Describes aspects of lexico-semantic variation in Nigerian English. The causes and types of variation are discussed within the a sociolinguistic framework, and implications of such variations, with reference to international intelligibility and communication strategies, are examined. (20 references) (Author/OD)

Argues that instruments normally applied to the analysis of discourse, and that originate in the Western tradition of analyzing language, must be used with extreme caution in analyzing new varieties of English. To substantiate this claim, the article uses as an example the recent work on the emergence of Batswana English. (Author/JL)

Clement M. Doke's 1929-1930 research on Zimbabwean languages has played a key role in shaping the tribalised and politicised linguistic terrain that characterises modern Zimbabwe. Doke, professor of linguistics at the University of Witwaters-rand, was commissioned in 1929 by the government of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) to research…

The study sought to establish the attitudes of Kenyan speakers (n = 210) towards three varieties of English: (1) ethnically marked Kenyan English, (2) standard Kenyan English and (3) native speaker English (British, American, Australian, etc). Of the three varieties, the most preferred by both rural and urban respondents for use in the media and…

The purpose of this article is to explore recent research into World Englishes (henceforth WEs) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), focusing on its implications for TESOL, and the extent to which it is being taken into account by English language teachers, linguists, and second language acquisition researchers. After a brief introduction…

An examination of pattern in certain languages spoken primarily by Blacks has both a narrow and a broad focus. The former is on structure and development of the creole spoken by Jamaicans in England and to a lesser extent, a Black country English. The broader focus is on the relationship between the Kwa languages of West Africa and the…

Attitudes toward usage, accent, and dialect in spoken English are examined, drawing on literature in the field and data from a British study of year 9 students' (pupils aged 13-14) language awareness. The dilemma inherent in teaching standard spoken usage while encouraging maintenance of ethnic and regional identity is examined, with attention…

This study examined the speech act of agreement and disagreement in the ordinary conversation of English-speakers in India. Data were collected in natural speech elicited from educated, bilingual speakers in cross-sex and same-sex conversations in a range of formal and informal settings. Subjects' ages ranged from 19 to about 60. Five agreement…

A study of middle verb constructions in Canadian French and Madrid Spanish suggests that two alleged defining characteristics of these constructions are not really defining characteristics. These are: (1) that the constructions only appear in generic sentences, and (2) that they disallow "by"-phrases of the type found in passive…

A discussion of the role of Swahili in Tanzania looks at its elaboration as an indigenous language, involving both internal modification of the written language and the extension of its institutionalized domains of use. Because of its role as the lingua franca of the independence movement, Swahili became a vehicle for national political…

Different language sample elicitation techniques may be appropriate for different linguistic phenomena and for learners at different phases of acquisition. These techniques include elicited production, manipulation of given linguistic material (sentence combining, sentence completion), intuition and grammaticality judgment tests, introspection,…

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…

This report is intended as a preliminary survey of the problems in the collection and sociological analysis of student slang. Dealing with the notion that every speaker handles a variety of registers and tends to choose among them in accordance with the particular social situation in which he finds himself, this study isolates some of the…

Traditional descriptions of Italian phonology have occasionally suggested that some type of connection exists between "raddoppiamento sintattico" (RS) and the word internal consonant length contrast. (RS is defined as a systematic lengthening of the first consonant of the second word in a two-word sequence in certain syntactic and phonological…

This volume consists of the following ten papers, which were presented at the second Hokan-Yuman Languages Workshop, held at the University of California at San Diego in June 1976: (1) "The Havasupai Writing System," by Rena Crook, Leanne Hinton, and Nancy Stenson; (2) "The Upland Yuman Numeral System," by Martha B. Kendall;…