Siblings play crucial roles in each other's cognitive and language development because they observe, imitate, and receive guidance and support from each other during their interactions. In this research, we examined trilingual siblings (ages 6 and 9) from an immigrant family with a rarely explored cultural background (American-born children of…

Purpose: To investigate regional dialect variation in the vowel systems of typically developing 8- to 12-year-old children. Method: Thirteen vowels in isolated "h_d" words were produced by 94 children and 93 adults (males and females). All participants spoke American English and were born and raised in 1 of 3 distinct dialect regions in…

This dissertation evaluates the relationship between African American English and White Vernacular English as spoken in a small rural town in western North Carolina for consistencies in vowel production by group membership and for participation in the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS), a vowel rotation currently occurring in the Southern United States. A…

Discusses Ocracoke English as an endangered dialect, examining the social responsibility linguists and dialectologists should assume in documenting and disseminating information about the state of moribund dialects and describing a community-based, collaborative model involving the development of materials and programs that foster knowledge of and…

Examines the nature of language diversity in the small, isolated community of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, where a lone African American family has resided for over 130 years. (57 references) (Author/CK)

Examines Ocracoke English (OE), a dialect of American English spoken on Ocracoke Island, located off the coast of North Carolina. The article presents linguistic and sociolinguistic evidence that OE is an endangered dialect and describes the development of a community-based preservation program paralleling proactive programs implemented for…