This study was conducted to provide descriptive, comparative, quantitative, and statistical information on the syntactic characteristics of two English registers: (1) formal and informal discussion and (2) administrative correspondence. In chapters 1 and 2 the background and purpose of the study are discussed. The composition of the major spoken…

The dialect of English as spoken by native Puerto Rican Spanish speakers is estensively influenced by interference from the speakers' native language. Since exposure to a language affects one's ability to use it, the speaker's position might affect his access to English and/or his willingness to speak it, and, therefore, his proficiency in it. It…

Question-answer interactions were chosen as an effective means of investigating the effect of the linguistic environment on language development. Research was reviewed indicating that the improvement in question and answer performance of a maturing child is based on the advancement of both his linguistic and cognitive abilities and that the adult…

It is not sufficient for students in foreign language classes to simply internalize the sound system and grammatical structure of the target language or to memorize the vocabulary. Speaking is not merely a linguistic event, but rather involves an extensive system of norms for the social interaction. The relationship between speaking and social…

The meaning of a word often cannot be formulated by conscious rules, because it is unconscious. Evidence on the verb "break" demonstrates this. The consequence for teaching is that teachers cannot supply meanings in words, but should present a wide range of uses of a word, so that students can intuit the unconscious generalization. (Author)

Prior to the development of modern sociolinguistics the immediate contribution of linguistics to society as a whole was negligible. Without the further development of sociolinguistics, the situation will not change radically. In order to arrive at a more useful system of linguistics, linguists must realize that this situation does not result…

The purpose of this paper is to classify the types of errors Arabs make with definiteness in English and to count the rate of occurrence of each. To accomplish this, 16 three-hour American history final examinations written by Arabic speakers at the University of Texas at Austin were examined. This discussion is limited to the four categories (out…

The second volume in this series on Serbo-Croatian-English contrastive analysis contains seven articles. They are: "The Use of Contrastive and Error Analysis to Practicing Teachers," by Rudolf Filipovic; "Some Problems in Teaching English Noun Phrases as Subject to Serbo-Croatian Speakers,""Problems in Teaching the Structure of Some English Noun…

This study examined (1) the incentive for achievement motivation of female and male Mexican American and Anglo American children and (2) the relationship between language behavior, as a possible indicator of acculturation, and modes of achievement motivation. A questionnaire type scale was developed to provide a viable assessment measure that is…

The purpose of this essay is to expand the conceptual content of folkloric performance as a communicative phenomenon, as spoken art. Performance is seen as representing an interpretive frame, whose nature may vary. This framing is accomplished through the use of culturally conventionalized metacommunication (communication about communication),…

This article discusses language planning in Sweden. The Swedish Academy has as its goal to develop the purity, strength and nobility of the Swedish language by means of dictionaries, grammars, and the codification of vocabulary. Sweden also has a National Language Committee, one of a network of such committees existing in the Scandinavian…

The majority of the 24 essays in this book describe successful units, classes, or courses on the misuse of public language, while others suggest specific techniques for studying doublespeak or discuss theoretical frameworks for approaching the study of doublespeak. The first section of the book deals with the theory behind the study of…

A review of the literature on Black English was made to determine what information is available and to assess the credibility of the information. The review covered the years from 1865 through the first half of 1975. More than 75 documents were identified as potentially informative in the area of investigation. The linguistic features of Black…

This study was conducted to find and collocate the semantically equivalent form patterns of the English and Hungarian relation-marking systems by contrasting the use of the individual relational morphemes. The ultimate aim of the study is to determine interlingual congruences and contrasts for possible use in language teaching. The investigation…

The data for the study were gathered in the course of a larger sociolinguistic survey carried out among francophones from Welland and Sudbury, Ontario. Among other things, the acquisition of spoken English by bilingual francophone students from these cities was studied in depth, using error analysis. The present study attempts to show that in a…