Provides data showing that "know" in colloquial Singapore has distributional and collocational properties that distinguish it from "you know," even though their discourse-pragmatic functions are similar. Differences between "you know" and "know" indicate that the latter has become a member of a linguistic…

Reports that thousands of the world's languages face extinction and that linguists are racing to preserve at least some of them. (MM)

Explores the distribution of /ai/ monophthongization in African-American and European-American speakers in Memphis, Tennessee. Presents evidence of extensive glide weakening in the African-American community in Memphis and compares it to the degree and contexts of glide weakening in the European-American community. (Author/VWL)

Presents results of a longitudinal study of Murcian Spanish carried out following a real-time approach with a retrospective trend design in order to detect and measure the apparent increasing diffusion of standard Castilian features from Northern peninsular Spanish. (Author/VWL)

Defines and traces the history of diglossia, and offers an extensive bibliography on the subject. The need for an overall integration of research within the socioevolutionary context of diglossia is highlighted. (32 references) (LT)

Discusses the relationship of Canadian and Australian English to that of British and American English. Variation and similarities in spelling, punctuation, pronuciation, and vocabulary are discussed. (Contains 19 references.) (JL)

Challenges the belief that the intonation of yes/no questions in American English is different from that of standard British English. Reports on a study that shows that American speakers of English do not distinguish between the high-rising and low-rising intonation, and argues that the supposed difference in intonation between the two varieties…

Aims to find the extent to which subject clitic "nous" and 4th person verbs in French are used in a corpus of informal spoken language and to identify factors that may account for the productive use of nous +4p verb. (Author/VWL)

Focuses on technical sub-languages to reveal sociological functions of language that transcend mere transfer of substantive information. Finds one sociological feature, the shibboleth, acting widely throughout technical fields. (PA)

Investigates the contexts in which "okay" is used in Nigerian English. Discusses how differences in usage of the term should be recognized, respected, and accepted and raises the question of whether or not current theories of learning are powerful enough to accommodate new norms of meanings that inevitably develop in language contact…

Presents evidence that Detroit African Americans are participating in a recent sound change that is typically associated with some White but not African American varieties in the American South. Reports a leveling pattern in which /ai/ monothongization has expanded to the salient pre-voiceless context in Detroit African American English (AAE).…

Data are presented from crossmodal form priming experiments in German on regressive and progressive assimilation at word boundaries. Results show that some, but not all forms of lawful variation are tolerated by the lexical system. Consequences of these findings for psycholinguistic and linguistic models are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Suggests that while recent sociolinguistic work focusing on crossing, or language boundaries is raising significant questions concerning how we relate language, identity, and popular culture, these insights have largely passed by the sociolinguistics of world English. (Author/VWL)

Language attitude studies have tended to assume that informants who listen to and evaluate speech stimuli are able to identify with consistent accuracy the varieties of English in question. However, misidentification could reduce the validity of any results obtained, particularly when it involves the evaluations of non-native English-speaking…

Singapore is unique in that it has not only embraced English as one of its official languages, but has made the language of its colonizers the "de facto" working language of the nation and the sole medium of instruction in all its schools, while assigning its other three official languages, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, an L2 status in the…