This monograph discusses the linguistic problems posed by the teaching and learning of non-African languages in multilingual African situations. Chapter 1 identifies and discusses the linguistic problems of foreign language education. Chapter 2 examines (1) the nature of linguistic descriptions, (2) the assumptions underlying contrastive analysis…

THIS INDIANA UNIVERSITY PUBLICATION IS AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND REVISION OF THE FINNISH ORIGINAL "SUOMEN KIELEN RAKENNE JA KEHITYS," (OTAVA, HELSINKI, 1941 AND 1946). CHAPTERS IN PART I TREAT--(1) THE PHONETIC STRUCTURE OF FINNISH, (2) HISTORICAL PHONOLOGY, (3) THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OR PARTS OF SPEECH, AND (4) INFLECTION AND…

THIS TEXT WAS WRITTEN FOR PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS WORKING IN AREAS OF PANAY AND THE ROMBLON ISLANDS IN THE PHILIPPINES. COVERED IN THIS SHORT TEXT ARE "ALL THE DIALECTS OF THE WESTERN VISAYAS" (EXCEPT THE DIALECTS SPOKEN BY THE NEGRITOS)--AKLANON, KINARAY-A, CAPIZNON, ILONGO, LOOCNON, ODIONGANON, AND ROMBLOMANON. IN SPITE OF DIFFERENCES AMONG THESE…

This study in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese is concerned with forms, meanings, and usage relating to personal pronouns and also other forms which, like them, are used as sentence subjects or objects with first or second person meanings--such phenomena being termed "pronominal." Three types of forms are seen to occur pronominally in the…

The third volume in this series on Serbo-Croatian-English contrastive analysis contains three articles. They are: "Recent Approaches to Grammar and Their Significance for Contrastive Structure Studies," by Rolf Berndt; "Some Remarks on the Factive and Non-Factive Complements in English and Serbo-Croatian," by Ljiljana Bibovic; and "On Conjoined…

The ergative construction is characteristic of all 37 languages of the Caucasian group. After definition of "subject" and "object," a summary is given of 13 Caucasian intransitive and transitive sentence-types, with respect to the case forms of their subjects and objects. The principal "symptoms" of ergativity are:…

This paper is an investigation of nasal vowels from both a synchronic and a diachronic point of view. Data from over 50 languages have been examined (some languages in much more detail than others) in an attempt to distinguish the aspects of vowel nasalization that are "universal" from those phenomena that are language-specific. This study is…

This four-part study introduces the reader to the methods and procedures used in descriptive linguistics and their application to the sound systems of English and Russian. A condensed phonology of English includes discussion of consonants, vowels, stress, phrasing, and pitch. The section on Russian phonemes examines: (1) consonant and vowel…

Reflexives in Japanese and English show a number of interesting differences. Morphologically, there is a single form "jibun" ("jishin") in Japanese, which does not vary for person or number. In English there are various forms which always agree in person and number ("myself,""himself,""themselves,"…

This article discusses sonorants and affricates in English, and contrasts them with the sonorants and affricates in French and German. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Discusses the various problems arising in teaching the German pronoun (and expletive) "es" ("it") to Rumanians. There is no universally usable correspondence to "es" in Rumanian, where it is sometimes lacking, with the subject absent in either the deep structure or the surface structure. (IFS/WGA)

Lexical differences between English and German in "there" constructions are examined. Contrastive evidence is also examined to propose analyses for certain troublesome types of "there" constructions in English. The descriptive approach attempts to show that the structuring of information in "there" sentences is dependent on lexical features of the…

Gives definitions for the component parts of acceptable translations in order to reconcile differences of opinion stemming from a variety of points of view. (MLA)

This contrastive analysis of English and Persian final consonantal clusters attempts to categorize and define the nature of the kinds of English final clusters likely to create problems for Iranian students of English. (CHK)

Fifty Romanian 2nd-year students of German were tested, and their errors tabulated. Most frequent sources of error were polysemy and verbs ending in -ieren ("deceptive cognates"). A contrastive linguistic description of German and Romanian can help the teacher steer students away from interference errors. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)