This investigation focuses on syllable boundary demarcation in Hualapai and Havasupai, both native American Indian languages spoken in Northern Arizona. In an attempt to understand better the nature of the syllable, allophonic variation with respect to syllable position is examined. Cross-linguistic evidence suggests that sounds may take on…

This document is an attempt at a comprehensive bibliography of all published and unpublished materials relevant to the Lakota (Teton Dakota or Teton Sioux) language with comments for most items. The period covered is from 1887 to 1987, the date of the publication of James Pilling's "Bibliography of the Siouan Languages" (1887). Items in…

In a brief analysis of Hopi consonant gradation, residual exceptions to Heath's generalizations about i-ablaut in Uto-Aztecan languages from Hopi are examined. In Heath's (1977, 1978) reconstruction of Proto-Uto-Aztecan verb morphophonemics, a consonant gradation is reconstructed when a final vowel of a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) root…

In an examination of effective presentation and practice of English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) instruction, this paper focuses on the ways that teachers can use examples as instructional techniques. The purpose of the paper is to clarify both the process of exemplification and its agent, examples, as they are used in ESL teaching and especially as…

A study explored the efficacy of the general semantic technique of E-Prime (a technique for increasing awareness of abstraction through the deliberate deletion of all forms of the verb "to be") through a study of copula deletion (omission of auxiliary verbs) and flaming (the fervent exchange of emotionally charged messages) in electronic…

The etymology of the word "OK" has been controversial from the time it was coined. As an acronym, it is ambiguous by its nature. It was originally meant to stand for "oll korrect," a deliberate misspelling of "all correct." These misspellings were a fad among the literati in late 1830s Boston. However, the phrase was…

Measurement of the mutual intelligibility of dialects of a language is discussed. The focus is on several theoretical constructs in measurement, illustrated with data from an earlier study of the mutual intelligibility of 17 Chinese dialects. Measurement procedures are also explained. It is proposed that mutual intelligibility is based on the…

Some language features are described that could account for feelings of people from different cultures not being on the same "wave length" when they communicate with each other in business negotiations. Candlin's explanatory approach involving a "top-down, bottom-up" methodology is used. It views language as being indeterminate…

A study investigated young children's knowledge of the constraint that prevents questioning from a position inside a temporal adjunct: i.e., knowledge of the ungrammaticality of a question such as "Who did Fred kiss Sue before hugging...?" Subjects were 30 children aged 3 to 5 years, who listened to stories accompanied by pictures and…

A phonetic study of vowel devoicing in the Shanghai dialect of Chinese explored the phonetic conditions under which the high, closed vowels and the apical vowel in Shanghai are most likely to become devoiced. The phonetic conditions may be segmental or suprasegmental. Segmentally, the study sought to determine whether a certain type of pre-vocalic…

Conversations are cooperatively achieved speech events. In introducing a new topic, there are specific procedures followed to close the old topic. Because these procedures take place over a series of utterances, both/all participants must cooperate to close a topic. Analysis of conversations among adults who know each other suggests that there are…

Although conversational stories within one individual's corpus share the same structure, they have features that set them apart from one another. Based on the stories' general characteristics and the way they function in ongoing talk, they can be identified as: (1) durable personal experience narratives (PENs), which are often repeated during the…

There has been a consensus among linguists that laryngeal and superlaryngeal nodes are located under the root node and place node is under the superlaryngeal node. However, there is very little consensus on where manner of articulation features belong. A phonological analysis of the spreading and delinking process occurring in the educated Spanish…

A study investigated the usefulness of indirect complaints (ICs)--i.e., expressions of dissatisfaction about someone or something not present--as a strategy for negotiating interaction for second language acquisition. In contrast to a direct complaint, an IC can be used to attempt to establish solidarity with an interlocutor. The language corpus…

It is proposed that there are cultural universals in the use of language and that these universals have implications for language acquisition. The model rests on three hypotheses: (1) there are culturally universal tendencies in the linguistic marking of four dimensions of language (epistemic and affective stances, social acts, social activities,…