Examines speech convergence as a primitive form of socialized speech. Discusses the extent of speech patter matching by three-year-old children and whether a talkative/reticence factor influenced degrees of convergence. (EKN)

Suggests that by reading aloud, students may come to a greater awareness of the three subsystems of the English punctuation system--inclusion, sentence stops, and sentence marks. (HOD)

Analyzes two descriptions of Nigerian English and discusses their implications for ESL teachers in Nigeria. (EKN)

Evaluates productive usage of 48 adult subjects of the causative verbs "bring" and "take." Results reveal that one quarter of the subjects employed standard usage and one third employed a "bring" over-extension, while the rest did not routinely employ standard, deictically based source or goal distinctions. (EKN)

Discusses how paralinguistics information of a voice is remembered without apparent intent and concludes that this happens because the connotation of the voice influences the meaning of what is being said. (EKN)

The Black English semi-auxiliary "come" is used to express speaker indignation, as opposed to the motion verb "come." Examines the history of the semi-auxiliary and why it has remained undetected for so long. (EKN)

Discusses the benefits of short answers and how they differ in German and English. Provides hints on how to teach students to produce reduced answers that are grammatically acceptable in spoken German. (EKN)

Considers the possibility that infants from different linguistic backgrounds babble similarly. Results of an experiment show that Spanish- and English-learning babies produce predominantly CV syllables with voiceless, unaspirated plosive consonants. Vowel production is also similar. (EKN)

Examines the reading and writing processes and their interdependence and urges the language arts instructor to be an audience for children's writing and to help them become aware that what they read is someone else's writing. (HTH)

A reliable clinical taxonomy of illocutionary acts for young language learning children was determined and the distributions of those illocutionary acts in naturalistic play situations with 12 Down syndrome and nondelayed children (20 to 89 months) and their mothers were examined. (Author)

Indicates in poetic form the author's doubts about electronic devices that emphasize spelling drills; notes her preference for instruction based on patterns of language. (GT)

Common language usage is considered from four perspectives: "situational" linguistics and language, "natural language," linguistic interdisciplinarity with the social sciences, and common language as a "social technology," or subject of pedagogy. (MSE)

Contends that the organization of comments made by one discourse participant on the contributions of another reveals a hierarchy of relevance and informativity. Illustrates this with discourse samples subjected to a particular method of analysis. (FL)