A large-scale study of complex "wh"-questions with 1,000 subjects aged 4-9 years is reported. The subjects' dialects were Mainstream American English or African American English, and approximately one-third were language impaired. The study examined when children permit long distance "wh"-movement, and when they respect a variety of syntactic…

This article argues that two movements in constant interplay operate within the historical trajectory of the Spanish language: the localization that becomes globalized and the globalization that becomes localized. Equally, this article illustrates how, at the same time that Spanish is expanding in the world, new idiosyncratic and localized forms…

Student essays for a college-level, department-wide final examination will be scrutinized to represent the ways that students who consciously employ rhetorical and intellectual traditions of Black discourses get penalized according to limited notions of academic writing. A dynamic intersection will be examined to show how this particular group of…

The number of undergraduates with diverse linguistic backgrounds currently enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities has increased dramatically over the past decade. Many of these students are international nonnative English speakers, resident bilinguals, and bidialectal speakers of African American English (AAE). Challenged by a host of language…

Purpose: In this study, the authors evaluated the contribution made by dialect shifting to reading achievement test scores of African American English (AAE)-speaking students when controlling for the effects of socioeconomic status (SES), general oral language abilities, and writing skills. Method: Participants were 165 typically developing…

This article examines various ways people of the past and present have dealt with the unfair practices associated with the use of norms and standards. Nineteenth-century responses of writers to the unfair aspects of standards are revealed by first examining the standards and then analyzing the discourse of two 19th-century women writers and social…

Some bases of intra-group identification among Black people who inhabit urban ghettoes are discussed, as well as the economy of the ghetto, especially as it pertains to the strategies that Black Americans have evolved to deal with their subsistence problems. An attempt is made to relate these strategies to the presence of in-group schisms and to…

The Black English tests for students attempt to provide a complete picture of a Black child's language proficiency, including the child's relative proficiency in the standard and vernaculary forms of speech. Three different tests, which can be taken separately, are included in this manual. The "Discrimination Test" measures the ability to…

AS PART OF A COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH CARE PROGRAM, A TEAM OF MEDICAL AND HEALTH-RELATED SPECIALISTS CONDUCTED SCREENING EXAMINATIONS OF CHILDREN ENROLLED IN SUMMER HEADSTART PROGRAMS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. THE 286 CHILDREN EXAMINED WERE NEGROES AND RECENTLY IMMIGRATED INDIANS AND LATIN AMERICANS. TWO SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS AND THREE AUDIOLOGISTS FROM THE…

This study involved the preparation of a set of 32 tape recordings of speakers of standard regional varieties of English in the United States and Canada, and the preparation of descriptive materials to accompany the tapes. Each tape includes (1) replies to 237 items based upon the pronunciation items of the "Linguistic Atlas of the United…

A current vocabulary of argot terms and meanings was collected from a Black male control group in the South Central Los Angeles ghetto. This lexicon was used to elicit and compare responses from 5 male groups of youths between 15 and 20 years old. Two of the groups consisted of lower class blacks separated geographically. The other groups were…

A study investigated African-American children, Section 1703(f) of the Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974 and the attention paid to teaching these children to read in current reading method textbooks. The main aspects of Black English were identified and recognized as significant barriers to reading achievement. The contents of 14 of the most…

Discusses four alternative policies that schools might implement with respect to dialect variability: try to wipe out nonstandard English; teach nonstandard English to standard speakers; accept dialect diversity; or encourage bidialectalism. (RM)

Brief reports are presented on several doctoral research projects on language acquisition. These projects concern such topics as: the linguistic expression of causal relations; language development of hearing children of deaf parents; bidialectal skills of black children; and language acquisition among Kaluli Children in New Guinea. (SW)

The following aspects of syntax in Indian English are examined: complex sentence formation, interrogative transformation, verb forms, and complementation. It is argued that a set of syntactic rules exists in all non-native second language varieties of English that will generate the non-stylistic deviant patterns discussed. (KM)