The inclusive bilingual-education programme suggestions and insights presented here are derived from grassroots input on the Flathead Reservation. This study focuses on the emic point of view. Views from the inside are valuable because they provide authoritative interpretations of local conditions. The author conducted 101 interviews with 89…

Ethnographic "New Literacy Studies" question the idea that literacy as such has any uniform effects, arguing instead that effects of literacy inhere in the social practices that impart it. What change, then, does literacy produce where it arrived from two opposed sets of practices? In Quechua-and Aymara-speaking villages on the high…

Among linguistic minorities of industrial nations proficiency speaking the dominant national language increases earnings and wages, but do similar results apply to autarkic linguistic minorities of developing nations? We contribute to studies of the returns to language skills by applying the human-capital approach to a society of hunters,…

This paper presents an exploratory study on cross-linguistic interference among indigenous Kechwa-Spanish bilingual children (n=30) living in a language contact situation. Its preliminary findings show evidence of cross-linguistic interference between Kechwa desiderative progressive forms such as miku-naya-yka-n (eat-desprog-3) "S/he wants to/is…

Research investigating the relationship between language and cognition (Lucy, 1992b) shows that speakers of languages with grammatical number marking (e.g. English) judge differences in the number of countable objects as more significant than differences in the number or amount of non-countable substances. On the other hand, speakers of languages…

Deals with patterns of limited borrowing in Tarahumara, or Raramuri, a Uto-Aztecan language in northern Mexico. Probes the sociolinguistic constraints that have apparently caused Raramuri to have borrowed surprisingly little from Spanish. (Author/RM)

This is both a report on the numbers of native speakers of Apachean languages and a statement of the need for sociolinguistic studies of these languages. (CK)

The first report in this issue, from Fort McPherson, MWT, concerns the ongoing work of transcribing, recording, and teaching Kutchin. In addition, there are reports concerning efforts in progress to preserve various Indian languages, among them Kwakiutl, Skagit, Shulkayn, Shoshoni, and Ojibway. Other investigations and courses in Alaskan native…

This paper synthesizes ideas expressed in 25 papers from the 1997 Fourth Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium (Flagstaff, AZ) on teaching indigenous languages and argues that American Indian languages in particular should be maintained through the schools, not at the expense of the learning of English and not simply for archival…

Reviews the literature to determine the importance of immersion in language restoration or preservation. Defines immersion and its goals, and discusses effects on students' English cognitive ability. Examines the success of Indian nations in retaining/restoring Native languages and concludes that, if nothing is done, additional Native languages…

Provides an afterword to a special issue of the journal on technology and indigenous languages. (Author/VWL)

Nearly 40 years have passed since the publication of Rubin's renowned study on Paraguayan bilingualism. The present study compares the results of surveys conducted in the years 2000-2001 with data from Rubin's 1960-1961 investigation. The main objective of this study is to examine the linguistic changes that have occurred in four decades and the…

This survey attempts to bring together as much information as possible on the current study and teaching of North American Indian languages in the United States and Canada. The primary source of data for this survey was a questionnaire distributed in the spring of 1973 to 61 universities and colleges in the U.S. and Canada. Other sources were…

When the movement for "English Only" began some years ago, the author told participants at a bilingual education workshop that he was against it. He was rendered momentarily mute because he had thought that the English Only proponents could not curtail the freedom of expression guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The way he understood…