The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how sociolinguistic research can be applied to endangered language documentation field linguistics. It first provides an overview of the techniques and practices of sociolinguistic fieldwork and the ensuring corpus compilation methods. The discussion is framed with examples from research projects focused on…

This dissertation takes an ethnomethodologically-grounded, conversation-analytic approach in investigating the sequential deployment of linguistic resources in Spanish-language talk-in-interaction. Three sets of resources are examined: 2nd-person singular reference forms (tú, vos, usted), indicative/subjunctive verbal mood selection, and…

Poplack, Zentz and Dion (PZD; Poplack, Zentz & Dion, 2011, this issue) examine the often unquestioned assumption that the existence of preposition stranding (PS) in Canadian French is linked to the presence of a contact situation with English in the North American context. Although this issue has been the topic of previous research from a…

Most approaches to argument realization in English are grounded in lexical semantic structure. While it is widely acknowledged that there is an intimate relationship between information structure and grammatical relations such as "subject," there have been few attempts to formalize this observation. This dissertation proposes an "interface model…

Grounded in literature on the miseducation of students whose native varieties of English differ most noticeably from the standard academic variety (Delpit 2006; Labov 1972a; Rickford 1999; Smitherman 1999; Wolfram, Adger, and Christian 1999; Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 2006), this dissertation examines the links between the sociolinguistic…

New positive attitudes towards language interaction in the realm of bilingualism open new horizons for sign bilingual education. Plaza-Pust and Morales-Lopez have innovatively reconceptualised a new cross-disciplinary approach to sign bilingualism, based on both sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. According to this framework, cross-modal…

This article presents a description of intonation in English in terms of the relationship between the syntactic surface structure of a given sentence and certain distinctive intonative features.

A report on a study in progress of the acquisition of a syntax rule: inversion in questions beginning with "Wh..". Its purpose is to show how certain modifications of linguistic theory and practice can contribute to this study and to psychology of language in general. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Examines the distinctive dialect of the British royal family, as well as the "advanced" Received Pronunciation (RP) of the British upper class. Particular focus is on usages, such as the royal "we" and "one," as well as intergenerational differences among RP speakers. (Contains 21 references.) (MDM)

The writer, who feels that the chief differences between Black English (BE) and White English (WE) are phonological and not syntactic, reports on a sociolinguistically oriented examination of that variety of English spoken by children in rural Northern Florida (CBE/Fla). Twenty-two black children between the ages of nine and 12 were taped…

The applicability of transferability principles to language contact in the British Isles, especially Ireland, is shown with a detailed discussion of absolute constructions, structures with interesting relations between syntax and discourse, and with susceptibility to cross-linguistic influence. Evidence for transferability of absolutes in…

Current research in linguistic typology shows some syntactic processes, such as rightward dislocation of modifiers, to be characteristic of certain types of languages, and that a language of that type without such processes is "unnatural" and likely to develop them. For instance, almost all languages with order Verb-Object (VO) have dislocation…

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…

Discusses a quantitative study of the use of Australian Questioning Intonation (AQI) in Sydney, which reveals that it has the social distribution characteristic of a language change in progress. The social motivations of AQI are examined in terms of local identity and the entry of new ethnic groups into the community. (Author/SED)