Reports on attempts to reconstruct the Proto-Chinese sound system, based on linguistic data from modern Chinese dialects rather than ancient rhyme dictionaries and tables, resulting in a sound system with 29 onsets and 74 rhymes and some new rules for sound changes. (18 references) (Author/CB)

Provides a brief history of pidgin and creole studies and describes the importance of these languages in the politics and sociology of linguistic studies. Applications of studies of pidgin and creole, especially those in Queensland (Australia) and Papua New Guinea, to linguistics are outlined. (JP)

This study examines children's metaphonological awareness for accent-related information in connected speech. In the first experiment, 5- to 6-year-old French-speaking children were asked to discriminate between Southern and Northern accented French in a sentence categorization task. It was found that these children were not able to reliably…

An international conference on creole languages and educational development was held at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, from July 24-28, 1972. It was attended by scholars from Africa, Australia, Hawaii, the Caribbean region, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. The papers presented were descriptions of a…

This paper draws on the recently theorised notions of space and scale in sociolinguistics to investigate the complexity and micro-variation of the Chinese language in the context of mass internal migration, and the way in which sociolinguistic processes shed light on the construction of migrant identities. In spite of the enormously rich diversity…

The study of deviant behavior was designed to focus on departure from a "group"'s normative expectations; however, the primary focus of deviance research has been the departure from the "dominant" group's norms. What happens when one is stigmatized by the dominant group and their minority group? Making use of interview data, this study…

Purpose: This study examined past tense marking by African American English (AAE)-speaking children from low- and middle-income backgrounds to determine if poverty affects children's marking of past tense in ways that mirror the clinical condition of specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Participants were 15 AAE-speaking 6-year-olds from…

For the past 25 years, controversy has developed over the value and use of African-American (AA) English. This study examined the opinions of AAs from a variety of backgrounds and communities in California and Georgia to obtain their views on AA English; its place in the school, in the community, and in AA heritage; and its role in the futures of…

Research has demonstrated that many linguistic features correlate with social stratification of speakers and that these features often serve as social identifiers that trigger language stereotypes. An experiment was conducted to verify these findings with regard to Portuguese ethnic groups. Judges from four Portuguese-speaking ethnic groups…

RECENT LINGUISTIC RESEARCH SHOWS THAT THE SPEECH PATTERNS OF SOUTHERN NEGROES CONSTITUTE A LEGITIMATE DIALECT OF ENGLISH WITH PHONOLOGICAL AND GRAMMATICAL RULES SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT FROM GENERAL AMERICAN ENGLISH (GAE). AN EXPERIMENT WAS DESIGNED TO DETERMINE WHETHER THOSE ASPECTS OF THE NEGRO DIALECT WHICH SET IT APART FROM OTHER ENGLISH DIALECTS…

This paper reports on the Arkansas Language Survey, which had two purposes: (1) to explore the idea advanced by Labov that Americans generally have negative attitudes about their language, and to see to what extent this applies to Arkansawyers; and (2) to determine how Arkansawyers judge the way other Americans speak English. The twenty-four white…

The Finnish language spoken by Finns who emigrated to America is often called "Finglish;" two distinct varieties are discussed in this paper. American Finnish differs from native Finnish in its assimilation of a substantial number of loan words that augment and sometimes replace the original vocabulary. Many loan words deal with employment,…

From sociolinguistic and dialect research have merged three hypotheses concerning the comparison of American Negro and white speech: (1) there is little difference in the linguistic usage of Negroes and whites of similar socioeconomic status; (2) Negroes have a separate dialect with its own phonological, grammatical, and lexical features; and (3)…

The following description sets forth the aims and methodology of a project in Arkansas dialect studies; summarizes the preliminary work being carried on; and outlines the future course of the study. The urgency of the need for such research is pointed out by Moreland: The South is a "formerly distinctive region that is fast losing its…