This study concerns the development of the determiners MINE/MY and THINE/THY in the Early Modern English period. The -N forms had essentially been ousted before words starting with consonants over the Middle English period, and over the subsequent centuries, these forms also fell into disuse before words starting with initial vowels and…

This dissertation presents the results of a tripartite exploration of English use by Latinxs in post-Katrina New Orleans, defined here as an ethnolinguistic repertoire that I call New Orleans Latinx English (NOLAE). The project considers how contemporary English use differs from that found in a pre-Katrina sample, how social network geometry…

Describes the procedures followed in obtaining samples of spoken French in five different dialectal areas of the Vaud Canton. Analyses these samples for certain vocalic and consonantal features and classifies the data along a rigidity-flexibility scale correlated with individual hesitation and group fluctuation. (MES)

Speech samples were obtained from college student Miami-area Cuban informants in an attempt to test the hypothesis that a compensatory phonemic change takes place in certain Spanish dialects in which syllable-final and word-final /s/ appear optionally as zero. Vowel system, distinction (open versus closed), and length are looked at. (SCC)

A study investigating the evolution in French of the unstressed "e" positioned between single consonants (e.g., "besoin") is presented. It is argued that stabilization of this pattern cannot be confirmed in the speech of educated Parisians but appears to be governed by sociolinguistic variables. Lexical conditioning is examined. (Author/MSE)

Special issue devoted to study of the whistling language of Kuskoy, Turkey. Study was prompted by study of whistling language in Aas, France. (DS)

Various aspects of Arabic and Semitic linguistics are discussed in this text. The nine chapters include: (1) fundamental Semitic vocabulary and the classification of southern dialects; (2) observations on nominal derivation by affixation in several Semitic languages; (3) an automatic analysis of literary Arabic; (4) "Addad" and…

Suggests the use of principal components analysis as an alternative solution to the problem of grouping speakers by sociological characteristics prior to quantitative analysis. An example is presented of its application to vowel variation data collected as part of a sociolinguistic survey of English in Sydney, Australia. (Author/CB)

Describes features of articulatory shortcuts discovered among middle class, educated native speakers of Spanish in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It is maintained that these features should be taught to students of Spanish in order that they may understand colloquial Spanish speech. (AM)

The idea that vowel nuclei in many northern European languages can be divided into peripheral and non-peripheral categories is discussed. Peripheral vowels are those located at the edge of the vowel envelope, and non-peripheral nuclei are those located on the inside. This assertion has not received as much scrutiny as it should. There are at least…

Evidence exists that, in the past, phonetic variants functioned as sociolinguistic variables, just as they do today, at least in societies with comparable stratificational patterns. This paper presents the significant details of the sociolinguistic environment within which the beginnings of the Great English Vowel Shift were embedded. An attempt…

Fourteen original research papers by faculty and students of the Linguistics Department and other related departments of the University of Kansas are presented. The titles and authors are as follows: "A Kinesic Approach to Understanding Communication and Context in Japanese" (Bruch); "Correlations between the Three Level Tones and…

Thirty-five papers, all but one in French, presented at the conference on research in linguistics are presented here. Topics include: verb tenses in English; computerized text analysis program; study of specialized terminology; court translation in Canada; subject-verb agreement in English; bilingual editing; swearing with religious words;…