The book offers a general survey of the history of Native American languages. Chapters address these topics: Native American pidgins and trade languages; the history of American Indian linguistics and classification of languages; the origin of Native American languages; languages of North America; languages of Central America; languages of South…

Offers a sociolinguistic appraisal of the representation of languages (as "languages" or "dialects") in the Indian census, with special reference to the status of Maithili. Classifying Maithili as an independent language threatens the homogeneity of the "Hindi belt"; conversely, treating it as a Hindi dialect might…

Background: The population of children with specific language impairments (SLI) is heterogeneous. The present study was conducted to examine this heterogeneity more closely, by identifying and describing subgroups within the population of children with SLI in the Netherlands. Method: A broad battery of language tests and language-related cognitive…

Six essays on native language instruction in Africa are presented. "Why Teach in an African Language?" examines the rationale and advantages of teaching in African mother tongues, and "Why Teach an African Language as a School Subject" discusses the need for such instruction. "Do African Languages Have Sufficient Potential…

Papers from a workshop on the role and development of national languages include: "What Is a National Language Good for?" (Florian Coulmas); "To the Language Born: Thoughts on the Problem of National and International Languages" (Jacob Mey); "Swahili as a National Language in East Africa" (Marilyn Merritt, Mohamed…

An analysis of Amuzgo, a language within the Otomanguean family of Mexico, suggests that it is an active-static language with patterns similar but not parallel to those of Chocho. In the report, data on the characteristics of Chocho are summarized, theory and research on active-static languages is reviewed, and the data on Amuzgo are presented.…

A discussion of language policy in India's educational system identifies substantive issues of both theoretical and comparative interest; presents a detailed account of the issues associated with policy-making for language in education in the Indian socio-political context; and discusses the current status of implementation of these policies, with…

Standard measures and techniques are needed to establish resemblances and differences among languages. A determination of the degree to which one lanquage or dialect differs from another requires the examination of language universals. To study what languages have in common, attention has to be given to the physical, psychological, and social…

Beginning chapters of this volume define language and describe the sound, stress, and intonation systems of English. The body of the text explores extensively morphology, phonetics, phonemics, and the process of communication. Individual chapters detail such topics as morphemes, syntactic devices, grammatical systems, phonemic problems in language…

Discussed in this article is the question of teaching Old Saxon in German departments. Usually, Old High German, Middle High German, and Gothic are taught in German departments where philology is included. Only in the large universities and colleges will one find a course in Old Saxon and Old Norsk. Greater emphasis on teaching Old Saxon is…

This volume contains papers presented at the Kittamaqundi Conference on the Uncommonly-Taught Languages, in Columbia, Maryland, September 29-October 2, 1974. The volume has two main sections. The first contains papers dealing with conceptual issues of developing materials for uncommonly-taught languages, without extended reference to any specific…

The materials included in this document concern the theory, objectives, and administrative issues behind the project to describe the languages of the world. The basic objective of the project is to collect a series of language descriptions which achieve an acceptable level of descriptive adequacy without interfering with the freedom of the…

Volume 2 of the four-volume, international bibliography contains over 15,300 entries referring to books, Festschriften, analyzed collections, and articles which focus on European, Asian, African, and Latin-American literatures. Nearly all entries refer to 1969 publications. The master list of the nearly 1,500 periodicals from which entries are…

Lectures, outlines, and class exercises are collected from 16 experienced teachers of general semantics in colleges, adult education, and management training. Among the subject areas explored in the sample lessons are high-level abstractions, extensional-intensional meanings, the "is" of identity, listening, classification, labeling, general…

This report presents a general study of the structure of Dravidian languages, nothing predominant and significant patterns and similarities among the languages in the areas of phonology, morphology, and syntax. There is also a discussion of the main differences of various subgroups or particular languages from the typical patterns. Background…