In a comparison of men's and women's use of directives at a dance group meeting, little difference was found in the frequency with which they direct others, the targets of their directives, or the types of directives used. Directive usage cannot be adequately understood without considering the specific contexts in which the directives occur. (48…

Investigates the changes in the nonverbal forms of written language, with specific attention to the art form of graffiti. Provides and analyzes data from a study of collected graffiti. Describes three phases of visible form in the historical development of graffiti. (HB)

This article presents initial guidelines for combining current conventions for analyzing sign language and spoken language, to represent signs accompanied by speech. Rules are outlined for transcribing utterance groupings in terms of their context, inflection, sign gloss, spoken component, and phonetic transcription. (JDD)

This meta-analysis of 33 studies compared the pragmatic language skills of 825 students (ages 3-12) having language and/or learning disabilities with the skills of nondisabled peers. The students with disabilities demonstrated consistent and pervasive pragmatic deficits in conversation, which were more attributable to underlying language deficits…

Examines the role of the computer in constructing, from rules, derived forms of Swedish morphology and a characterization of Swedish pronunciation. Computer rules are described that mimic generative morphophonemic rules that produce nominals, adjectives, and verbals, and phonological rules that represent their pronunciations. (Author/CB)

Addresses complicated categories of loanwords and their uses in Japanese, an analysis of the developing functions of loanwords; the cultural attitudes that permit borrowings in some semantic areas; and how the present process of borrowing English words has similarities to the borrowing of Chinese language and culture some 1400 years ago.…

This article reviews recent research on phonological development and characteristics associated with different forms of delay. Language-delayed students are considered categorizable at 24 months as either "late talkers" with no major deviations from patterns of normal acquisition or disordered students whose developmental patterns are markedly…

Cites the lack of authenticity in intertextuality (ITX) research and argues that collaborative learning environments offer a better research setting. One particular research context, literature circles, is examined to identify characteristics of generative research environments for the study of ITX. (Contains 27 references.) (JP)

A sociolinguistic analysis of pronunciation patterns of postnuclear occlusive consonants in northern peninsular Spanish resulted in (1) understanding of the vitality of the use of distinct allophonic variations; (2) characterization of sociolinguistic usage tendencies in relation to speakers' demographic characteristics; and (3) identification of…

Explores Singapore poet Edwin Thumboo's aesthetic use of consistent foregrounding, or use of certain linguistic devices to attract attention, in one poem from three perspectives: propositional; textual; and interpersonal. The approach adopted is functional-semantic in orientation and is designed to gain a better appreciation of the poem's texture…

Provides examples illustrating that the study of technologically-mediated communication, if approached from an ethnographic perspective, draws attention to old questions of interactional patterning in what may be radically new contexts of communication. Notes a central issue to be explored, that of the implications of formulating the notion of…

Describes a study of undergraduates that investigated the ability of readers of computer-mediated communication (CMC) such as electronic mail to identify the gender of the author when messages were selected for language characteristics identified in previous studies as being associated with both group development and gender. (Author/LRW)

A study analyzed oral narrative and emergent storybook reading by 40 children (half with language impairment) ages 2-4. Children with language impairment were less able to produce language features associated with written language, used past-tense verbs less frequently in both contexts, and used personal pronouns less in the oral narratives.…

Offers an explanation for the gap in the paradigm of the verb "be" where amn't is expected to be found. The explanation is base on a combination of multiple-default inheritance and function-based morphology, as embodied in word grammar. (Author/VWL)

Brule and Isleno dialects of Spanish came to Louisiana from the Canary Islands simultaneously in the 18th century but have remained relatively isolated from each other and face extinction. Although they show common evidence of their origin, each has distinctive lexical, phonological, and syntactic features, some from contact with Acadian French or…