A survey of written and spoken Tennessee English was recently begun. Work is in progress on the first stage of the project, which involves the compilation of a bibliography. Data from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) and the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) will be examined in planning the survey itself. The next stage…

Exploring the issue of black and white speech differences, the articles reprinted in this anthology span several decades and are to be viewed in a historical perspective. Turner (1948) examines Gullah, the creole language spoken off the coast of South Carolina. McDavid and McDavid (1951) attempt to identify the different influences on the speech…

Four nonstandard linguistic features used by five black children, ages 6-11 years, in 14 conversations were recorded and transcribed. The interviewers included male and female adults, Negro and white. The four nonstandard linguistic features were multiple negation, and absence of the Z suffixes marking noun plural, possession, and the third person…

It seems highly likely that many of the features of Black American English can be traced back to the Afro-Portuguese Creole dialects that sprang up in the fifteenth century in Portuguese slave camps along the West African coast, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea area, the area of greatest concentration of activity during the slave trade. This…

A presentation of evidence gathered in a study of a dying dialect of Scottish Gaelic that reduction in structure accompanies reduction in use. Recognition of distortion through unavoidable reliance on semi-speaker informants seems possible on the basis of internal or external evidence. More study is needed on the semi-speaker phenomenon. (AMH)

Compares data gathered for 5-year-olds in Montreal and Paris, and shows that the differences between the two communities are marginal in terms of the complexity of the acquisition process. Notable differences are observed in performance. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

This paper presents linguistic evidence for communication problems in everyday classroom interactions where children are dialect speakers. It also examines the problem of coding language functions for use in experiments. (RB)

In a comparative study of American English speakers and British English speakers, it was examined whether segmental effects can be used in speech production as cues to syntactic structure. American speakers could use the segmental cues in syntax perception, while British speakers could not. Speakers of British English who were long-term residents…

Discusses the merits of studying the morphological system of a language as opposed to the phonological or lexical, for the purposes of geographical and diachronic studies. The vowel system of Gascon is compared to that of Basque. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/AM)

This article discusses the history of the Galician language. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

Reports an investigation of the effect of dialect on speech discrimination scores of black and white adolescents. (TO)

Paper presented at a symposium on the preservation of the Spanish language in the U.S., August 7-10, 1973, Mexico City, Mexico. (SK)

Paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Salish Languages, Bellingham, Washington, August 1972; research supported by the National Science Foundation. (DD)

Revised version of a paper presented to the Australian College of Speech Therapists, Sydney, Australia, May 27, 1972. (DD)