This study explores the question of whether native and nonnative listeners, some familiar with the language and some not, differ in their accent ratings of native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs). Although a few studies have employed native and nonnative judges to evaluate native and nonnative speech, the present study is perhaps the…

Purpose: This study examined the relation between African American preschoolers' use of African American English (AAE) and their language and emergent literacy skills in an effort to better understand the perplexing and persistent difficulties many African American children experience learning to read proficiently. Method: African American…

This paper examines an under-studied component of deep vocabulary knowledge, affective meaning, which is used to convey attitudes. Two affective dimensions, evaluation and potency, are examined to determine whether they influence the vocabulary choices of native speakers of American-English in describing interpersonal interactions. In Experiment…

Reviews articles by Allen Walker Read and Merriam-Webster's Editor-in-Chief Gove on dictionaries. Problems discussed are boundaries of the lexicon, regional usage, commercial dictionaries, ordering of lexemes, establishing meaning, providing grammatical information, semantics, and editorial bias. (MSE)

A guide to several hundred common American idioms and slang phrases such as "to get something straight,""to mooch," and "in the bag" provides definitions, examples of usage, variations, and explanations when appropriate. A list of common abbreviations, such as "ASAP," and their referents is also included. (MSE)

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 experiment reported in this document extended the study by Milburn and Bell (1969) of English word frequencies. Specifically, this experiment examined the influence of instructional set on the relationship between affect and frequency estimates, with a distinction between personal and nationwide norms. The experiment design provided for two…

Argues that the standard of correct pronunciation is what educated native speakers actually say, not what they think they say and not what dictionaries prescribe that they are supposed to say; therefore educated Southern pronunciation is correct and should be labeled so. (SR)

Reports the results of three experiments investigating comprehension and memory for slang metaphors. The experiments examine the thesis that the special pragmatic properties of slang should make these metaphorical expressions easy to understand and remember, especially since speakers frequently share information about the conventional meaning of…

Describes in detail the conventions of polite language of deaf Americans using American Sign Language and examines how it differs from the conversational patterns of English-speaking hearing Americans. (EKN)

Part of Lexicography and Dialect Geography, Festgabe for Hans Kurath''. (DD)

Discusses building language understandings through the multiple channels of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, with special emphasis on the use of syntactic blocks. (GB)

Reflections on the annual conference of the Canadian Council of Teachers of English (CCTE) and the development of language study in Canadian education are given. (HTH)

Briefly explores the usage patterns of American English words, terms, or expressions such as "y'all" and other second plural pronouns, English conditionals, "greasy' by East-Central Pennsylvanians, who or whom, the genderless "-person" suffix, and Russianisms. (CB)

In an investigation of the use of the word "hey" in pseudoquotations, invented quotations, in current English communication, tokens (n=26) were collected from public and commercial broadcasts and miscellaneous readings. A speaker uses quote formula + hey + pseudoquotation to dramatize and give emphasis to an important point. (72…