Four keynote papers, presented at an international conference on sign language research, discussed general linguistic issues of sign language, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language acquisition. (CB)

Investigates performance of the highly constrained Hallowe'en "trick or treat" routine in 115 children from 2 to 16 years of age. Changes in competence and role of parental input are examined in relation to cognitive and social factors. (Author/RM)

Report on the Course sponsored by the Institut fur deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language) and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. (RS)

Responds to some of the arguments in Firth and Wagner's (F&W's) article appearing in this issue. Argues that whether one uses a psychological or sociological paradigm, it makes sense to follow the practice of assigning preference to experimental rather than naturalistic settings and agrees with F&W that other factors besides one's proficiency in…

This bibliography includes titles of unpublished works in various fields of linguistics such as grammar (morphology, phonology and syntax), socioli nguistics, psycholinguistics, foreign language instruction, language acquisit ion, discourse analysis, poetics, etc. (Text is in German.) (DS)

Theories about language functions, the ways in which language is used, are discussed. (Text is in French.) (PMP)

The goal of this article is to give a survey of the literature and theoretical trends relevant to language acquisition. Developments in the fields of psychology, psycholinguistics, sociology, sociolinguistics and in various interdisciplinary studies are discussed. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Reports on a study to determine the origin, development, and use of the comparative in children ages 2-7. The role of adult-child interaction in acquisition is discussed. Tabulated results show that the comparative is used infrequently by young children. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Six Samoan children ranging in age from 2 to 16 were the subjects of a study to document the spontaneous production of the deictic verbs "sau" ("to come") and "aumai" ("to bring/give"). "Aumai" appears to be used before "sau" and is generally used more frequently than "sau." Imperatives with "aumai" tend to be directed to higher status persons or…

The natural process of learning language is to concentrate on what we mean, not only on how we are saying it. What we mean is dependent upon the context in which we speak. This context in turn depends on the society or the speech-community in which our speech act takes place. To be a member of a speech community is to know what language behavior…

This article discusses sentence structure and sentence production as an integral process that reflects the given situation as perceived by the speaker, and not merely as a grammatical combination of words. The role of predicativity in sentence production is outlined. (CLK)

A comparison of the linguistic analysis of Mounin and the psychoanalytic work of Freud on forgetting of words. Martinet's thesis regarding pertinence is confirmed. In the study Devereux's theories are used to study relationships among diverse disciplines and the epistomology of multidisciplinary research. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

This article proposes that language contact can be best understood if the entire range of such situations from second language learning to evolution of dialects and creoles is studied within a framework analogical to the symbiosis of living organisms. Language contact is viewed in terms of dynamic evolutionary stages. (CHK)

The nonuse of slang terms for cash among British bank and building society cashiers is noted and an explanation sought in the field of social control. The possible relevance of the Whorfian hypothesis is explored, and it is suggested that the in-house terms discussed have social, psychological and representational functions. (Author/CB)