Discusses the subject/object drop pattern found in child Korean and makes a cross-linguistic comparison among seven languages. Findings are most consistent with Valian's observation that early grammars show a high degree of sensitivity to characteristics of and frequency distributions in input. (Author/VWL)

Examines the text of a popular radio series in natal, South Africa in the 1940s, "Applesammy and Naidoo," with a view to adding to the historical data base on Indian South African English. A comparison is made between direct speech of the Indian characters in the series and tape recordings of pre-basilectal speakers. Data suggest the…

Dorsopalatal contact and F2 data for speakers of dialectal groups with dark [l] (Majorcan Catalan, Eastern Catalan) and clear [l] (German, Catalan from the Valencia region) provide some support for the hypothesis that degree of velarization or pharyngealization in the alveolar lateral consonant does not proceed categorically but gradually across…

Linguistic structures and cultural conflicts are the reasons why African-American students fare poorly in literacy instructions in classrooms. Some ideas for creating an accessible, research-based approach to language arts in dialectally diverse classrooms are presented.

The spontaneous utterances produced by 492 Cantonese-speaking children aged 36-60 months in 30-minute toy play contexts were collected. The incidence and percentage of different lexical classes, the ratio of noun and verb types and tokens were calculated. A statistically significant predominance of verb usage was found in the expressive utterances…

This article presents the results of an exploratory empirical study into the perception of conventionally indirect requests in British English and Peninsular Spanish, given the high incidence of the pragmatic category over others in its encoding of politeness in both related and unrelated languages (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). More specifically,…

The aim of the article is to analyse the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the skills of reading and text-understanding, focusing on the comparative analysis of experiences of meaning in native language, Romanian and English in the case of Hungarian pupils. We attempted to present the qualitative indexes and factors of the process of reading…

This study investigated the acquisition of word initial s clusters of 3-5 year old Dutch children with phonological disorders. Within these clusters, sl was produced correctly most often, whereas sn and sx were the more difficult clusters. In cluster reductions, s+obstruent and sl clusters reduction patterns followed the Sonority Sequencing…

In the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in morphological awareness, which refers to the ability to reflect on and manipulate morphemes and word formation rules in a language. This review provides a critical synthesis of empirical studies on this topic from a broad cross-linguistic perspective. Research with children speaking several…

This paper examines a specific aspect of systematic variability, which is taken to be a result of influence of linguistic context on interlanguage (IL) performance. While it is important to describe how or under what circumstances a linguistic context exerts an influence on IL development, one also needs to explain why it occurs. On the basis of a…

Most studies that have been conducted on locative constructions in many languages show the relationship between the figure and the ground in terms of geometrical or topological terms. This report shows that in Sinhala the locative expressions answer not only the question "Where is the object X," but also indicate how the figure is oriented in…

The notion of "textual norms" refers to sociocultural conventions that define the "well-formedness" of a text. Because well-formedness in texts is characterized by convention, different conventions may exist in a community and lead to norm conflicts when used in actual text generation. In this article, two types of norm conflict are described. In…

Academic rhetoric is manifested at all levels of language, and its aim is to increase the credibility of the writer's message in the reader's mind. However, cultural variation in rhetorical values and conventions may undermine the writer's efforts to impress the reader. The use of reference in scientific texts by Finnish and native English writers…

It is proposed that there are cultural universals in the use of language and that these universals have implications for language acquisition. The model rests on three hypotheses: (1) there are culturally universal tendencies in the linguistic marking of four dimensions of language (epistemic and affective stances, social acts, social activities,…

A study compared translations of biblical passages into different languages in Papua New Guinea. The study looked for evidence of balance between literal and free interpretation in translation style in the gospel of Mark, which is narrative and didactic material, in 12 languages, and the mainly hortatory genre in translations of 4 epistles:…