Argues that most pronunciation problems encountered by Cantonese learners of English may be adequately accounted for by contrastive differences. The phonological differences between the two languages are examined, ranging from their phoneme inventories, the characteristics of the phonemes, the distributions of the phoneme syllable structure, to…

The ''ba, ba, ba'' sound universal to babies' babbling around 7 months captures scientific attention because it provides insights into the mechanisms underlying language acquisition and vestiges of its evolutionary origins. Yet the prevailing mystery is what is the biological basis of babbling, with one hypothesis being that it is a non-linguistic…

This article analyzes the function of deixis in the poetry of the 20th century Italian, Eugenio Montale, in particular, his "In limine." The main objective is to show how deixis is involved in the dynamic relationship between text and reader. A constant problem in Montale's texts is that of a disharmony felt by the poetic voice with the…

A study of Black American spirituals focuses on African linguistic patterns that have persisted in them. The analysis begins with a brief account of the history and nature of Black spirituals, the sacred songs created by Americans of African descent during the time of slavery (1619-1864). Six elements of spirituals are identified and discussed,…

A series of experiments investigated infants' perception of inherent structural organization in the prosody of utterances. The experiments used a listening preference procedure to test: perceptions of appropriate pauses in child-directed and adult-directed speech; perceptions of appropriate pauses in speech filtered for most segmental features but…

Grace and style are elements of composition rarely demanded by teachers or developed by students. Since both terms are elusive to define and because asking students to make attempts at grace and style can have unappealing results, perhaps vigor is a better element to encourage students to pursue. Vigor does not outlaw graceful flourishes and…

This paper focuses on linguistic prosodic units related to boundaries between syntactic units. Specifically, rules for predicting the location of such boundaries, and factors affecting their location, are discussed. Examples are given on how prosodies can be used for syntactic analysis. Addressing the question of prosodic units and their…

The introductory section of this study of Spanish dialects in the United States, commissioned by the ERIC Clearinghouse for Linguistics, presents the plan and the ethnic distribution of Spanish speakers in the U.S.. (The 1960 census shows the preponderance of population contribution to be from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Spain.) A description…

Presents some reasons why more emphasis should be placed on the mastery of the rhythmic features of the target language in foreign language teaching. An account of an important recent theoretical contribution to the description of the principles underlying English speech rhythm is included. (SED)

Discusses the types of arguments available for settling questions of phonological constituency. On the basis of these arguments the most frequently assumed syllable structure is selected in which the relationship between "Peak" and "Coda" is closer than that between "Peak" and "Onset." (Author/LMO)

Presents the results of an experiment which examined the temporal characteristics of voiceless plosives in American English, Arabic, and Arabic-accented English. Results showed that Arabic-accented English departed from the target language goal and constituted an articulation type characterizable as more Arabic than Arabic itself. (Author/SED)

References to the study of behavioral organization of face-to-face interaction are arrranged in alphabetical order by author. A subject classification of works in the bibliography is appended. (EJS)

Reports on studies testing a method that uses a television monitor to present simultaneously the visual and auditory versions of sentences, as a way of facilitating the teaching of reading. (GT)

Observes that rhythm and synchrony are facets of language learning and use that are often overlooked in English instruction. Describes several ways to explore the rhythmic aspects of speaking, reading, and writing. (MM)

Compares the ability of English speakers and Portuguese speakers to learn two complex rhythm patterns observed in languages with primary word stress. Subjects were familiarized with one of two rhythms during a discrimination task, followed by a recognition task that tested whether knowledge of the rhythm generalized to novel stimuli.(Author/VWL)