This study attempts to bring together most of the information about the transformational analysis of the grammar of English that was available up through the summer of 1968, and to integrate it into a single coherent format. The format chosen is that of C. Fillmore (the "Deep Case" hypothesis) combined with the "Lexicalist" hypothesis of N.…

The purpose of this study was to discover: (1) whether or not adults can discriminate between the babbling of babies learning different languages, and (2) the approximate age at which discrimination is possible. There were two tests involved in the experiment. The identification test consisted of 20 babbling samples, each of which was 15 seconds…

Piaget has suggested that a child's language reflects the degree to which he is able to take into account the point of view of his listener. His inability to do so results in what Piaget calls egocentric speech whereas what Piaget calls socialized speech indicates that the child actually adopts his listener's viewpoint and engages in an exchange…

The paper presents a set of linguistic phenomena illustrative of the notion "universal tendency". Linguistic generalizations are regarded here not as isolated, "true-or-false" propositions but as embedded in a hierarchy of competing forces. An "exception" to a universal is thus seen as the result of the prevalence of another conflicting universal…

A particular aspect of syllable structure, length of syllable margins, was investigated with the aid of a Markov chain model. The model represented explicitly the dynamic relationship between types of syllable structure and the historical processes that affect them. It is proposed that the regularities concerning syllable types (universality of CV…

Exploring the issue of black and white speech differences, the articles reprinted in this anthology span several decades and are to be viewed in a historical perspective. Turner (1948) examines Gullah, the creole language spoken off the coast of South Carolina. McDavid and McDavid (1951) attempt to identify the different influences on the speech…

The papers included in this volume discuss the relationship of sociolinguistics to social interaction, sociolinguistic surveys, the intersection of sociolinguistics with education, and the influence of linguistics and sociology on sociolinguistics. The papers include: "Optional Rules in Grammar" (Fraser); "The Structure of Polylectal Grammars"…

When considering vowel alternations in English, it is possible to develop a less abstract vowel system than the one developed by Chomsky and Halle by using their laxing rule as the input for a restrictive vowel-shift rule which accounts for the relative height of alternating vowels in alternations such as divine-divinity, extreme-extremity,…

The study attempted to determine if differences occurred in the written language patterns used by intermediate grade children when they wrote compositions for different purposes. Sex and grade level were also independent variables. The compositions were obtained from a representative sample of intermediate grade children. The children listened to…

Four nonstandard linguistic features used by five black children, ages 6-11 years, in 14 conversations were recorded and transcribed. The interviewers included male and female adults, Negro and white. The four nonstandard linguistic features were multiple negation, and absence of the Z suffixes marking noun plural, possession, and the third person…

This volume, one of a series of concise but relatively exhaustive descriptions of the grammatical structures of the principal standard Slavic languages, contains an outline of Polish morphology. The four major sections are morphophonemics, nominal inflection, the Polish verb (Part 1--stem alternation and conjugation, and the Polish verb (Part…

Communication interactions between a child (2 to 5 years of age) and the language users around him were studied by means of a descriptive model which employs interrogation as the index of audit speech patterns. It was hypothesized that adult demands would correlate with a child's language response capability and would constitute a useful index of…

Information necessary to understand many English sentences appears to be supplied by a source outside the sentence which is composed of a fund of knowledge accumulated throughout life. This fund of knowledge may be visualized and a conceptual network into which the incomplete information supplied by a sentence can be mapped, thus making it…

A course to make students aware of the patterns of the different dialects of American English is offered by the Dade County Public Schools. Designed to foster tolerance for other ways of speaking, the quinmester program helps students to determine their own dialect and to compare it with alternative forms of speech. The course content includes a…

A DISCUSSION OF THE LINGUISTIC AND PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF HAUSA (A LANGUAGE OF WEST AFRICA) ACCOMPANIES A TEXT WHICH CONSISTS OF BASIC SENTENCES, NOTES, AND GRAMMATICAL DRILLS. THE BASIC SENTENCES ARE DIALOGS TO BE MEMORIZED, AND THEIR ENGLISH RENDERINGS ARE MEANT TO BE SITUATIONAL EQUIVALENTS, NOT LITERAL TRANSLATIONS. THE NOTES EXPLAIN…