This dissertation compares the phonetic and phonological features of adult non-speakers' productions of words in an endangered Native American language, Oregon Northern Paiute (also known, and hereafter referred to, as Numu), to productions by fluent speakers. The purpose of this comparison is two-fold. The first purpose is to examine the…

The uniquely human capacity of using arbitrary signs to transfer concept and experience over great distances in time and place is what we call language. We use language with a purpose, and we use whatever features are at our disposal to achieve our ends, regardless of the fact that some speakers think that certain features should be held together…

The five papers in this issue cover a range of perspectives on the acquisition and use of the Spanish copulas "ser" and "estar" in a variety of contexts, including language contact, bilingual language acquisition, and classroom second language learning. The fact that these papers cite work in this area as far back as the early part of the 20th…

This dissertation project examines the language contact situation of Chipilo, a Veneto-Spanish bilingual community of immigrant origin in central Mexico, focusing both on the social motivations for the sustained bilingualism observed and the linguistic outcomes in the Spanish of the community. Chipilo is a unique community in that Veneto, a…

Osundare's writing is generally acknowledged as coterminous with the contentious issues of language, style and meaning in Anglophone modern African literature, and because he is seen as representing a generation of African writers, this study highlights and analyzes aspects of Osundare's creative processes of meaning for his thematic project.…

Discusses the encroachment of English into the German language. (EKN)

Discusses a previous article on linguistic borrowing in the French language and argues that the metaphor "borrowing" (with its linguistic equivalents in French and German) is approximate. Suggests because the family tree model has been discredited as has the notion of a standard language, borrowings are merely the "tip of the iceberg" in the…

In introducing this special issue of "Bilingualism: Language and Cognition," we feel it is critical to clarify what we understand "linguistic convergence" to mean in the context of bilingualism, since "convergence" is a technical term more readily associated with the field of language contact than with the field of bilingualism (for recent…

We examine the variable use of locative prepositions in Cajun French, adding two dimensions to existing studies: real-time evidence, adding a diachronic descriptive perspective, and a methodological tool, measuring the degree of exposure to French (MDI). The goal of this paper is to determine the origins and the directions of language change…

This paper is concerned with a specific case of L3 acquisition: the starting position for English vowel acquisition by infant German-Italian bilinguals will be investigated in light of prototype theory. The chosen example of triple language contact is characterised by consecutive bilingualism as the basis of L3 acquisition, where the learners' L2…

Research has increasingly pointed to a range of cognitive and social reasons behind ESL students' transgressive textual appropriation, defined as students' source use that contravenes acceptable borrowing practices. However, one aspect that has received little attention is the role of the immediate pedagogical context in this type of textual…

It is suggested that English loanwords are introduced into Japanese by one or a few individuals at a single point in time, and that their pronunciation depends on their spelling in the katakana writing system. (CK)

Presents the definitions and evolution of 18 words recently coined. (DD)

Gives some examples of linguistic borrowing in translatin Quebec statutes from French to English. (AM)

Many languages use vast numbers of words borrowed from English, and modified (clipped) to use the first part of the word only. The paper provides examples, mainly from Italian, examining the linguistic reasons for such clipped forms and presents several clipped Italian terms used in English, noting that the same thing can happen in reverse. (SMN)