From an epistemological perspective, Wilhelm von Humboldt's studies on the Oriental and East Asian languages and writing systems (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sanskrit, Chinese, Polynesian) raise the question of his position in the Orientalist discourse of his time. Said [Said, E.W., 1978. "Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient, fourth…

This article challenges the categorisation of English into national forms, arguing that this obscures differences in usage within a nation and ignores genres and registers that exist around the world. Further, I suggest that in addition to examining the spread of English around the world, scholars should study the ubiquity of various discourses…

Despite the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) government's determination to implement the "mother tongue education" policy amid strong social resistance one year after the handover, English remains a prestigious language in society. The need for Putonghua (Mandarin/Standard Chinese) is also increasing following ever-expanding…

This study investigates the interface between speech and gesture in second language (L2) narration within Slobin's (2003) thinking-for-speaking (TFS) framework as well as with respect to McNeill's (1992, 2005) growth point (GP) hypothesis. Specifically, our interest is in whether speakers shift from a first language (L1) to a L2 TFS pattern as…

Persian Languages is one of the widespread branches of Indo-European languages that for long have comprised several important languages. The importance of these languages which lies in the strength of Median, Achamenian, Parthian, and Sasanid Empires during different eras caused a number of researchers to increase their studies about these…

This study examines how Keenan and Comrie's (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) intersects with the typological characteristics of Korean in the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs). Korean has two types of RC constructions: head-external and head-internal. The head-external relative has its head to the right of the RC, whereas the…

The Center for Applied Linguistics, in its function as a clearinghouse for linguistic information, maintains a set of language files, limited to some 300 languages which have been selected from among the 3,000 to 4,000 in the world for their socio-political importance from an American point of view. The present list, compiled from these files,…

Presents typology of main areas of language contact in Nigeria and diagrams those requiring translation in public domains. (BK)

Traces history of Jewish languages and interlinguistics through non-Jewish languages with which Jews came into contact. Proposes a typology of Jewish language phenomena, formulates research tasks in comparative Jewish interlinguistics and assesses contribution of Jewish language study to general linguistics. (Author/BK)

This study introduces a typological model of the "conceptual language-specific approach" to the L2 research on the acquisition of tense-aspect. The model is based on the typological notion of prominence, classifying languages into tense-prominent and aspect-prominent (Bhat 1999) and the L1 research proposal that language-specific…

The three mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) are so closely related that the speakers mostly communicate in their own languages (semicommunication). Even though the three West Germanic languages Dutch, Frisian and Afrikaans are also closely related, semicommunication is not usual between these languages. In the present…

This issue of Exploratorium Magazine is devoted to languages as a systematic means of getting across ideas. Contents include: (1) "Where Do Languages Come From" (Merrit Ruhlen); (2) "English in Transition" (Rupert Peene); (3) "The Making of English" (Judith Brand); (4) "Try This!"-Become a Word Historian and One Poem-Three Poems" (Kurt…

The relationship between written words and their pronunciation varies considerably among different orthographic systems, and these variations have repercussions on learning to read. Children whose languages have deep orthographies must learn to pronounce larger units, such as rhymes, morphemes, or whole words, to achieve the correct pronunciation…

A great deal of disagreement exists as to whether the writing systems of the Brahmi family of scripts from Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent and the Hangul script of Korea should be classified as alphabets or syllabaries. Both have in common a mixture of syllabic and alphabetic characteristics that has spawned vigorous disagreement among…

This document lists the indigenous languages of North and South America, with the exception of the Eskimo-Aleut languages, the European-based Creoles, and languages which represent Post-Columbian intrusions. Section I consists of genetic classification of the languages included (948 language-level entries). Section II is an alphabetic list of all…