Discusses dialectal differences in the aggregate. Employs a dialectometric technique that provides an additive measure of pronunciation difference: The (aggregate) pronunciation difference. Sampled Dutch towns and villages, where the variation ranges between 56% and 81%, lending credence to the dialect continuum view. (Author/VWL)

A study of concord phenomena in Rio de Janeiro spoken Portuguese found that, in the serial context, the linguistic system is so highly constrained that external, and even internal, influences are blocked. Authors conclude that strong constraints should be identified and further studies undertaken to understand the interplay of the diverse forces…

Investigates variable deletion of short vowels in word-final unstressed syllables in Latvian spoken in Riga. Affected vowels were almost always inflectional endings and results indicated that internal phonological and prosodic factors (especially distance from main word stress) were the strongest constraints on vowel deletion, along with the…

Offers an optimality theoretic account for the phonological process of across-word regressive assimilation (AWRA) in Picard, a Gallo-Romance dialect spoken in the Picardie region in Northern France and Southern Belgium. Focuses on the varieties spoken in the Vimeu region of France. Examines one particular topic in the analysis of AWRA: the…

The grammaticalization of "liao" as a main verb in tenth-century vernacular texts to "le" as an aspectual particle in modern Chinese is investigated. The change is attributed to the resultative construction coming into existence in the language and to instances where the verb took sentential subjects or occurred in temporal clauses only. (17…

Gondi, a Dravidian language spoken by 2.2 million people in central India, is a chain of dialects, some of which are not mutually intelligible. This study looked at a two-step sound change, responsible for this dialect division. (ER)

Attempts to resolve an outstanding question as to the most appropriate structural description of the relationship between subject and verb in Bislama (a Melanesian creole spoken in Vanuatu), discusses what the implications of this analysis might be for a Creole ontogeny, and attempts to unify this analysis to the verb system with the distribution…

A formal reading of word groups and a same/different listening test revealed that Hungarian Americans in South Bend, Indiana, exhibit a continuum in a short front unrounded low vowel phoneme, showing important differences between the informant's perception and production. The Hungarian-American and metropolitan Hungarian data were compared to…

Investigated the sociolinguistic variable of apical palatalization in Cairene Arabic, focusing on the roles of gender and social class in the distribution of palatalization. As in a number of other speech communities, women in Cairo seem to have been the innovators of this sound change. (27 references) (MDM)

Concerns the interrelation between the theoretical status and the social dimensions of syntactic variation in Heerlen Dutch. Syntactic variation of Heerlen Dutch consists of a range of dative constructions that are unacceptable in standard Dutch. (Author/JL)

Discusses the notion of regional standards of a language with regard to modern Danish. Regional and national standards of a language as well as local dialect are defined. The article shows that, for a geographical entity, a statistically determined boundary can be established in the range between the extremes of a regional dialect and national…

Examines vowel harmony in the "Gaucho dialect" of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Informants from four areas of the state were studied: the capital city (Porto Alegre), the border region with Uruguay, and two areas of the interior populated by descendants of nineteenth-century immigrants from Europe, mainly Germans and…

The development of language conditions in Helsinki, including its origins in a Swedish-speaking area, makes it possible to observe many processes of sociolinguistic interest. Helsinki's colloquial Finnish has served as a model for the evolution of colloquial Finnish throughout the country. (Contains eight references.) (Author/LB)

Results are presented on the grammar of spoken Brazilian Portuguese, with focus on the syntactic boundaries of the main constituents of an utterance. Major differences are found both in the distribution of filling by syntactic adjuncts versus discourse elements and in the susceptibility of different syntactic boundaries to be filled. (Contains 33…

Examines the distribution of clause types in ancient Greek during the Homeric (pre-800 B.C.) and Hellenistic (ca. 100 A.D.) periods, as well as an intermediate period (ca. 450 B.C.), delineating the evolution from a subject-object-verb (SOV) to a subject-verb-object (SVO) structure. (49 references) (MDM)