The sixth volume of this series contains eight contrastive studies in the syntax and semantics of English and Romanian. They are: "Criteria for the Contrastive Analysis of English Nouns," by Andrei Bantas; "Adjectives as Noun Modifiers in Post-Verbal Position," by Ioana Poenaru; "Towards a Semantic Description of 'Tense'…

Sometimes descriptions of known facts about a language fail to be explanatory in a satisfying way, because they ignore parallelisms in related languages, including chronologically earlier stages of the same language. This article examines several Romance languages and dialects in terms of similarities in morphological evolutionary development.…

A study investigated whether the use of etymology as an instructional technique for vocabulary development in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction is equally effective for students from Romance and other language backgrounds. Subjects were 20 community college ESL students in two cohorts. Pre- and posttests assessed etymological…

Analyzes data on the acquisition of German by Italian and Spanish speakers. Findings reveal that children learning a first language and adults learning a second language build up syntactic structure in much the same manner, and propose that the weak continuity approach of language acquisition accounts for all instances of syntactic acquisition.…

Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) is receiving increasing attention in multilingual learners (Cenoz "et al.", 2001). Research with bilingual learners has analysed CLI in relation to language dominance (see, for instance, Hulk & Muller, 2000; Yip & Stephen, 2000) and to language dominance and grade in school settings (Cenoz, 2003; Lasagabaster,…

Focuses on the application of the Null Subject Parameter. Data reveals that some second-language learners exhibit knowledge that English is morphologically nonuniform yet still accept English null subject sentences. Findings disprove the Morphological Uniformity Hypothesis, indicating that any reformulation of the Null Subject Parameter must…

In the process of language shift from the immigrant languages to English, everyday communication within the family can become increasingly problematic due to strong divergences in the linguistic competences of the older and the younger generations. This article explores the process of language mediation between different generations, as it occurs…

This monograph on minority languages and bilingualism focuses on seven minority languages in different parts of the world, looking at their history and current status, including patterns of usage among samples of their speakers. The first two chapters discuss several issues regarding diglossia and bilingualism, language patterns within societies,…

The second of three volumes that present the three basic factors of the bilingual education equation--public policy, theory, and technology--this volume focuses on the theoretical aspects of bilingual education. Papers from the areas of language, culture, neurolinguistics, and pedagogy include: (1) "Ethnic and Linguistic Processes: The Future…

The benefits of learning a foreign language and arguments in support of language requirements in the college curriculum are discussed. The arguments concerning the acquisition of indirect benefits not inherent in the language skill itself through the learning of a foreign language prove inconvincing and only serve to divert one's attention from…

Papers in this volume on individualized instruction in foreign languages include: (1) "Individualized Instruction and 'Back to Basics': Are They Compatible?" by Howard B. Altman; (2) "Individualized Instruction in French at Northwestern University" by Margaret Sinclair Breslin; (3) "An Individualized French Program for…