The Betawi language is one of the endangered languages that must be saved uniquely and comprehensively. The Betawi language speakers occupy a regional position in the heart of the Indonesian state capital, Jakarta and its surroundings. The challenge of pressure, intimidation, interference, influence, and the shadow of other regional languages or…

Do the lexical representations of the non-response language enter into lexical competition during speech production? This issue has been studied by means of the picture-word interference paradigm in which two paradoxical effects have been observed. The so-called CROSS-LANGUAGE IDENTITY EFFECT (Costa, Miozzo and Caramazza, 1999) has been taken as…

Provides a brief history of Chinese punctuation and detailed analysis of modern Chinese punctuation. Three tables show: 1) uniquely Chinese punctuation markers; 2) markers graphemically identical and functionally similar to Western markers; and 3) markers graphemically identical but functionally different from Western markers. Each punctuation…

Considers interference problems of Arabic-speaking learners of French and English on four levels: single-word; grammar-rule; intonation; and the study of French and English literature. (CB)

Describes a study that sought to characterize the Scotch-Irish influence on the dialect of southeastern Pennsylvania in particular and American English in general. A questionnaire was used to obtain lexical and grammatical data from 97 subjects. The study concludes that the Scotch-Irish linguistic heritage is rapidly disappearing. (19 references)…

Examined whether second language (L2) utterance durations increase as age of learning increases. Fluently produced English sentences spoken by 240 native speakers of both Italian and Korean were examined. Results give preliminary support for the proposal that the more established the first language during exposure to the second language, the more…

Presents data from the Spanish of Quechua-Spanish bilinguals that exemplify a contact situation that gives rise to a process called structural interference. Concentrates on the use of the diminutive in the Spanish of speakers of Spanish in the Andes. (Author/VWL)

Presents a historical summary of the sociolinguistic context of Malaysian English and analyzes data demonstrating that transfer from Malay to standard Malaysian English does not result from interference leading to fossilization, but rather as English is acculturated in a sociolinguistic context unique to Malaysia. (Author/CB)

Examines the interference of first language neutralization rules in the acquisition of a marked second language phonological feature. Presents results from a study of the acquisition of the voicing contrast in English word-final obstruents by native speakers of Catalan. (Author/VWL)

Tok Pisin, New Guinea Pidgin English, is becoming increasingly important as a "lingua franca" in Papua New Guinea, even though English is the country's official language. Urban versus rural and spoken versus written varieties of the pidgin are examined, and the influence of English on Tok Pisin is investigated. 73 references. (Author/CB)

A review of the literature and teacher observations are used to examine the processes and strategies by which second language learners attain and organize verbal knowledge. Classroom data are derived from experience in teaching German to Dutch-speaking university students. The analysis looks at the relationship of morphology and word recognition…

Two picture-word interference experiments investigated whether or not words from a first and more dominant language are activates during lexical access in a foreign and less dominant language. Native speakers of Dutch were instructed to name pictures in English. Revealed that the Dutch name of a picture is activated during initial stages of the…

This paper presents an exploratory study on cross-linguistic interference among indigenous Kechwa-Spanish bilingual children (n=30) living in a language contact situation. Its preliminary findings show evidence of cross-linguistic interference between Kechwa desiderative progressive forms such as miku-naya-yka-n (eat-desprog-3) "S/he wants to/is…

A language instruction technique that uses students' foreign language errors to point up contrasts and similarities in the native and foreign languages is described as it was used with Albanian students learning French. (MSE)