Despite replicating previous findings of a relationship between maternal descriptiveness and the proportion of nouns and maternal directiveness and the proportion of verbs in children's early vocabulary, this study of eight mother-infant dyads revealed no relationship between differences in mothers' interactional behavior and differences in the…

Finds that differences in the amount that mothers talk to their children are a function of both characteristics of mothers' language use and of their children's conversational participation. Shows that mothers who talked more to their children more frequently produced multiple utterances on a single topic and had children who talked more. (SR)

Discusses the ways that one English teacher researched her student's language patterns and used that information to adjust her teaching. Considers the difficulty of changing ingrained habits of nongrammatical usage in student speech and writing. (HB)

Investigates the determinants of adult usage of various syntactic and semantic cues in sentence interpretation. Native French speakers and advanced English/French bilinguals were tested for the strength of usage of word order, clitic pronoun agreement, verb agreement, and noun animacy cues in the assignment of the role in French sentences. (46…

The pedagogical use of commands in second-language learning is addressed. Current textbooks are shown to expose students to many morphologically complicated command forms, and it is suggested that command use may be facilitated by offering students a reduced system of commands. (33 references) (Author/LB)

Describes the writing problems of a poor, black, urban student who wants to succeed in college but doesn't know how. Asserts that language use, particularly the use of Black English, plays a major role in their lack of academic success. Offers drills and strategies to help with this problem. (PRA)

Investigates the grammatical and formal writing preferences of college professors, for the purpose of informing high school instructors about the students' future audience. Surveys professors' attitudes regarding disapproval of forms and stylistic preferences, and compare results with those of two other usage surveys. (PRA)

Discusses strategies for teaching nonsexist language. Advocates discussion of misconceptions about the history of linguistic reform, forms of address, and outdated, sexist textbooks. Suggests that students find samples of sexist language and rewrite them using NCTE guidelines. Alerts teachers to be prepared for resistance. Suggests further…

Drummond and Hopper's article in this issue, "Back Channels Revisited," is argued to have decontextualized Jefferson's acknowledgement token phenomenon. The need for careful coding protocols for research on conversational practices is discussed. (eight references) (LB)

It is argued that the combination of research methods used in Drummond and Hopper's article in this issue, "Back Channels Revisited," is appropriate. Factors that make for good social science research are discussed. (eight references) (LB)

Attempts at being polite can fail through unwitting violation of speech act rules (SARs). Several situations illustrate the use of "please" by Japanese users of English. The question of whose SARs should apply in intercultural communication in English is addressed. (Contains 13 references.) (Author)

Reviews the history and development of the Pinyin grapheme system for the transcription of Chinese, and contrasts Pinyin graphemes with those of several other systems for Chinese. It is argued that Pinyin should be accepted as the standard system for Chinese transcription. (JL)

A survey measuring native French speakers' preference for English words instead of the officially sanctioned French equivalents revealed that subjects had high passive recognition of French terms, concluding that the French terminological process reminded users that French had ample resources to create its own expressions without automatically…

A brief review of research on native language production precedes a critical discussion of recent second-language production research, focusing on native language research applications to second-language research, the relationship between second-language learning and production, and the various methodologies used to study such production. (190…

Describes Tongan language proficiency, language usage, and attitudes toward the language among the ethnic Tongans of Wellington, New Zealand. Although the language is strongly preferred and maintained by the Tongan community, incipient language shift, increasing English proficiency, and code switching are evident among younger people. (40…