The normalization of French and the selection of German as a second language over the traditional Alsatian is discussed. The teaching of the dialect has more often than not been promoted as an argument against German, and not as a serious proposition. The author encourages some bilingual education. (Text is in French.) (MSE)

This study analyzed the acquisition of the interactional competence in an environment where children used two or three languages every day. Two aspects were examined: the acquisition of culturemes such as thanking and greeting, and the comprehension of indirect requests. The bilingual children observed were eight Swedish-Estonian children, six…

A sub-thesaurus of language teaching terms was compiled as a supplement to the EUDISED Multilingual Thesaurus. The sub-thesaurus includes three lists: (1) an alphabetized cross-referenced list of English descriptors to be added to the Multilingual Thesaurus; (2) an alphabetized English list of additional descriptors and the French and German…

This article attempts to present an exhaustive, fully-documented discussion of recent and current work around the world on questions related to French/Dutch multilingual contact in Brussels. An attempt has been made to go beyond mere bibliographical listing to an evaluation of everything of importance written around this topic, primarily in the…

This paper defines diglossia as "a situation in which two closely related language systems enjoy differing social status, one being the 'high' and the other the 'low' language," and then attempts to show how a study of diglossia in Canada, where such a diglossic situation is seen to exist among varieties of French, might be carried out.…

A comparison was made of the performance in an automatic information retrieval environment of user queries and document abstracts available in natural language form in both English and French. The results obtained indicate that the automatic indexing and retrieval techniques actually used appear equally effective in handling the query and document…

The current status of world literacy can be revealed through recent UNESCO data: (1) the nations of the world spend an average of $7800 annually to train and equip one soldier, while spending only an average of $100 annually to educate one child; (2) a quarter of the world's population will not attend any school in this century; (3) more than 40…

Examines perspectives on language transfer in the light of a body of data regarding a beginning learner of French whose native language was English but who also had some knowledge of Irish, Latin, and Spanish. (Author/CB)

Considers how the new language learning initiatives in Great Britain concerning bilingual students and nonindigenous students (particularly those in London) may eradicate racial prejudice, foster mutual understanding, as well as help students achieve academically. (CB)

Soldiers in each of the 3 countries answered questions relating to content and vocabulary of material in languages of the other 2 countries. Nonlinguistic factors (education, travel, etc.) were taken into account. Investigation indicated that the languages are so similar that comprehension could be improved with little difficulty. (RW)

This article examines research done in Switzerland on languages in contact, and concludes that the limited amount of such research is due to the fact that the various languages spoken in Switzerland are spoken in adjacent areas in which bilingualism is rare. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

Code switching is a widely observed phenomenon especially seen in multilingual and multicultural communities. In ELT classrooms, code switching comes into use either in the teachers' or the students' discourse. Although it is not favoured by many educators, one should have at least an understanding of the functions of switching between the native…

This collection of papers examines how sign languages are distributed around the world; what occurs when they come in contact with spoken and written languages, and how signers use them in a variety of situations. Each chapter introduces the key issues in a particular area of inquiry and provides a comprehensive review of the literature. The seven…

Following Roman Jakobson, this article attempts to outline the affinity between linguistic change induced by language contact and conflict, and the poetic function of language. This phenomenon can be observed by studying the discourses of trilingual speakers in the Aosta Valley in Northern Italy. The problematic position of French is reflected and…