A collection of essays on aspects of pragmatics in non-Western cultures includes these papers: "Social Rank and Tunebo Requests" (Paul Headland); "The Use of Reported Speech in Saramaccan Discourse" (Naomi Glock); "An Analysis of Illocutionary Verbs in Walmatjari" (Joyce Hudson); "Please Be Specific: A Functional…

Many Puerto Rican children currently enrolled in English as a second language (ESL) classes speak Puerto Rican English (PRE). Their speech is characterized by nonstandard features, including some from Black English. Because of actual or historical interference from Spanish, they do qualify for ESL enrollment, yet their language problems are…

The first part of these findings is a report on a study of the characteristics of 120 Spanish-English bilingual children's speech over a two-year period in the classroom, on the playground, and at home. Three types of language measures were used as well as audiotaped speech samples taken in the three communication settings. Preliminary findings…

This paper proposes a tentative notational or marking system which attempts to provide more information on the sociolinguistic constraints upon the use of linguistic features than has been the case in other systems. A review of other studies in language variation, particularly those of William Labov, suggests that much can be done toward…

This paper considers the problem of differentiating thought and language in a way that makes it possible to relate them to each other. The analysis covers approaches of sociolinguistic research, different models of language and cognitive functioning within psychology and linguistics, the cybernetic approach, and psycholinguistic analyses. A common…

To dispel the myths of linguistic deficiency among nonstandard English dialect speakers, evidence that repudiates these myths should be examined. These myths include suggestions that nonstandard dialects are ungrammatical and cannot be used to form concepts, and that speakers of such dialects receive little verbal stimulation as children. The…

The first section of this paper focuses on misunderstandings surrounding two of the proposals for changing sexist aspects of the English language, namely, avoiding the use of masculine pronouns (he, his, him, himself) with alleged sex-indefinite reference, and replacing the word and morpheme "man" with "person" in sex-indefinite usage. Several…

These proceedings contain six conference papers with commentary and discussion: (1) Dell Hymes, "On Communicative Competence," (2) David McNeill, "How to Learn a First Language," (3) Wayne O'Neil, "A Theory of Linguistic Performance," (4) William Stewart, "Social Dialect," (5) Paul Cohen, "Some Methods in Sociolinguistic Research," and (6) S. Alan…

The research resumes presented here comprise the responses received by the Stanford Child Language Project to a general request for reports on research in progress. These reports include all those distributed at the Child Language Research Forum in April 1973. The resumes cover a wide range of topics and present, in order, the following…

The articles included in this book are intended to demonstrate the diversity of academic interest in the phenomenon of bilingualism. Articles treat Mexican-Americans, American Indians, and Suggestions for Further Research. The first two parts contain the following subdivisions: (1) Assumptions and Methods, (2) Language Resources and Development,…

This study considers the occurrence of noun plural marker deletion in black English. It questions the cause of the phenomenon and investigates four factors which could be involved: presence or absence of a quantifier expression, phonological constraints, age of the speaker, and interaction between quantifier expressions and phonological…

This paper examines negative incorporation in various lects of two historically related sign languages, French Sign Language and American Sign Language. Negative incorporation not only offers interesting insights into the structure of French and American Sign Language, but also into the descriptive and explanatory power of variation theory. By…

This bibliography is an outgrowth of a project undertaken in 1975 by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics. The project was to update the bibliography of American doctoral dissertations in linguistics covering the years 1900-1964. Due to the large number of dissertations, the update was broken down into three parts, of which this…

This issue includes the following articles: "Vowel Epenthesis in Vimeu Picard: A Preliminary Investigation" (Julie Auger, Jeffrey Steele); "Lexical Borrowings from French in Written Quebec English: Perspectives on Motivation" (Pamela Grant-Russell and Celine Beaudet); "Variable Article Use in Korean Learners of…

Reviews current research on language and gender and discusses the implications of such work for gender-based research in second-language acquisition. The article notes that recent work in sociolinguistics, generally, and language and gender research, more specifically, has rejected categorical ideas of social identities in favor of more dynamic…