Investigates the language use and literacy practices of 36 children from a Gujarati- and Urdu-speaking Muslim community in Northeast London. These experiences are explored in the children's three-generation families, in the community, and in school interviews, recordings, and observations. (Author/VWL)

Examines similarities and differences in loss of grammatical systems across languages, investigating structural changes in six attrited languages as compared to nonattrited languages and demonstrating significant parallelism in structural changes across languages. Correlation between levels of grammatical and lexical loss are discussed, noting a…

Examines the position of Tamil as the language of an ethnic minority in Malaysia and Singapore, placing the issue of Tamil and language maintenance within the larger sociolinguistic milieu in the two countries and drawing conclusions about the role of language policy and planning in the determination of linguistic outcomes. (SM)

Gives an account of converb (adverbial participle or gerund) systems in eight languages from Paleoasiatic and Altaic families spoken in northeastern Siberia. The rich converbal system is not the only relevant and peculiar feature common to the languages, but it is not common in other languages. The characteristics of converbs are described, and…

Net gains in the number of Welsh speakers as a result of education in South East Wales are examined to see if there is any basis for connecting them with disadvantage to education in English-medium schools. (Author/JL)

Shows positive and negative aspects of the interference of the Polish voicing system on the learner's attempt to master the pronunciation of English. Argues that visual feedback can help foreign learners acquire the nuances of English pronunciation. (Author/VWL)

Discusses South Africa's adoption of nine indigenous languages to join Afrikaans and English as official languages and the expanding role of English at the expense of these languages. Analyzes studies on South African Englishes, examining the way expanded use and domains for Black South African English (BSAE) speakers will have a significant…

Explores the usefulness of a typology of contact mechanisms for one type of contact setting: that of a typical immigrant language, in this case the variety of Turkish that is spoken in the Netherlands. Examines the relevance of insertional code switching to the genesis of mixed languages--Dutch and Turkish. (Author/VWL)

Describes a study that used primarily in-depth interviews to investigate attitudes of 20 lecturers toward English medium of instruction policy at a Hong Kong university at moment of former colony's transition to Chinese sovereignty. Results document overall attitudes of lecturers toward policy, their reasons for supporting it, their problems in…

Evaluated the WLPAN method of intensive language teaching by studying 7 students at Cardiff University's Centre for Teaching Welsh to Adults. Using questionnaires and interviews, factors affecting students' ultimate ability to speak Welsh were examined. Factors included students' motivation, background in Welsh or other foreign languages, and…

Elementary and middle school children in California who speak Vietnamese as a first language reported high levels of oral competence in Vietnamese and a desire to maintain Vietnamese language and culture. There was no evidence that the development of the first language was a barrier to second language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

This study investigates how learners of the less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) (i.e., Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Swahili, Yoruba) perceive their identities as heritage or non-heritage language learners. A survey of 530 college-level language learners reveals that heritage and non-heritage…

On-line comprehension studies of flexible word-order languages find that noncanonical ("scrambled") structures induce more difficulty than canonical structures [e.g., Hyona & Hujanen, "Q. J. Exp. Psychol." 50A (1997) 841-858], with this difference being attributed to the structural complexity/infrequency of these forms. However, by presenting…

This article explores the long-standing problem of ascribing meaning to individual acts of codeswitching. Drawing on ethnographic data from bilingual classrooms in Corsica, I situate the analysis of codeswitching within the more general question of the interpretation of speaker stance, which is defined as speakers' positioning with regard to both…

This study investigated the relationships between phonological awareness and reading in Oriya and English. Oriya is the official language of Orissa, an eastern state of India. The writing system is an alphasyllabary. Ninety-nine fifth grade children (mean age 9 years 7 months) were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, word reading and…