The current paper aims to search and summarise the current literature on the linguistic aspect of the Orang Asli languages in Malaysia. Following the PRISMA Statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses), a systematic review was conducted with a particular focus on three main groups of the Orang Asli in Peninsular…

The functioning of any language is regulated not only by linguistic rules, but also by norms of social and cultural life. Nowadays, development of lingua cultural approach in worldwide education is conditioned by a re-construal of culture phenomena as a specific form of human existence. Until now, we have been dealing with an absence of sufficient…

This dissertation explores the effects of frequency on the learning and use of linguistic constructions. The work examines the influence of frequency on form choice in production and meaning inference in comprehension and discusses the effect of each modality on diachronic patterns of change in language. In production, high frequency of a form…

This study describes the thematic roles of Somali; a language that manifests unorthodox grammatical structures due to the use of the focus particle. A mapping of some language features related to the semantic-syntactic interface is carried out. The effect of the meaning of the lexical items is tested to whether it affects the syntactic structures…

Language is of vital importance to human beings. It is a means of communication and it has specific cognitive links. Advanced social cognition is necessary for children to acquire language, and sophisticated mind-reading abilities to assume word meanings and communicate pragmatically. Language can be defined as a bi-directional system that permits…

In this article the way bilinguals handle differing semantic categories in their two languages will be investigated. Drawing on bilingual data from multilingual speakers of Romansh as well as from speakers of (Swiss) German, the tensions that emerge from "conflicting habits" in the two languages are analyzed in the semantic domain of…

The present article compares and contrasts linguistic findings from longitudinal studies of low-income Americans derived from evidence of recorded family speech interactions. Hart and Risley (1995) employed research assistants who spent 1 hour per month observing language usage among families from different socioeconomic backgrounds in their homes…

Greek-Aramaic bilingualism was wide-spread throughout Late Antique Syria and Mesopotamia. Among the various Aramaic dialects, Syriac underwent a particularly intense and prolonged period of contact with Greek. This contact led to changes in both languages. The present study provides a new analysis of contact-induced changes in Syriac due to Greek,…

This dissertation focuses on the apparent linguistic discontinuity reflected in notarial texts from the twelfth to the thirteenth century in the Iberian Peninsula. Particular attention is given to the historical development of Spanish personal a (the direct object animacy marker), which can be used to trace the communicative continuity that must…

Recent research in language contact has investigated bilingual deviations from monolingual norms where syntax interfaces with the lexical and discourse components of the grammar (e.g. Iverson & Rothman 2008; Lozano 2006; Montrul 2004, 2005; Sorace & Filiaci 2006; Tsimpli et al. 2004). Such studies generally show that the…

Examines language frontier and transitional zones along the Belgium-northwestern France linguistic border as area occupying important position in linguistic contact research. Gives examples of variant forms in the morphosyntactic, semantic, stylistic, and lexical forms. (Author/BK)

This article proposes a new analysis of illocutionary force, in terms of discourse practices, and specifically analyzes the act of reproaching. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Contrasts the situation of the French language and of sociolinguistic research in France and in Canada. (AM)

Presuppositions, those propositions which the sentence is not primarily about but which have to be established prior to the utterance of a sentence in order for communication to go smoothly, are discussed. The notions of the Kiparskys (1970), Lakoff (1970, 1971), Fillmore (1971), Karttunen (1971), and Horn (1969) are summarized with examples in an…

In analyzing utterances whose singular property is to become true simply by being uttered, this article discusses the theory of explicit performatives and proposes an alternative explanation which focuses on meaning rather than on the fact of these utterances are speech acts. (Text is in French.) (CLK)