This collection of working papers in linguistics includes four works. "Autour de la racine indo-europeenne 'pet-' ('voler') (pour servir a l'histoire des faits latins)" ("Concerning the Indo-European Root 'Pet-' ('To Fly') (To Serve as an Example of Latin Facts)" by Claude Sandoz looks at the Latin manifestations of the root and illustrates the…

The working papers by students and professors of linguistics on research in progress include the following: "Are Cariban Languages Moving Away From or Towards Ergative Systems?" (Desmond D. Derbyshire); "A Double-Verb Construction in Mbya Guarani" (Robert A. Dooley); "Semantically Ergative Languages in Typological…

A review of the journal of the Dutch Modern Language Association in the last three decades indicates that second language teaching in the Netherlands has evolved from something static into something very dynamic. Emphasis has shifted from knowledge about the language to knowledge of the language. Thirty years ago, Dutch textbooks were written by…

Research on the language development of children in immersion programs has uncovered a certain amount of data. Immersion students have less well developed productive skills than their francophone peers and passive receptive skills which approach those of francophones. Error analysis studies have found that immersion students reach a plateau in…

While language switching among multilinguals has been studied in a wide variety of contexts, few attempts have been made to generalize or to integrate findings into useful communication theory. Since language switching is an important part of personal as well as group identity and since issues surrounding language identity are often a focal point…

A study investigated the speaking styles of black college students to determine whether selected stylistic features of speeches of students at a predominantly black university were different from those of black college students at a predominantly white university. Audiotapes were made of 25 students at the predominantly black university and 21…

The problems of classroom teacher-conducted research are examined with reference to a particular case study. The case study involved a field test of "A Practical Guide for Advanced Writers in ESL" over a semester in two sections of an intermediate English as a second language (ESL) writing class for college-bound students at the University of…

This paper examines content-based instruction, which is an integrated approach to language instruction drawing topics, texts, and tasks from content or subject matter classes but focusing on the cognitive, academic language skills needed to participate effectively in content instruction. The intent and design of content-based instructional…

Results of a review of 34 contracts relating to bilingual education awarded by the Department of Education's Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs and the Office of Planning, Budget, and Evaluation are presented. The review analyzed awards made from 1982 to 1985 and focused on: the extent of and justification for contracts…

This study investigated the relative ability of literate (n=24), semi-literate (n=45), and non-literate (n=21) adults to erase the initial consonant or vowel from non-words and pronounce the remaining phonemes. It was hypothesized that difficulty in removing the initial consonant from the vowel with which it coarticulates is due not only to…

A study examined the errors in the use of prepositions, particularly of prepositional verbs, made by native Greek speakers learning English. Two tests were constructed, one a translation of a Greek text into English and the other a series of English sentences to be completed with the appropriate prepositional word based on the Greek equivalent…

In constructing a syllabus for the teaching of Modern Greek as a foreign language to English-speaking students, it is suggested that some lexical items be taught from the corpus of Greek loan words in English. These words fall into the following categories: direct loans; words that, in joining English, have acquired a different meaning, which was…

Four studies were conducted in which subjects performed three sets of tasks tapping, in a standard format, progressively refined, non-linguistic processes in speech processing. The studies examined the following: (1) auditory versus phonetic processes in the discrimination of consonants; (2) auditory versus phonetic processes in loudness and pitch…

This study investigated the level of politeness of various forms of request made in English, as if spoken to an American, as perceived by college-level native speakers of English (n=80), Japanese speakers in the United States (n=34), and Japanese speakers in Japan (n=103). A semantic differential questionnaire measuring 10 levels of politeness was…

Extracts from financial reports broadcast on two British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio channels are analyzed for cognitive structures that affect the conceptual organization of this discourse type. The approach used for the analysis is based on two assumptions in the relationship of communication and cognition. These are: (1) financial…