In studying sociolinguistic rules, researchers must be aware of some guiding principles: that (1) these rules are below the conscious level of awareness, and (2) rules of speaking differ across cultural groups, with none being more correct than another. Even when members of different cultural groups interact in the same language they may find it…

This article discusses the history of the Spanish word denoting a particular tree, "secoya," which found its origin in the name of the originator of the Cherokee alphabet "Sekwiyi," moving then into English and subsequently into Spanish. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

A study investigated the possibility that native speakers of American English make coordinated modifications in their speech to non-native addressees, depending on the degree to which the conversation is conventionalized. The specific exchange analyzed was direction-giving, and evidence of use of a "foreigner" register was sought in…

A comparison is made between the modal verb systems of German and English with an emphasis on the interference caused by slight variations. (TL)

Deals with the shift of the low-back vowel as in 'caught' to a low-central vowel as in 'cot' thereby merging such pairs as caught/cot, dawn/Don, and stalk/stock. The causes and the sociolinguistic implications of this shift are discussed. The majority of the informants were from West Los Angeles. (TL)

This book, designed to teach American English sounds and spellings to beginning and intermediate level English as a second language (ESL) students, provides practice with all the meaningful sounds of a "standard" American dialect that will be understood nearly everywhere in the English speaking world. It contains an introductory lesson…

The intelligibility of crosslanguage voice communication in American English was studied in situations where the phonemes of that language are uttered by American speakers and identified by speakers of German, French, and Mexican Spanish and in situations where they are uttered by speakers of German, French, and Mexican Spanish and identified by…

A 15-minute interview was conducted separately with 2 5th grade boys (1 Caucasian, 1 Negro) who were matched on IQ and 4 pupil characteristics; home background, personality, social behavior, and academic ability. A semantic differential scale was constructed for the 4 characteristics, and 5 disability labels were assigned to each child:…

This bibliography is divided into five sections. The second, third, fourth, and fifth sections are each devoted to publications in one specified area, American, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand English respectively. The first section lists bibliographies pertaining to all of these areas. Entries in all sections include both American and…

This paper reports on the Arkansas Language Survey, which had two purposes: (1) to explore the idea advanced by Labov that Americans generally have negative attitudes about their language, and to see to what extent this applies to Arkansawyers; and (2) to determine how Arkansawyers judge the way other Americans speak English. The twenty-four white…

This paper explores the meanings and distribution of the perfect in contemporary American English prose, with reference to problems encountered in teaching English as a second language. The English perfect comprises forms traditionally called present perfect tense, past perfect tense, and perfects of the infinitive, gerund and present participle.…

The characteristics of several nonstandard dialects of American English are presented in this paper in the form of an inventory of features. It has been compiled with the recognition that nonstandard dialects are governed by pronunciation and grammatical rules and that within the broad category of nonstandard dialects, regional and ethnic…

This investigation studied (1) the acquisition and proportion of correct usage of consonants of Japanese and American children, (2) the consonant substitutions of children developing normal language and of children with articulation problems, and (3) confusion in adults' recall of consonants. A system of distinctive features (gravity, diffuseness,…

This study is a critical, analytic, and historical survey of the development of the American English dictionary from its beginning in 1798 until the publication of the Webster-Mahn dictionary in 1864. The survey is divided historically into three sections: (1) the British influence upon early American dictionaries, pre-Websterian American…

Despite the similarity in the surface structure, sentences containing a semi-auxiliary (e.g., "avoid,""bother,""happen,""seem,""begin,""tend," etc.) followed by a "to" infinitive or a gerund show a number of differences among themselves in respect to the co-occurrence…