This paper examines language in a factory setting and focuses on: (1) identical terms which workers use in different contexts, (2) terms that are discarded or changed, (3) different terms that express opposite units in a conceptual category but are labels for identical objects, and (4) terms which represent finer discriminations within conceptual…

This paper reports on a preliminary quantitative study of syntactic constraints on code-switching within discourses in which no change in participants, setting or topic is evident. The goals of the study are to provide a syntactic description of the points at which switches from Spanish to English and English to Spanish are possible and to assess…

A statistical analysis of 3,170 entries in the Kotelova and Sorokin dictionary "Novyje slova i znacenija: slovar'-spravocnik po materialam pressy i literatury 60-x godov," Moscow, 1973 and the Stejnfel'dt dictionary "Castotnyj slovar' sovremennogo Russkogo Literaturnogo Jazyka," Moscow, n.d. establishes a clear-cut correlation between the new…

In 1922, Otto Jespersen hypothesized that women were more fluent (exhibited less hesitation in oral expression) than men because they had smaller and more central vocabularies, consisting of common words and combinations. Men's vocabularies were considered more extensive due to the inclusion of numerous novel, technical, and infrequently used…

This is a study of tense variation in "si"-clauses in Buenos Aires Spanish which basically consists of the substitution of the conditional for the imperfect subjunctive. The highest frequency of imperfect subjunctive shows up in +Contrary examples, while the conditional substitutes much more often in -Contrary examples. When the…

Recent analyses of Russian (Halle 1963, Lightner 1972) have been forced by the criteria of rule "naturalness" and rule "generality" to posit highly abstract underlying forms. These underlying forms and rules are claimed to represent the speaker's competence. Such analyses are now being criticized (Derwing 1973, Hooper 1974) on the following…

It is essential that language arts students in teacher education programs learn more than just facts about language, such as grammar, dialect, and so on. Future teachers must be taught how language, especially the child's language, affects the teacher, the child, and the child's achievement in school. These prospective teachers should learn what…

The conversational language of 28 men and women born in Maine around the beginning of this century is described and analyzed as it relates to Lakoff's hypotheses in "Language and Women's Place." Transcripts were gathered by students as part of an interdisciplinary course, Women of Maine. Results indicated that there is a traditional…

Principles of rural sociology and interpersonal communication provide the foundation for a study of "Gullah" culture. The Gullahs are a group of African Americans living along the southwestern U.S. coastal territory. Gullah culture began to evolve with the enslavement of African people in the Sea Islands off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia,…

Six propositions express central and crucial functions of language. Knowledge of these concepts constitutes language awareness, and they should therefore be used as a basis for designing language awareness curricula. They are that: (1) each individual has the ability to produce an unlimited number of different utterances from the limited…

An analysis of Korean case marking proposes an explanation for several aspects of marking, especially stacking and spreading, from a lexical perspective. The explanation has advantages over previous theories in that (1) it explains the morphology of Korean case marking without reference to several levels of syntactic derivation, including…

Current practices and materials for teaching English as a second language (ESL) contain oversimplifications about English based on the assumption of a uniform language type and standard of usage, presented to foreign learners for pedagogical clarity. ESL teachers may be aware of the language's diversity but are not prepared to provide…

This paper examines aspects of variation in child language, and specifically how children express causal relations in complex sentences. Four particular types of variation were observed: (1) the order of clauses and the connectives used to link clauses; (2) mothers' causal statements; (3) interaction of language form and content, in the form of…

A total of 224 college students participated in a study of the relationships between dogmatism and authoritarianism and the characteristics of written discourse. Early in the semester each class completed a public opinion poll which included a combination of the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale and the California F Scale. In a seemingly unrelated task…

Poetry presents serious difficulties to students. Many poems students are asked to study were written during eras with social mores, modes of thought and expression that are now unfamiliar. Often the sentiments expressed in poetry are discomforting or unfamiliar to students, though the greatest poets express universal ideas and emotions with which…