Traces the history and describes the present state of France's regional languages (Alsacien, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Flemish, and Occitan) and analyzes the common problems encountered by speakers of these languages. (Author/CB)

The characteristics of Natalie Sarrault's "Entre la vie et la mort" ("Between Life and Death") that blur the distinction between poetry and prose are examined, including wordplay, phonetic play, and graphic variations. (MSE)

An African gray parrot, taught to employ the vocalization "want" before an object label so as to discriminate functional labeling from requesting, subsequently generalized "want" to novel situations. The findings of the study indicate that the training procedure might be applicable to intervention programs for humans with…

Examines Modern Greek verbs which seem to be negative-raisers, including consideration of data that offer syntactic justification for negative-raisers and an examination of the semantics and pragmatics of the negative-raisers. (CB)

Reviews literature relating to conversational analysis, identifying two major approaches which exhibit chronological and methodological differentiations and focusing from a perspective of sequencing. (CB)

Analyses of longitudinal speech data collected from two children indicated that children rapidly acquire count/mass noun distinctions. (Author/CB)

Discusses the pros and cons of grammatical consciousness raising in (English as a second language) pedagogy, arguing that meaningful research on the effectiveness of formal instruction must abandon notions of language learning as the accumulation of language entities and consider consciousness raising with regard to grammatical processes and the…

Reviews recent research on aspects of mass media that use a sociolinguistic framework. Argues that linguistic strategies used by media personae to foster the appearance of neutrality as well as aspects of attribution are rich areas for sociolinguistic investigation. (SD)

Compares cohesive ties and chains in the good and poor essays of college freshmen. Results indicate that longer chains, greater variety of words, and greater maturity or word choice characterize good writing. (SRT)

Describes the wide variety of personal statements and "mini-poems" on personalized license plates. Suggests that having students collect such statements might be a way of teaching them about the creative potential of language. (EL)

Offers an explanation of metaphor comprehension and the processes of comparison it entails. Describes a strategy that focuses on the processes of comparison, intended for regular students in junior high school or gifted middle school students. Presents segments of an actual lesson illustrating the strategy. (JK)

A biblical story about the mispronunciation of Shibboleth introduces a discussion of the notion of cultural codes and cultural traits relating to language, science, and popular culture that commonly mark an individual as an insider or an outsider of a particular culture. (MSE)

Direct links between Australian English and the Australian culture are drawn. The author proposes ways in which a linguistically precise and culturally revealing study of linguistic phenomena such as expressive derivation, illocutionary devices, and speech act verbs are related to Australian society, history, culture, and "national…

Describes the influences which have affected the changing sociolinguistic setting for tribal Aborigines in the Northern Territory, Australia. The effects of various governmental and educational policies on language development are highlighted, and the need for deliberately planned, implemented, and monitored language policy is suggested.…

Presents the design of a long-term project aimed at facilitating communication among social scientists in different countries by the production of a new kind of encyclopedia, called the INTERCOCTA Encyclopedia. The project does not attempt to standardize or legislate terminology. (JDH)