A study investigated the usefulness of indirect complaints (ICs)--i.e., expressions of dissatisfaction about someone or something not present--as a strategy for negotiating interaction for second language acquisition. In contrast to a direct complaint, an IC can be used to attempt to establish solidarity with an interlocutor. The language corpus…

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 explored the acquisition of "se" by Spanish-speaking children in Madrid, Spain, looking at: (1) acquisition of multifunctional forms; and (2) the course of acquisition for a linguistic expression that has both anaphoric and non-anaphoric functions, and its relevance to Binding Theory approaches to the acquisition of reflexives.…

A discussion of pharyngeal fricatives in Arabic looks at voiced and voiceless varieties within the context of K. L. Pike's classifications. Pike treated pharyngeal fricatives as standing apart from others, including a number of oral fricatives and one glottal fricative in a category he called "frictionals." Later, however, he…

Mestreechs, the dialect of Dutch spoken in Maastricht, the Netherlands, is analyzed for patterns of phonological duration or quantity. Two forms of prosody, hard (H) and slurred (S), are distinguished and their distribution is examined, making reference to previous research on Dutch phonology and on the realization of prosody in Northern European…

The relationship between bidialectalism and literacy in the United States is discussed. The primary issue addressed is whether the spoken language of dialectally divergent groups creates a linguistic mismatch that creates problems in the acquisition of literacy skills. First, the controversy over use of dialect readers, which incorporate…

Research results should not be taken at face value; some research is not well designed, and readers must be able to assess whether the research carried out actually supports the results or may be explained otherwise. Research reports are usually divided into introduction or literature review, methods, results, and discussion and conclusions. Basic…

A feedback technique for second-language compositions is that of "reformulation." This procedure consists of having a native writer of the target language rewrite the learner's essay, preserving all the learner's ideas. The learner then compares this version with the original version, complete with teacher corrections. To determine the benefits of…

Describes an alphabetic process for cuing readers to speak the three dimensions of sound: fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity. (RB)

Raised, nasalized variants of /ae/ in such words as hat and back in the speech of many Illinoisans are found to correlate with the size of the community in which the speaker was raised. Generally, the higher the variants, the more urban the speaker was raised. (Author/RM)

Patients with cortical lesions, both with or without aphasia, were asked to reconstruct sentences. It was found that syntactic comprehension deficits exist only in aphasics. Two groups are distinguishable, those with deficits due to problems of repetition and those with deficits due to problems of object recognition. (Text is in French.) (TL)

Agrammatism, the disruption of the grammatical structure of speech, is studied in its accompaniment to aphasia. Since it occurs with all studied forms of aphasia, it is considered here a symptom typical to aphasia. It is also examined in relation to different kinds of aphasics. (SCC)

A structural analysis of the wine vocabulary used by wine experts is given. Experiments involving typical wine drinkers show that there is little consensus in how the words are applied to wine. Communication tasks show that the sender and receiver of messages about wine perform little better than chance. (Author/RM)

This article discusses the way in which the orthography may or may not reflect changes in the pronunciation of Castilian Spanish. Examples substantiate the discussion. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

This article defines the linguistic situation in Puerto Rico and explains why the term "bilingualism" cannot be used to accurately describe the linguistic reality there. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)