This article shows that bilingualism can be an enriching part of children's lives. A young child named Anna, living in a bilingual environment in which English and Finnish were spoken, was observed and her speech recorded. This discussion focuses on aspects of Anna's acquisition of language. Initial discussion works toward a definition of…

A comparison of German and American advertising reveals differences in technique and structures. Persuasion is central in both, but the grammatical structures and illocutionary devices available in each language vary. The culture is also reflected in the type and degree to which each language uses techniques of persuasive language. The findings…

The computerized morphological parser, AMPLE, grew out of work in computer assisted dialect adaptation. AMPLE contains no language-specific code, but is controlled entirely through external, user-written files, the notations of which were designed for linguists. AMPLE's constructs are linguistic: e.g., allomorph, morpheme, conditioning…

Six working papers in linguistics are presented. "The Semantics and Morphology of Mixtec Mood and Aspect" (J. Albert Bickford and Stephen A. Marlett) presents a relatively detailed description of the following grammatical categories in three Mixtec languages: Santiago Nuyoo, Santo Domingo Nuxaa, and Municipio of Tezoatlan.…

The ways in which the Chinese have used the homophonic nature of their language to express abstractions in concrete terms, especially to express daily wishes, are described. In Chinese, a value is assigned to an object because the pronunciation of the word for the object brings that implied value to the mind of the listener; for instance, vase in…

A study analyzed four dyadic conversations for evidence of the signals operating in the turn-taking process and facilitating the smooth exchange of turns. It found over 20 syntactic, prosodic, and semantic features occurring frequently with turn-taking. The five most significant factors correlating with turn-taking were a prosodically completed…

A study, investigating the patterns in which Chinese learners of English as a second language (ESL) learn English interrogative structures, focused on four major classes of English questions (yes/no, wh-, alternative, and embedded) categorized into seven structural types. Data came from a test requiring rapid translation of 55 Chinese questions.…

A study investigating favorable and unfavorable contexts for learning some word order rules in Swedish as a second language is reported. The rules examined are subject-verb inversion after a preposed non-subject in main clauses and the rules for placement of the negative particle. Subjects were 60 adult native speakers of Finnish, Polish, and…

An unusual construction in Shina grammar is examined, particularly as it has been observed in the language form spoken in the Skardu region of Pakistan. The construction occurs in the use of the dative case with certain verbs. The patterns of occurrence and the origins of this phenomenon are analyzed through examples from Shina. (MSE)

The position this paper assumes views vocabulary not as single words but as phrases, sentences, and sometimes entire segments of discourse that act as single words. This view of vocabulary would be helpful in: (1) bringing the vocabulary aspect of instruction in English as a second language (ESL) closer to current research in language performance,…

The vocabulary lists from five basal readers were examined in an effort (1) to determine what information is taught in the form of phonic generalizations in current, primary-level basal readers; (2) to examine intraprogram reliability of those generalizations; and (3) to determine whether the content of generalization instruction had changed since…

The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate that the fields of linguistics, dialectology, language education, and early reading would be well served by a word book of the Black English vernacular. Chapters are devoted to discussion of the social significance of a lexicon of Black English vernacular, the terminology of sex and lovemaking, religion…

The text consists of 22 lessons and is intended as a supplementary text for intermediate and advanced Hausa students. All but three of the lessons contain a reading selection, a set of discussion questions, a list of idioms from the reading along with other expressions that are semantically or syntactically related, exercises to test for mastery…

Sociolinguists have recently demonstrated the value of directives in indicating the relationship between status and linguistic form. The purpose of the instrument developed for this study was to quantify the coerciveness of directives on the basis of the theoretical approaches in the literature to objectify the comparison of directive forms.…

This study was designed to identify and analyze some of the common linguistic patterns that impede the academic progress of black students entering college. A questionnaire, distributed to educators in communication skills on the college level, asked for the identification of common black linguistic features according to familiarity and use in…