Working within the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) framework of Anna Wierzbicka, this study proposes reductive paraphrase explications for a range of first-person pronominal meanings. It is argued that NSM explications are preferable to conventional feature analysis because they are less subject to charges of arbitrariness and obscurity and…

Describes a study that analyzed 2,032 sentences from the literature of subject disciplines representing the social sciences and hard sciences to examine their use of syntactic features. Discussion covers the finding that there were significant differences primarily between, not among, the social science and hard science disciplines, and the…

Develops a psychologically plausible model of the development of word-naming skills in children in order to verify psychological evidence indicating the importance of children's underlying phonological skills as determinants of the ease with which they learn to read. This model is highly successful in learning the pronunciations of single-syllable…

Examined a nonstandard pattern of agreement found in certain varieties of Atlantic Canada Acadian French. Quantitative analysis of subject-verb agreement patterns in Newfoundland French revealed consistent invariant behavior in this dialect, or, where there is variation, variation constrained according to specific linguistically based factors. (19…

The empirical basis for this article is a series of studies of glottalization in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. These studies show that, while females lead in the use of glottal replacement, males prefer glottalization. This pattern is interpreted in terms of a preference of males for localized variants, whereas females lead in adopting supra-local…

Describes the grammaticalization of the Swedish word "bara" (English "just") in present-day adolescent speech. "Bara" has in the last 15 years been used with 2 new functions in spoken, narrative discourse: to foreground central events and to introduce quotations. (40 references) (Author/CK)

Develops an extended and precise rendering of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in order to clarify difficulties in analyzing Italian. The method used is the paradigm method of analysis since there are no universal phonemic rules of pronunciation that will allow one to correctly pronounce Italian. Tables of transcriptions are included. (32…

Clarifies the functional relationships within the fourfold deictic NAN/CAN adverbials in Hausa, a system that requires analysis in terms of several person-centric positional parameters. The primary determinant of speaker choices is the (spatial) position of the intended referent in relation to the participants at the time of the exchange. (50…

This article focuses on a change affecting Spanish in contact with English in the United States: simplification and loss of subjunctive mood morphology. Analysis of conversational data from 17 Mexican American bilinguals representing 3 immigrant groups living in Los Angeles reveals a reduced inclination for the obligatory use of the subjunctive in…

Examines the process of consonant cluster reduction in the English of residents of a San Antonio, Texas, "barrio." The author compares Tejano patterns of "/-t,d/" deletion with the pan-English pattern. Results suggest a pattern of convergence and divergence. The study shows that Mexican American English exhibits regional and…

Presents a survey of English usage for various communication purposes in different types of Brazilian business organizations. The objectives of the survey are to identify the major uses of business English/Portuguese in international/national settings, to identify the varieties widely used in transactions, and to study the types of documents used…

Examines what linguistic devices speakers use to make an entity salient in a discourse and how they re-refer to discourse entities moving in and out of focus. Speakers' center of attention was manipulated via a videotaped basketball game. Speakers referred to prominent entities as subjects; when they referred to them as objects, they repeated the…

Reports on a study of the color terms used in Setswana. The study compared terms used by children with those of adults and those used by people from rural areas with those used by people from urban areas. Results show a move away from traditional Setswana color terms toward the use of borrowed English terms, particularly among the young and…

Studies the acquisition of timing control by Australians enrolled in first-year Japanese. Instrumental techniques are used to observe segment duration and pitch patterns in the speech production of learners and native speakers. Results indicate the learners can control timing, but their phonetic realization differs from that of native speakers.…

Discusses the assumption that linguistic heterogeneity reflects social heterogeneity. The article examines a challenge to this assumption evident in the Gaelic-speaking communities of East Sutherland, Scotland, with homogeneous populations showing well-established patterns of language variation that do not correlate with socioeconomic status. (38…