Italy is characterized by a considerable amount of language variation. Only a few spoken vernaculars enjoy institutional support and are officially recognized as minority languages. Among these, Friulian is one of the largest in terms of number of speakers. In the past decade, the assessment of Friulian language vitality has yielded discordant…

By providing evidence that sign language is an autonomous language, research has contributed to various changes both within and beyond the signing communities. The aim of this article is to present an example of how sign language change is driven not only by language-internal factors but also by changes in language perception, as well as in the…

Dominant notions of what constitutes a "language" and what a "dialect" within a continuum are entirely based on sociopolitical factors (i.e. the "languages by 'Ausbau'" of Kloss), totally disregarding structural and communicative aspects. This paper argues that such stance is no longer tenable in view of the modern…

This paper, after shortly introducing "Folk Linguistics" by defining its domain of competence [cf. Preston, Dennis R., ed. 1999. "Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology." Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Niedzielski, Nancy A., and Dennis R. Preston. 2003. "Folk Linguistics." Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter], attempts to draw an…

The development of linguistic politeness in 7- and 9-year-old Italian children was examined. A total of 80 subjects, 40 males and 40 females, produced requests according to different contexts which were graphically presented. Factors considered for such contexts were: sex of the speaker; sex of the addressee; status of the addressee, either peer…

Presents findings of ethnographic research on children's talk and behavior, specifically routines in spontaneous peer play and verbal routines in structured activities. Concludes that instructional strategies should incorporate some of the features of children's play routines and peer culture. (SRT)

These two studies, which were part of a cross-national project exploring the development of Italian and British children's understanding of sociolinguistic rules, investigated politeness in children's requests addressed to adults and children, and children's views on how requests addressed to persons differing in status and familiarity would be…