Error analysis of the informal conversations (in both the interlanguage [IL] and native language) of two native Vietnamese speakers gave limited support to the hypothesis that a universal preference for the open syllable is a shaping force in IL phonology that is independent of the process of native language transfer. (Author/CB)

Reports a study of language learning and language attitudes among immigrants to the Netherlands. Questionnaires obtained from college students studying Dutch showed no evidence that Dutch was threatened by English and indicated that the importance attached to English as an international language did not lessen the value of Dutch for living in the…

Language shift and language loss were studied in three generations of a Dutch immigrant family. Findings from an analysis of letters, interviews, a domain questionnaire, and editing and correction tests suggest increases in language shift with each generation although the degree of loss was rather slow in the first and second generation. (Contains…

Presents a monoclausal, multipredicate analysis of Japanese causatives, adopting the fundamentals of Relational Grammar. Two classes of causatives, distinguished by the matrix subject's agentivity, exist. The surface case marking of the causee is constrained by its relationship to the matrix subject with respect to a set of Proto-Agent…

The nativelike linguistic competence of an adult second-language learner of Egyptian Arabic who was first exposed to the target language after the close of the critical period is examined to determine what factors differentiate her from less successful naturalistic adult acquirers. The role of internalized grammar is discussed. (Contains 43…

Provides an analysis of the syntax of Straits Salish. Main clauses consist of an initial predicate followed by a second position clitic string of inflectional elements, the subject pronoun and tense. Evidence is provided against copular verb analysis as further proof of the lack of the noun/verb distinction at the lexical level. (52 references)…

Reports on reaction time experiments investigating subject-verb agreement and null subjects in 33 Korean learners of German and a control group of 20 German native speakers. Results found that the two phenomena do not covary in the Korean learners, indicating that properties of agreement and null subjects are acquired separately from one another.…

Discusses phonological errors and their causes in the language performance of beginning to advanced Slovak grammar school students learning English as a foreign language under conditions suggested by G. Nickel (1989). Errors in perception, production, and perception/production are shown to be of different quality and distribution; interferential…

Discusses the background and implications of the 1990 Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Accord signed by the seven nations that have Portuguese as their official language. Concludes that while most of the debate over the accord revolves around issues of linguistic efficiency, the accord and its proponents are primarily concerned with political and…

This article discusses the attitude of the second generation Dutch in Australia to language maintenance. A profile of the group's language activities is given, and factors related to language maintenance attitudes and the use of Dutch are examined. (16 references) (VWL)

A multidimensional approach analyzes the linguistic characteristics of 26 Somali spoken and written registers. Somali represents a different language type, and no single dimension adequately describes the relations among registers. Findings are related to previous analyses of English, Tuvaluan, and Korean. (27 references) (Author/LB)

Reports on two studies of minority language children enrolled in a Toronto, Canada, bilingual (English-French) program. The study indicated that focus on the maintenance and development of students' heritage language with specific reference to literacy learning enhanced the learning of French, a third language for the minority language students.…

A study of 47,542 telephone directory listings of business names in Brazil to document the extent of Englishization in Brazilian Portuguese indicated that business names, rather than being linked to an international variety of commercial English, may be viewed as a form of function interlanguage identifying the referent as trendy or unique. (28…

Examines the sensitivity of second-language (L2) working memory (ability to store and process information simultaneously) to differences in reading skills among advanced L2 learners. Subjects with larger L2 working memory capacities scored higher on measures of L2 reading skills, but no correlation was found between reading and passive short-term…

Tests the relative difficulty for Arab speakers in their acquisition of aspects of English derivational morphology, based on previous work that identified major similarities and differences between Standard Arabic and Standard English through contrastive analysis. Results confirm the usefulness of predictions of contrastive analysis in the…