This study assesses and characterizes lexical relationships among the major urban Syro-Lebanese varieties of Arabic. To achieve this quantitative analysis of degrees of similarity or differentiation, an analytical procedure based on lexical compatibility was developed. Secondarily, a classification of these varieties is presented as a by-product…

Describes the behavior of the phoneme /s/ in Central American Spanish by comparing the speech patterns of residents of Guatemala City, San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, San Jose, and Managua. Considers the possible diachronic processes which could have given rise to the current configurations and the theoretical consequences implied by the…

Discusses the nature of the difference between dialectology and sociolinguistics and suggests that the findings of dialectology are relevant for use by sociolinguists. (30 references) (CK)

Examines the concept of indigenized Englishes and compares them with pidgins and creoles, focusing on attitudes about indigenized English, creative aspects of indigenized English, substratum influences, and universals. (Author/CB)

Demonstrates that two Tungusic languages, Evenki and Oroqen, that have long been treated as a single language for classification purposes, are better treated as distinct linguistic varieties. Fundamental questions are raised about the current classification of Tungusic languages and a renewed examination is suggested of the role of dialect…

This article examines speakers' perceptions of and attitudes towards address pronoun usage in Paris and Toulouse. The data on which this article is based come from a comparative project based at the University of Melbourne, "Address in some western European languages, and were generated in focus groups in both Paris and Toulouse, as well as…

Recent research has shown that sign language varieties in India and Pakistan are related. This report examines the possible relationship of sign language varieties in India and Pakistan to those in Nepal by analyzing comparative lexical data from sign language varieties in the three countries. (10 references) (VWL)

Investigated African American Vernacular English dialect features in the midwestern community of Davenport, Iowa, and compared them to those reported by Pollock and Berni (1997) for Memphis, Tennessee--specifically productions of vocalic and postvocalic /r/ across African-American speakers from Davenport and Memphis. (Author/VWL)

Studies palatization gestures in the production of /t/ and /d/ in standard Belgium French through the use of electropalatography. The articulatory results are compared with an acoustic study of the affricated realization of these consonants when followed by /i/, /y/, /j/, and /h/ in Quebec French. (Author/VWL)

This study investigates whether second language (L2) phonological learning can be characterized as a gradual and systematically patterned replacement of nonnative segments by native segments in learners' speech, conforming to a two-stage implicational scale. We adopt a dynamic approach to language variation based on Gatbonton's (1975, 1978)…

Some results are reported of an investigation into the meanings of the English modal auxiliary verbs. The corpus consisted of the one million word Brown University corpus of American English and a matching Lancaster University corpus of British English. The three factors operative in the study were: (1) contextual features, that is, co-occurring…

The origin, etymology and phonology of two words of Chinese origin found in Peruvian Spanish are outlined. The words, "chifa" and "chaufa," derive from Cantonese words for "rice" and have been adapted into Spanish. (CHK)

Describes the lexical characteristics of South African Indian English, focusing on its similarities with English in India, pidgins and creoles, and other expatriate Indian Englishes. (Author/CB)

Analyzes numerous examples of English and German verbs with respect to alternations they undergo and concludes that the semantic classes of verbs that undergo a particular alternation differ between these two languages but that there are some semantic constraints on this variation. The article stresses the limited nature of the study. (Seven…

Investigated the extent to which there is rhetorical variation between the research article abstracts written in English for international journals and those written in Spanish and published in Spanish journals in the area of experimental social sciences. Rhetorical variables found across the two languages may be explained by the different…