Examination of accidental CVC and CV correspondences among languages representing 5 large families of agglutinative languages found that comparison pairs had much more similarity between basic 100-word vocabularies than would have been possible by mere chance, supporting the hypothesis that those 5 language families were mutually related.…

Explores the widespread acceptance of Bahasa Indonesian as the single national and official language of Indonesia. The discussion focuses on the political, sociocultural, and linguistic forces that have created the strong bond between the language and Indonesians' sense of national identity, and on Indonesia's successful policy of maintaining its…

Gives an account of the origin and development of the Russian language as it relates to the cultural history and nationalism of various Slavic groups. (90 references) (Author/OD)

Reports on an experimental study that was conducted to examine how native speakers of Japanese acquire syntactic properties of English reflexive pronouns. In particular, the effects of two parameters of Universal Grammar, the Governing Category Parameter, and the Proper Antecedent Parameter were studied. (AUTHOR/GLR)

Investigation of speech of Baghdadi men and women showed that, in Baghdad, the prestige variety of spoken Arabic was in the direction of the standard, and that more women than men favored this variety. However, in the past, when Baghdadi women had less access to standard Arabic, men more often spoke a dialect approximating the standard variety.…

Proposes a reinterpretation of the language bioprogram hypothesis to show how substrate influence and bioprogrammatic factors may all be invoked to account for various complementary aspects of creole genesis. A contextual and weighted interpretation of markedness shows the selective application of substrate influence in creolization and transfer…

Investigates the pragmatic functions of topicalizing subject (S) and object (O) in Standard Arabic and attempts to find a functional explanation for the occasional preposing/topicalization of S and/or O over the verb (V) to yield a construction in the form of SVO order or any other order sanctioned by the rules of Arabic grammar. (22 references)…

Illustrates the necessity of viewing formal language instruction in terms of both intercultural and intracultural encounters. An examination of examples of cultural interactions occurring in an English as a second language classroom at the University of Guam points out the overall importance of the roles of culture. (Author/CB)

Argues that attempts to revive Chamorro, the indigenous language of Guam, need to be based on an examination of the English language aspirations and behavior of the Chamorro people and on the ideology of English as it has developed in the past several decades in Guam. (Author/CB)

Examines the history of language issues and educational policies in the Marshall Islands. Discussion focuses on the administrative, financial, curricular, and staffing features of current language and educational programs, and an immersion model of bilingual Marshallese-English education is proposed to counteract some of the negative outcomes of…

Analysis of Polish emigres' (N=90) responses to a value survey (in English or Polish) showed predictable differences, according to level of cultural identification, notably about values of spirituality and traditional/conservative responsibility. A follow-up study of emigres to Tasmania yielded both similarities and dissimilarities in value…

Analysis of the development of the forms and functions of interrogatives in Tamil-speaking parent-child interactions during early stages of language acquisition revealed that children first acquired and used intonation questions, followed by questions using "where,""what," and "who." Yes/no questions using the…

A contrastive analysis clarifies the differences in the formation of English and Persian verbs through examination of language differences in person, tense, phase, aspect, mode, voice, and status. (27 references) (CB)

Examines doublets in Arabic, discussing the alterations between the determinants in the doublets, and shows that the alterations are the result of phonological changes. It is concluded that the phonological changes are in agreement with changes that have occurred in other Semitic languages and in modern Arabic dialects. (30 references) (Author/VWL)

Suggests some ways to enhance the user-friendliness of many Macintosh (personal computer) foreign language character fonts with the aid of three commercial programs: MacKeymeleon; FONTastic Plus; and Tempo. (Author/CB)