This study examined the hypothesis of a linear, bipolar continuum, with the principles of oral language at one end and those of written language at the other. Six sources of language were identified and arranged along the continuum, to reflect their underlying governing principles: spontaneous oral language of children, children's folk songs,…

In the French verb phrase, negation is often marked twice, by a proclitic element (ne) and by a second negative (such as "pas" or "rien"). Until the seventeenth century, the first element was obligatory, while a second negative was optionally added for emphasis or precision. Subsequently, the second negatives lost their…

Romanes is the collective name for dialects spoken by over six million Rom throughout the world. It is felt that a standard language is an essential factor for the attainment of a united future and the possible creation of the Gypsy state of Romanestan. This paper deals with some of the problems involved in creating such a unified and standardized…

This work attempts to provide an overview of linguistic diversity in South Asia and to place this diversity in a cultural context. The work tries to describe the current state of knowledge concerning socially conditioned language variation in the subcontinent. Each of five major language families contains numerous mutually intelligible and…

The lexicon of present-day English is changing rapidly and regularly, and a description and explanation of this change is necessary for any comprehensive diachronic theory. An examination of a corpus of 500 new words collected during 1975 provides the basis for a typology of lexical change that both supports and suggests modifications for the…

Sometimes descriptions of known facts about a language fail to be explanatory in a satisfying way, because they ignore parallelisms in related languages, including chronologically earlier stages of the same language. This article examines several Romance languages and dialects in terms of similarities in morphological evolutionary development.…

This paper examines the differences between second language learning and pidginization to better understand the mechanisms involved in each process. Current research suggests similarities between the two. Both are characterized by reduction and simplification. Grammatical transformations tend to be eliminated, along with inflectional markers of…

A sentence interpretation experiment conducted with university-age native English speakers, Japanese English as a second language (ESL) speakers, and native Japanese speakers (N=12 per group) suggested caution in attempting to typify languages on the basis of processing strategies drawn from probabilistic tendencies evident in grouped data.…

Presents evidence to show that the development and institutionalization of non-native varieties of English around the world pose a serious problem for all existing theories of second language acquisition. The issues that need to be addressed in future research are clearly defined. (Author/SED)

To be an English teacher today is to play an inevitable part in the globalizing of English. This volume canvasses important questions for English language teachers that are posed by the phenomenon of a global English: (1) Whose language? English speakers today are more likely to use English with multilingual speakers than with monolingual…

The introductory section of the conference proceedings contains two essays. "Crossing Borders: Some Values To Declare" (Julian Edge) is a personal statement about cultural diversity, offering personal perspectives as a teacher of English as a Second Language and the perspectives of several colleagues of different cultural backgrounds and…

A study conducted in grades 4 and 5 in French Canadian schools in Atlantic Canada and Ontario investigated differences between students' vernacular and standard spoken French, with regard to learning how to eliminate interference in students' learning of standard usage. The discussion focuses on mistakes caused by borrowings from English,…

A survey investigated the increasing preference for Alemannic Swiss German over standard German in public functions in Switzerland, particularly in light of Switzerland's decision in 1996 not to join the European Union, which suggests an emphasis on national independence. The history of Alemannic Swiss usage and language policy are briefly…

This books examines the interrelation between language and society in contemporary Italy and provides an up-to-date account of linguistic diversity, social variation, special codes, and language varieties within Italian society, and in situations of language contact both within and outside Italy. Part 1 covers the evolution and variations of…

This edited volume focuses on the linguistic aspects of the Spanish used in the United States today. The earliest studies in this field concentrated on rural Mexican-American Spanish in the Southwest. The parameters of the field have been extended in response to changing urban and demographic realities, and to paradigm shifts in linguistics…