The advantages and disadvantages of wider or narrower definitions of "pidginization" and "pidgin" are reviewed to determine the differences between pidgins and naturalistically learned second languages (L2s). It is argued that a wider definition is preferred because it avoids problematic counterexamples and captures…

The main assumption in this article is that the pragmatics of the variety of South African English commonly referred to as black South African English (BSAE) have been shaped, over time, by educated bilinguals, through a transfer of features from African languages. Transfer of syntactic forms, now firmly established in the variety, is evidenced…

A study of Chinese logograph recognition investigated: (1) whether word-length effect is generalizable to Chinese readers in recognizing context-free logographic characters; (2) whether readers from mainland China would outperform readers from Taiwan when each group read its own familiar logograph version; (3) whether both groups would perform…

The use of music in the foreign language classroom offers a unique approach to enhance students' awareness of another culture, and also can aid in the practice of communication skills. Music provides an interesting mirror of the history, literature, and culture of a country, that can be seen in song texts and in musical style. Musical styles and…

In Quebec French, unlike standard French, sentence negation "pas" ("not") can occur in the same clause as a negative quantifier like "personne" ("nobody"), for instance. This paper proposes that "pas" in these contexts marks negative association in the same way that "ne" does in standard…

A discussion of the teaching of English for academic purposes (EAP) focuses on criticism that the content of such courses is thin and that they are offered as a service to other disciplines. It is proposed that the emphasis of EAP instruction be shifted to the role English plays as a medium for conveying meaning to the ways in which English is…

This paper reports on a paper to develop two computer text corpora, called Hong Kong Texts on Hong Kong," at the University of Hong Kong English Centre. These corpora are intended to serve as a resource for teachers and researchers who need information on English usage in published text in Hong Kong. The aim of the report is to disseminate…

A study of the pronunciation of an adult male Swahili speaker, a native and long-term resident of Mombasa Old Town, supplemented with notes on other adult speakers, suggests a new account of glides and phonological change in this variation of the language. The asymmetrical distribution of the two glide types (palatal and labiovelar) is analyzed…

Focusing on the present state of book development in the Asia-Pacific region, where countries are separated by vast distances, this report examines measures that might improve local book industries and meet the needs for endogenous literature. The various sections of the report discuss (1) the book situation and needs in the Asia-Pacific region;…

Examines these questions: how do America's ethno-linguistic groups adjust to the bicultural demands made on them? How are speakers of local varieties of French as opposed to other forms viewed by French-Americans? Does participation in a bilingual education program influence children's attitudes? (SCC)

Nassau Community College (NCC) offers a grammar course as a humanities option that may be taken instead of a literature course. The approach to the course incorporates reader-response theory, feminist criticism, new historicism, and journal writing as the key means for enabling students to learn. Each student has a notebook divided into sections…

A study of the language use of 45 transitional Spanish-English bilinguals focused on subject pronoun usage patterns evolving when the bilingual has acquired both a prodrop (Spanish) and a non-prodrop (English) language and frequently switches between them. Subjects were of Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican background, and had not attained the…

Grammatical theories that rely exclusively on the categorical nature of constituents to determine their syntactic behavior encounter problems when dealing with cleft construction. The ungrammaticality of such constructions is indeed syntactic in nature and can be shown to derive from a general principle of universal grammar (UG), restricting the…

A study of dialectal variation in Mexican Sign Language (MSL), the primary language for a large segment of Mexico's deaf community, is presented. Signs used by nine different sources representing various locations, ages, and social groups are compared. The first section reviews a number of previous informal assessments of dialectal variation in…