to attempt to find support for--or evidence against--the view that international tests of English language proficiency are unfair to speakers of non-standards forms of English, since these tests privilege standard forms. We explore the question of whose norms should be imposed in these tests, and…

Describes the new dictionary of Australian English. (HTH)

In this article, the terms "Ebonics" and "Mainstream American English" are defined. (Author/MC)

Critically examines assumptions in teaching in a bi-dialectal context. Presents ethnographic data from one teacher's experience teaching a summer course in Shakespearean theater in which the students were speakers of African-American English. (Author/VWL)