This is an autobiographical account of a teacher's first day in an inner city high school; it contains a discussion of the importance of understanding the subculture of one's students. The teacher's dress and comprehension of slang are noticed by the students. Incidents are related that illustrate the effects of ethnocentrism (the belief in the…

Analyzes errors made by 65 innercity third and fourth graders on the "Gray Oral Reading Test." (RB)

The "Standard Written English" test newly added to the Scholastic Aptitude Test is reactionalry, unscholarly, and potentially discriminatory. (JH)

Criticizes Bernstein's formulation that there is a fundamental qualitative difference between working class and middle class speech--that working class speech is "restricted" and middle class speech is "elaborated." It is suggested that the relationship between social class and type of speech cannot be well described or…

Control of standard dialect necessary to school learning; students need to be trained in choosing appropriate speech styles for different contexts. (JH)

The problem of investigating linguistic attitudes in urban speech communities is considered in connection with three studies, in New York, Quebec, and Glasgow. Methodological problems raise questions regarding the reliability of the conclusions, suggesting that a more systematic approach to the study of linguistic attitudes is needed. (Author/AM)

Explores the Indian, African, and American influences on the lexicon, phonology, orthography, morphology, and syntax of Brazilian Portuguese. (AM)

Reveals the social, psychological and economic disadvantages encountered by exclusive users of nonstandard dialects. Suggests bi-dialectism as one solution for American minority members. (MH)

The syntax of the relative clause in the Saraswat Brahmin dialect of Konkani, an Indo-Aryan language, has been Dravidianized because of the impact of the Dravidian Kannada language, operating through bilingual speakers. The Konkani-Kannada bilingual situation is described and an explanatory account of the syntactic change is given. (Author/CLK)

Nahuatl was the indigenous, prehispanic Mexican language, still spoken today, and related to the nontonal languages of Mesoamerica. Several Nahuatl dialects are mentioned: Cazcan, Pipil, the extinct Pochuteco, and four dialects distinguished geographically, east, north, central, and west. These are discussed with attention to the development of…

Defines the causative construction semantically and describes various syntactic constructions that answer the definition. Intentional and unintentional causative constructions are distinguished. The semantic content of all intentional causative constructions is analyzed. (Author/RM)

Deals with 13th and 14th century distribution of [s] and [z] retracted or apical sibilants in the languages of Western and Central Europe. Based on philological evidence and on dialect evidence of today, the presence of various sibilants is determined. (SC)

Deals with how phonological changes occur and why. Presented as a response to "how" is the idea of lexical diffusion with focus on the temporal and lexical dimensions of sound changes. Evidence has been gathered from various languages to support this theory. Actuation is presented as occurring for physiological and perceptual reasons. (SC)