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…

This book contains 22 studies relating to the social implications of multilingualism in Eastern Africa. The first section, "General and Theoretical Studies," contains papers on national languages and languages of wider communication in developing nations; the communication roles of languages in multilingual societies; the social and…

After a brief history of influences on the standardization of Russian since the Revolution, the descriptive and normalizing role of specific reference works of grammar, phonetics, vocabulary, and morphology is discussed. Concluding remarks point out a problem caused by a lack of coordination of standardization efforts and the mounting demands for…

The study described here was intended to test Basil Bernstein's contention that different types of speech patterns can be identified for lower and middle class children, and that lower class children may, because of their speech behavior, have difficulty in performing cognitive tasks necessary for success in the school situation. Spontaneous…

This book is the fifth in a series of publications concerning the position and role of language in a large metropolitan area. In this sociolinguistic description Detroit is chosen as a case study of a large Northern urban area which has shown a dramatic increase in its Negro population within the last half century. The primary goal of the study…

The author lists steps for constructing a research study guaranteeing "statistically significant results when comparing two populations which differ linguistically." Many of these steps are direct quotations from typical research reports--choose a control group as much like yourself as possible; assume your own dialect is standard; encode all…

This study involved the preparation of a set of 32 tape recordings of speakers of standard regional varieties of English in the United States and Canada, and the preparation of descriptive materials to accompany the tapes. Each tape includes (1) replies to 237 items based upon the pronunciation items of the "Linguistic Atlas of the United…

Language is defined here as a means of social control, a viewpoint by which language restrictions can be seen as a method of discriminating against speakers of minority languages. A government designates an official language to restrict access to economic and political power. This view of language is substantiated by an analysis of the United…

This paper discusses the effect of the Mexican American's bilingualism on his English language development. It cites recent research reports which state that bilingualism does not have a negative effect upon language development when socio-environmental factors are controlled or considered. Investigations of the syntactic development of Chicano…

This content analysis schedule for the Bilingual Schools Program of the Los Angeles Unified School District presents information on the history, funding, and scope of the project in its second year. Included are sociolinguistic process variables such as the native and dominant languages of students and their interaction. Information is provided on…

Educational program designs for teachers and parents of urban American Indian youth (especially in Minneapolis and St. Paul) are discussed in this paper. In terms of the suggested program for teachers, the question of what should be included in the curriculum for teacher training is reviewed in 12 areas of concern (e.g., the knowledge base of the…

The experimental program described in this report provided English-speaking Canadian children with elementary schooling exclusively in French for kindergarten and grade 1, and then from grade 2 through grade 5 mainly in French except for two half-hour periods of English language arts. The guiding principle for this form of bilingual education…

The notion of language dependency presupposes that there is a hierarchy of languages in a multilingual society, and that each language is assigned a functional role in a multilingual individual's restricted or extended spheres of linguistic interaction. In South Asia, language dependency has resulted in linguistic convergence of two types: (1)…

Research on language attitudes and performances of prospective teachers shows the need for special training to prepare teachers to work with "linguistically different" students. An attempt was made to develop, and test the effectiveness of, such training. Twenty-six prospective teachers conducted an Informal Reading Inventory on the reading of a…