The dictionary of Lushootseed, the Puget Salish Indian language spoken in the area of Seattle, Washington, begins with an introduction to the language's name, dialects, geographic distribution, research methodology and native informants, texts used as sources, and pronunciation and transcription. It also gives an overview of the way entries are…

This monograph was originally a chapter from a 14-volume series, "Current Trends in Linguistics," that presented reviews of research pertaining to language and society worldwide. This publication provides access to researchers of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent, focusing on the Sindhi language. Chapter 1, "Sindhi Studies:…

Papers from the conference in this volume include the following: "Towards Corpus Annotation Standards--The MATE Workbench" (Laila Dybkjaer and Niels Ole Bernsen); "Danish Text-to-Speech Synthesis Based on Stored Acoustic Segments" (Charles Hoequist); "Toward a Method for the Automated Design of Semantic…

This paper examines the political status of Romani. the language of the Gypsies/Roma, in the European Union (EU). Even though some groups do not call themselves "Roma," all Romani speaking groups use the name "Romanes" for their language and "Romani/Romano/Romane" for everything related to their group. All groups use…

This study examined students' and teachers' attitudes toward using black dialect (BD) in a community college writing program. White educators completed a Language Aptitude Survey and followup interviews. African American students completed interviews. Teachers held Standard English (SE) in high regard and did not agree with using Ebonics in…

This paper offers a brief but comprehensive overview of various issues pertaining to the use and origins of Black English. The purpose of the paper is to help educators understand Black English and celebrate this dialect in class while facilitating the acquisition of Standard English. It holds that Ebonics is a dialect of English with its own set…

Essays on the history of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) include: an introduction to the evolution of AAVE within the African American diaspora (Shana Poplack); "Rephrasing the Copula: Contraction and Zero in Early African American English" (James A. Walker); "Reconstructing the Source of Early African American English…

One concern in current sociolinguistic theories of language variation is to find dynamic models that integrate rules governing the 'lects' of a language into a unified description of that language. The dynamics of language change in the variations inherent to the Fijian dialect chain have profound implications for language literacy and educational…

Discusses some of the problems of the culturally diverse and economically disadvantaged student in learning to read and achieving academic success. Several suggestions are offered as solutions for these problems. (TO)

Discusses the belief that meaning is primary to a child learning language and concludes that teachers should develop language programs in which the use of language would be essential rather than incidental. (RL)

Argues that since the black child is handicapped not so much by a lack of reading skills but more by certain phonic sounds he is forced to memorize, black language will not aid him in learning English. (Author/JM)

Argues that the African's struggle to survive the racist language may be seen as psychological rejection and resistance to mastering the language, and advocates the development of a language of African Humanism. (Author/JM)

Contends that the language of the suburbia--the language of the British middle class--is a dead language, because it has so few sources of contemporary enrichment and vitality, and because it is derivative and unoriginal and relies heavily on an imagery that stems from obsolete popular speech. (RJ)