A discussion of women's oral discourse patterns focuses on the uses made of minimal responses, hedges, and tag questions. The analysis draws on transcriptions of conversations among a group of women friends over a period of months. It is proposed that the conventional treatment of these forms as "weak" is inappropriate in all-female…

The theory of conventional metaphor, as developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) is briefly recapitulated. The implications of this theory for teaching English for Specific Purposes are outlined. Chief among these cannot be accurately understood if the metaphorical chaining is not retracted; and (2) the ability of metaphor to add lexis that is not…

Six propositions express central and crucial functions of language. Knowledge of these concepts constitutes language awareness, and they should therefore be used as a basis for designing language awareness curricula. They are that: (1) each individual has the ability to produce an unlimited number of different utterances from the limited…

While traditional views of literacy assume that discourse is either written or oral, an alternative perspective considers different discourse samples as part of the linguistic repertoire of the speech community. Placing this perspective in a sociolinguistic context and taking language use rather than form as the starting point for analysis, it is…

The acquisition of negative forms by a Jordanian Arabic speaker as evidenced in utterances from 19 months of age is examined. The language corpus consisted of selective samples of spontaneous daily speech and biweekly recorded speech sessions. Results suggest that although the subject's negation system is incomplete, it will be acquired by age 5.…

Research findings on auditory sequencing and auditory blending and fusion, auditory-visual integration, and language patterns are presented in support of the Linguistic Auditory Memory Patterns (LAMP) program. LAMP consists of 100 developmental lessons for young students with learning disabilities or language problems. The lessons are included in…

A sampling of classroom approaches for second language teaching included in the book "Methods That Work: A Smorgasbord of Ideas for Language Teachers" is outlined. The methods covered include Total Physical Response, Silent Way, The Natural Approach, several dramatization techniques, and the pragmatic curriculum. It is concluded that these methods…

An English translation of a grammar of the language used by the Roma, a group of wanderers living in many countries, united by a common language, and often called Bohemians or gypsies, begins with a translator's preface concerning the group's history and the development of the language and dialects. Preliminary material contains a brief history of…

One of a series dealing with current issues affecting language arts instruction, this paper focuses on spelling. The paper begins with the observation that when people complain that students cannot write, too often they mean that when the students do write, they misspell a few words. After noting that spelling improvement comes from using words in…

Research in contrastive linguistics suggests that in the teaching of English pronunciation to native speakers of Spanish, it is important for teachers to consider the aspects of each language expressed through different suprasegmentals, or prosodic features. What is often stated at the syntactic and/or lexical levels in Spanish is expressed in…

Applied linguistics has made major contributions to literacy teaching in recent years, in four general areas. First, second language acquisition is becoming the model for first language literacy teaching in schools through the "whole language approach" to literacy. Second, the field of sociolinguistics has convinced educators that literacy is a…

A collection of papers on morphology in relation to other grammar components and on the morphology-syntax interface includes: "Locative Plural Forms in Classical Sanskrit" (Belinda Brodie); "On Explaining Morpheme Structure" (Donald G. Churma); "Lexical Relatedness, Head of a Word and the Misanalysis of Latin" (Brian…

The product of researchers' efforts to develop a computer processor which distinguishes between relevant and irrelevant information in the database, Spreading Activation Processor for Information Encoded in Network Structures (SAPIENS) exhibits (1) context sensitivity, (2) efficiency, (3) decreasing activation over time, (4) summation of…

Proposing that the utility of formal grammar instruction has never been put to the test, this booklet first explains the heretofore negative research results and explains why all the good intentions behind them have not kept those results from being essentially useless. The remainder of the booklet describes an experiment in which there were no…

Outside the core grammar, the set of "peripheral" or marked properties of a language include exceptions or relaxations of the settings of core grammar and the idiosyncratic features of the language governed by particular lexical items. The core/peripheral distinction has direct implications for grammatical development in children. The…