This paper presents patterns of accentual alignment in two varieties of Spanish spoken in the Basque Country: Lekeitio Spanish (LS), with speakers whose other native language is Lekeitio Basque (LB); and Vitoria Spanish (VS), with monolingual speakers of Spanish from the city of Vitoria. These patterns are compared to those of Madrid Spanish (MS),…

Ellis's target article suggests that language processing is based on frequency and probabilistic knowledge and that language learning is implicit. These findings are consistent with those of SLA researchers working within a variationist framework (e.g., Tarone, 1985; Bayley & Preston, 1996). This paper provides a brief overview of this research…

In traditional classifications of languages by inflectional subsystems, both creole languages and the results of untutored SLA (interlanguages) are classified as isolating. We focus on remnants of verbal inflectional morphology in French-related creoles and ask: (a) Can the properties of verbal morphology be attributed to SLA, and (b) what does…

Colloquial Singapore English is an outer circle variety that exhibits contact induced linguistic change. It has been characterized as the L variant in diglossic opposition to standard English. In this paper, the authors address two related issues: (1) the extent to which the Singapore English diglossia is supported by corpus data, and (2) the…

This study investigates whether second language (L2) phonological learning can be characterized as a gradual and systematically patterned replacement of nonnative segments by native segments in learners' speech, conforming to a two-stage implicational scale. We adopt a dynamic approach to language variation based on Gatbonton's (1975, 1978)…

The Hispanic population of the United States is quite diverse and with each passing year, due to (im)migration patterns, more and more students are entering language classrooms with some degree of familiarity with the language. However, because of the tendency toward intergenerational loss of Spanish, the linguistic proficiency covers the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the language ideologies--the assumptions about the nature of language, language variation, and language learning--reflected in a widespread daily editing activity often known as Daily Oral Language or Daily Language Practice. Through a yearlong ethnographic study of grammar instruction in three urban,…

This contribution investigates the frequency patterns of the modal verbs as they occur in the one-million-word corpus of Cameroon written English. An analysis of dominant senses of some of the modals is also attempted. I have used results and statistical figures from British and American English (as reported in studies such as Biber et al. 1999…

In the Singlish-"Good" English debate, the use of Singlish (SCE) is viewed as an obstacle to the development of students' literacy skills in standard English (SSE) and so the practice of classroom codeswitching between the two varieties is strongly discouraged. Yet the presence of the vernacular in the classroom continues to be robust.…

Students enter pre-service teacher education programmes with certain preconceptions about what the world is like, what classrooms are like and how students acquire literacy. In our increasingly multicultural society, teachers in pre-service teacher education courses are often not representative of the wider population. The present paper reports on…

The dictionary for the Northern-Central variety of Thai is designed as a reference for use by Peace Corps volunteers assigned to northern Thailand. An introductory section gives an overview of the dictionary's content and design and of the use of the Central Thai alphabet (the old Northern alphabet is rarely used). Most of the words included are…

This paper examines the claim that German-language syntax is undergoing a process of restructuring that will eliminate verb final position in sentences, resulting in a very English-style linear sentence structure. One particular structure is examined in interviews with 30 adults and 10 children: the finite verb in subordinate clauses that is…

A study of syntactic variation in Spanish spoken by native speakers in the United States examined patterns of variation in different areas of the country. High school students in larger Hispanic communities throughout the country were surveyed concerning their own and their parents' demographic characteristics and their Spanish speaking,…

This brochure explains in lay terms what an accent is and how it occurs, focusing on how learners of English-as-a-Second-language come to have what is perceived as an accent. It begins with an explanation of two kinds of accent: that of a non-native speaker and that of a speaker from a particular region in which a language is spoken. The second…

Choice of second-person pronouns can help explain the intersection of language, personality, and culture. Changes in modern Norway are described in which the polite forms "de,""dem"/"dykk," and "deres"/"dykkar" have been replaced in all except commercial, government, or ultra-polite speech by the…