This book describes the phonological and grammatical structure of the whole-Dravidian language family from different aspects, examining its history and writing system, structure and typology, lexicon, and recent contacts between Dravidian and other language groups. The 11 chapters highlight the following: (1) "Introduction" (e.g., the…

A descriptive study of Ngaanyatjarra, an Australian Aboriginal language, examines two major areas of sentence structure. First, it describes the grammatical structure of the sentence, beginning with the simplest sentence and moving into verb clusters, complex sentences, and juncture strategies. Second, it outlines the meaning and usage of various…

The paper describes activities incorporating literature, music, and cultural material that are used with foreign language majors at National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) and makes suggestions for their use in the pronunciation class. Even at advanced levels, Asian students of English as a second language (ESL) have difficulty with English…

A study explored the use of a text-copying task for the determination of syntactic constituent structure. It was predicted that the task would be a naturalistic, reasonably direct, and sensitive psycholinguistic research method. In two experiments, 70 subjects wrote out copies of typed passages. The points where they paused and looked back to the…

A study investigated the linguistic behavior of three groups of speakers in reacting to accusatory complaints: (1) native speakers of Italian residing in Italy (SI); (2) native speakers of Canadian English residing in Toronto (CE); and (3) speakers of Italian residing in Toronto, first-generation immigrants, defined as speakers of Italian as a…

A collection of papers on linguistics includes: "Italian Comparatives of Inequality with 'Che' and 'Di'" (Adrian C. Battye); "A Note on Passives in GPSG [Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar]" (Robert D. Borsley); "Reduplicated Constructions in Chinese and Questions of Generative Power" (Jonathan Calder); "A Note on Subcategorization, Constituent…

Topics covered in papers presented at a Finnish workshop on discourse analysis include, in English: the situational code in conversation; persuasive strategies and face-work in impromptu speech; historical aspects of complex behavioral strategies in politeness; the implications of predictability and unpredictability for negotiation discourse; and…

Based on a native English-speaking teacher's perception that Chinese university students of English as a Second Language have greater skill in vocabulary than in the communication of ideas, a survey of students in one class investigated attitudes about the role of nonverbal communication in the communication process. Responses indicate a lack of…

A collection of papers concerning the application of language studies to the instruction and promotion of English literature appreciation in foreign countries includes an introduction by Neil Gilroy-Scott and these essays: "The Deviant Language of Poetry" (H. G. Widdowson); "Approaches to the Study of Literature: A Practitioner's View" (H. L. B.…

A case study analyzed the echolalia behavior of an autistic 11-year-old boy, based on recordings made in his home and school. Focus was on the subset of immediate echolalia referred to as pure echoing. Using an approach informed by conversation analysis and descriptive phonetics, distinctions are drawn between different forms of pure echo. It is…

This paper considers four levels of analysis in the observation of the prosodic features of pause in speech: phonetic; syntactic; semantic; and informative. On the phonetic level, a pause is related to length and intonation, and intonation in turn, being a result of the speaker's meaning, constitutes an expression of his/her emotional state. On…

Two related studies investigated (1) the extent to which native language input to five Japanese children was varied based on the children's age, and (2) the effectiveness of adult Japanese second language input to a three-year-old American child during a one-month period in Japan. In the first study, interactions of adult-child dyads were compared…

The guide contains ideas for independent language learning tasks, written for teachers by teachers from secondary and higher education institutions around the world. The tasks described serve as guidelines for creating varied activities for learners and for setting up ways for learners to take control of their own learning by determining how to…

Research papers on language and linguistics include: "Enchainement des mots et acces au lexique en francais" ("Word Order and Lexical Access in French") (Besson); "L'apport de la coarticulation dans la perception de consonnes occlusives et constrictives" ("The Contribution of Coarticulation to the Perception of…

Investigates the relationship between age of arrival in the second-language environment and a preference for prosodic versus syntactic cues to sentence interpretation in English. The study found that older English-as-a-Second-Language learners were just as likely as the younger ones to attend to prosody rather than syntax. (43 references)…