This article discusses the implications of "multicompetence" (Cook, 1991), defined as an individual's knowledge of more than one language, for language assessment. The growing psycholinguistic evidence highlighting variability in native speaker performance as a result of multicompetence is reviewed, evidence that further questions the validity of…

The present article investigates the acquisition of the pronominal systems by French and Italian monolingual children and by bilingual German-French and German-Italian children, demonstrating a stable asymmetry: object and reflexive clitics are acquired later than nominative clitics and strong subject and object pronouns. We will widen the scope…

Suggests that ethnic American literature might help promote FL study through themes also recurrent in the target group literature and through English usages reminiscent of target language features. Sees these shared characteristics as a potential aid to learning, usually obscured by the emphasis placed on contrastive aspects. (MES)

Many languages use vast numbers of words borrowed from English, and modified (clipped) to use the first part of the word only. The paper provides examples, mainly from Italian, examining the linguistic reasons for such clipped forms and presents several clipped Italian terms used in English, noting that the same thing can happen in reverse. (SMN)

Reviews three Italian-French dictionaries recently published in Italy comparing them with an older one. States that all three mark a definite progress compared to the latter, for the variety and abundance of examples and the coverage of phraseology, but finds them lacking in the areas of syntactic and semantic information. (MES)

The fourth in a series of articles on the relationships of European languages to their cultures looks at the role of the theater in Italian culture and the theatricality of the Italian language. (MSE)

It is proposed that the "irregularity" inherent in allomorphy can be appreciated not as basically inert deviation from a natural isomorphic relationship between meaning and form but as an active, abstract structural property of morphological systems. Examples of allomorphy in Italian illustrate the theory. (Contains 44 references.) (LB)

Discusses the writing of literary works in languages other than English in the United States with a a particular focus on authors who write in Italian. Asks whether it is possible to talk about multiculturalism in the United States without multilingualism and whether or not texts written in languages other than English can be part of the American…

Outlines a project for setting up bilingual schools for Italian children in Switzerland and Germany and discusses the advantages of doing so. (CFM)

Argues for the introduction of the syllable in the teaching and learning of Italian and to show that using a structural representation of the syllable can enlighten facts about the distribution of the definite masculine markers "il" and "lo," as well as other Italian morphemes. (Author/VWL)

The schema generally used to describe the linguistic situation in Italy includes two categories: dialetto regionale (regional dialect) and italiano regionale (regional Italian). These stand apart from the widely accepted sociolinguistic model "variety--dialect--language." It is demonstrated that both these categories should be treated…

The initial phase of Porta's mature poetry, composed between 1801 and 1805, is discussed in the context of dialect translation and parody of famous literary texts. (Author/LB)

To eliminate confusion caused by diverse spellings in Italian texts of words from languages using the Cyrillic alphabet, the adoption of a common system is urged that would establish correspondence between the letters and sounds of the two languages but keep the form of the original as much as possible. (CFM)

Presents criteria teachers can use when evaluating software designed to teach grammar to students of Italian-as-a-Second-Language. The importance of collaboration between programmers and academic experts is stressed in creating software and the need for teachers to choose software as carefully as they select textbooks. (CFM)

Martoglio's work is discussed in terms of the relationship of dialect literature and sociolinguistics in Sicilian culture. His ability to inform the speech of a character with the qualities of a particular code, somewhere between dialect and standard, is noted. (31 references) (Author/LB)