The present study discusses and describes codeswitches produced by two trilingual children acquiring English, Spanish and Hebrew simultaneously from birth. Data were collected regularly over a period of 20 months (from age 2;6 to 4;2 for M and from age 5;5 to 7;1 for E), in naturalistic tape-recorded sessions. Codeswitches drawn from…

Five papers on African linguistics are presented. "Observations on Some Derivational Affixes in Kiswahili Predicate Items" (Assibi Apatewon Amidu) examines the few morphemes recognized in the Swahili derivational affix system and suggests changes in the rules of vowel harmony and in presentation and representation of the affixes in use.…

A method of teaching English as a second language (ESL) involving open sentence combining practice with group discussion was compared with a more traditional teaching method. Students were largely college-bound and attended the University of Arizona's ESL Center. Sentence combining was analyzed for a paragraph-length exercise on a low-level…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) aspects of the organization of redundancy rules in the lexicon; (2) the adult role in early child language acquisition; (3) semantic categorization,…

This book is written primarily for those studying linguistic topics in the area of sign language, but also can be useful to sign language teachers who want to understand more about American Sign Language (ASL). Pen-and-ink illustrations allow the reader with no knowledge of sign language to follow the discussion. The hypothesis examined in this…

This study of the linguistic acts of assenting and confirming is inspired by an attempt to create instructional materials for the learning of spoken English as a second language, with communicative competence as a goal. Observations are based on several hours of informal conversation between native speakers of English, mostly students and…

Several focal points for southwestern American Indian English research are proposed. This variation is used on reservations or in urban Indian enclaves when the "Indianness" of the discussion or participants needs formal linguistic marking. One research goal is to demonstrate that tribal varieties of Indian English actually exist.…

Forty bilingual Ss were tested in four experiments to see if decoding of linguistically mixed texts with one-word substitutions in the other language would take more time than decoding of unilingual material. The overall aim was to further explore the nature of the language switch mechanism as it functions in input. In the first experiment,…

Chorti, a Mayan language spoken in eastern Guatemala, is analyzed in this paper on the basis of a story text provided by an adult native speaker. A phonological description of Chorti is presented for background information; syllables, suprasegmentals, pause groups, articulation, and phonological rules are all considered. The author presents the…

The final part of a four-part report of research on the development of a computerized, phrase-structure grammar of modern Hebrew describes the computerized algorithm for analyzing the sentences generated based on a complex-constituent-phrase structure grammar. The first section here discusses a structural model for modern Hebrew; the second…

There is a need for empirical investigation of the optimal length for drill sentences at various states of second language learning. This paper reports the results of a study that explores the effects of sentence length and grammatical structure on the ability of foreign students to repeat English sentences. It was hypothesized that sentences of…

The present study reports on exploratory research to determine whether the Aluminum Paragraph, a sentence-combining exercise developed by O'Donnell (Hunt, 1970) to measure the development of syntactic complexity in the writing of native speakers of English, can also serve as a measure of the active syntactic proficiency of learners of English as a…

Presents a method for classifying errors of second language learners for the purpose of: (1) evaluating information in samples of students' communication, (2) diagnosing individual learner needs, (3) developing individualized instructional materials, and (4) deciding which errors to correct first. Suggests applications of the method in…

This document contains the 1994 edition of a publication designed to share information in the field of linguistics that is of practical, theoretical, administrative, or general interest. Articles in these issues include: "Ethnography Vs. Questionnaire" (Thomas E. Murray); "Differences: A Diary Entry"--concerning structuralism…

The collection of papers on linguistic experiments includes: "Discourse Functions of Pitch Range in Spontaneous and Read Speech" (Gayle M. Ayers); "When Is a Syllable Not a Syllable?" (Mary E. Beckman); "The Relationship between Syntactic and Semantic Processes in Sentence Comprehension" (Julie E. Boland); "The Influence of Orthography and…