Compares and analyzes speech samples of Mayan and American mothers addressing their infant children. Results indicate that although higher pitch has been described as a universal feature of baby talk registers worldwide, the Mayan mothers do not utilize this feature. It is suggested that pitch-raising strategies may be sociolinguistically…

Describes a two-course, team-taught series originally designed to introduce students to the nature of language and other symbolic systems. The course is a building block for language, literature, and other multidisciplinary programs. It also provides a coherent framework for the updated study of foreign languages. (SL)

The use of interpersonal verbal routines such as greetings and thanks is examined as a universal phenomenon of human languages. Examples from Syrian Arabic, American English and other languages are used to show differing patterns of structure and use, susceptible of grammatical and sociolinguistic analysis. (Author/RM)

Response to Robert A. Hall, Jr.'s article, "Why a Structural Semantics Is Impossible," Language Sciences, n21. (DD)

Revised version of a paper supported by a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship. The universal base hypothesis states that all natural languages utilize the same base component in their transformational grammars. (DD)

Recognition criteria refer to those features which enable the analyst to recognize the item he attempts to ascertain through his elicitation procedure. (DD)

Revised and abridged version of You Can't Learn without Goofing (An Analysis of Children's Second Language Errors')'' to appear in Jack Richards (ed.), Error Analysis -- Perspectives in Second Language Acquisition,'' (Longmans). A goof'' is a productive error made during the language learning process. (RS)

Twenty true-false statements are discussed as a way of presenting the scientific knowledge base on which school programs for developing literacy can be built. (Author/MLF)

Discusses arguments that support the position regarding the distribution of non-grammatical markings of negation and of "wh"-scope and emphasizes the importance of looking for deep unifying principles in cross-modal studies of American Sign Language in order to further understanding of Universal Grammar. (33 references) (Author/CK)

Presents an analysis of code switching that relies on general principles of phrase structure and rejects constraints specific to code switching. This model is shown to account for intersentential switches between typologically different languages such as Farsi and English, including within word switches and switches between modifiers and nouns.…

Identifies lexical equivalents of semantic primitives "above, under, inside, on the side," as defined by Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, in Longgu (Solomon Islands) and argues that the first three have both a semantically primitive rational sense and a secondary topological sense. Morphosyntactic issues are discussed, including…

This experimental study on English, Spanish, and Turkish as second languages investigates the interaction of universal principles and first language knowledge in interlanguage grammars by focusing on verbs that participate in the causative/inchoative alternation. (Author/VWL)

Analysis of Sesotho-speaking children's spontaneous language showed that the acquisition of passives was closely linked to the fact that Sesotho subjects must be discourse topics. It is suggested that a detailed analysis of how passive constructions interact with other components of a given linguistic system is critical for developing coherent and…

Suggests that differences between first- and second-language learners are due to principles of universal grammar (UG) that guide first language (L1), but not second language (L2) acquisition. This view can be reconciled with the idea that L2 learners can use UG principles to some extent in evaluating target sentences. (49 references) (Author/VWL)