This dissertation describes a study of the Black English Vernacular (BEV) based on 350 compositions written in the college classroom by 42 black students from working class and lower class families in a predominantly white university. The correlation between certain extralinguistic variables and over 20 linguistic variables was examined. Although…

This paper points out the irrelevance of the sentence-based grammatical explanations found in most grammar reference books and ESL textbooks with regard to answering questions such as: (1) when and why do native speakers of English use the passive rather than the active voice, and (2) when and why does the native speaker of English use the present…

This summary gathers together for easy reference the inflected forms of Literary Sinhala together with a transliteration guide to the writing system. This work differs, therefore, from the authors' previous work, "Literary Sinhala" (1974), which presented the inflected forms in a pedagogical sequence. In this summary, the inflected forms…

The Children's Language Assessment-Situational Tasks (CLA-ST) was developed to collect language samples within a normally operating classroom. The language is taken on a cassette tape recorder, which is placed at the foot of a small table. At this table, in a committee setting, four children are engaged with a teacher in an activity similar to…

In speaking a child sometimes makes constructions in which a sequence of separate utterances expresses a semantic relation not expressed by either utterance. These "vertical constructions" are the main point of this study. Previous studies of construction in child language have largely dealt with sentences. In this study, sentences are…

Intended for teachers and speech clinicians, the handbook and accompanying worksheets describe research-based psycholinguistic procedures for needs assessment and individualized instruction of language-delayed children, including aphasics. Four main chapters explain how to collect a language sample (a systematic transcription of the student's…

This paper presents a diachronic phonological analysis of French in order to show that Kiparsky's (1972) argument against formal (or language-specific) notation is based on a small sample of phenomena and is therefore not valid. Examples of vocalic tension in French are given, and the process from tension to relaxation is described. This tension…

This paper attempts to show that the theory of phonological rule reordering is not plausible, and that any argument which attempts to use reordering to refute the theory of intrinsic ordering is inadmissible. King's (1973) arguments against intrinsic ordering are based on the theory that two reordering rules operate in phonological processes.…

This paper attempts a systematic approach to the teaching of word stress in the ESL classroom. Stress assignment rules from Chomsky and Halle and from Ross are used to establish the SISL Principle (Stress Initial Strong Left), for final weak-syllable words. On the basis of spelling, this rule can be applied correctly to 95 out of 100 cases. (AM)

The paper constitutes an attempt to provide a nonenumerative characterization of agreeing terms and agreement features. The following pertinent statements turn out to be (near) exceptionless: only coreferential terms agree, and for any given language all agreement features are pronominal ones. Four agreement features, gender, number, definiteness,…

No attempt is made here to construct a theory about language and sexism, but examples of English usage are provided as data which would have to be accounted for by any general statements regarding the nature and function of sexist language in our society. The examples are taken from the English lexicon and syntactic structure, with emphasis on…

This dissertation examines the principles of two current theories of first language acquisition and from them synthesizes a second language methodology. As a background to the problem of second language methodology, it is stated that the basing of second language methodologies on first language learning is currently being questioned and that the…

A detailed, spectrographic analysis of two lectures, given by Diego Rivera and Margaret Mead, which were chosen for their realistic naturalness, permits a graphic presentation and description of the patterns of three types of intonation within the declarative sentence in Spanish and American English. They include a minor continuation (A), major…

With comprehension defined as the ability to specify the relationship between two items, an investigation was conducted to determine the ability of children to relate ideas from several sentences to arrive at answers to questions. This study was a replication of a previous study in which inner-city children participated. In constrast, the subjects…

In answer to the need for more effective punctuation instruction, a project, based on the theory that an essential relationship exists between intonation and punctuation, was designed for and executed with two 9th-grade student groups--one experimental, the other control. The experimental group received punctuation instruction through the use of…