The tendency for negation to appear early in the sentence, dubbed the "Neg-First principle" by Horn (1989:452), has been observed in the domains of typology, language contact, and language acquisition. Based on evidence from these fields, scholars have speculated about the source and universality of Neg-First biases affecting language…

This dissertation represents the first attempt to integrate typological, semantic, and psycholinguistic perspectives to elucidate a semantically "bizarre" and "illogical" phenomenon called "expletive negation" (henceforth, EN) which is well known in Romance languages but has so far attracted little attention outside…

South Africa is a country characterised by great linguistic diversity. Large indigenous languages, such as isiZulu and isiXhosa, are spoken by many millions of people, as well as the languages with European roots, such as Afrikaans and English, which are spoken by several millions and used by many more in daily life. This situation provides a…

Because language, as a method of communication, is a two-way channel involving both speakers and listeners, a methodical study of linguistic variation should involve an analysis of both, how it is expressed and how it is interpreted. Furthermore, because language is known to vary between individuals (inter-speaker variation) as well as at the…

Prepositions can be found with and without adjacent complements in many forms of popular spoken French. The alternation appears in main clauses ("il veut pas payer pour ca [approximately] il veut pas payer pour" "he doesn't want to pay for [it]") and, though with a more restricted social and geographic distribution, in relative…

The Pacific Coast Athabaskan (PCA) languages are part of the Athabaskan language family, one of the most geographically widespread in North America. Over a millennium ago Athabaskan-speaking groups migrated into northwestern California and southwestern Oregon from a northern point of origin several hundred miles away, but even after several…

Focuses on the language situation in Luxembourg, examining the interference between Letzeburgesch on one hand and, French German, and English on the other. Bourdieu's concept of legitimate language is modified to match the situation in Luxembourg of "triglossia with trilinguaism" and the legitimate multilingual language competence, which…

Among Mexican-Americans today, not only native speakers of Spanish but also many native speakers of English speak the language with a notable influence from Spanish phonology. This paper reviews a series of studies concerning reactions of Anglos and Mexican-Americans toward accented English. The unifying goal of these investigations has been the…

The linguistic interactions in the speech of bilingual children is systematically examined to determine their ability to differentiate between their two language systems. The speech samples of eighteen bilingual (Spanish-English) children aged two to six were examined for instances of deviation from the norms of the language of utterance due to…

Six papers on Irish English are presented. "The Study of Hiberno-English" (Jeffrey L. Kallen) surveys some aspects of research on the language and offers a historical context for the subsequent papers. "A Tape-Recorded Survey of Hiberno-English in Its Context" (T. M. Tilling) reports on the early stages of an island-wide survey…

The phonology of General Indian English (the region-independent variety of English that is considered the norm for India) is analyzed as a step in establishing a standard pronunciation for classroom use in India. A table is appended which presents English sound discriminations that are difficult for Indian learners with various language…

The term "village English" has been used by a number of people to label the English used by Alaskan natives. The term appears in discussions of educational problems and often the phenomenon is cited as a significant reason for the lower than expected achievement of Alaskan school children. It is suggested that statements about…

The internalized grammar of the bilingual is different from that of a monolingual. The bilingual has, in addition to the entries that are proper to each of the two languages he speaks, certain union entries. These are extensive in the case of the Spanish/English bilingual since there are many items in the two languages that manifest systematic…

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,…

Chicano English, spoken by many Chicanos and some Anglos, is an ethnic variety of English that serves as a marker of social identity, and it has specific linguistic parameters. It is similar to standard English, and often exists alongside interference English, spoken by Spanish-speakers beginning to learn English. Research supports the argument…