The source of the similarities and differences produced by pidginization is a central question studied in Pidgin-Creole linguistics. Several explanatory approaches are discussed that have guided research in this area, including simplification, substratum, independent innovation, and universals. (27 references) (Author/OD)

Examines the relationship between ideas of universal grammar (UG) and second language (L2) teaching and learning in medieval Europe in the context of the 20th-century debate about the role of UG in L2 acquisition. The roles of generative linguistics on UG and L2 instruction and learning in the 20th century are discussed. (65 references) (MDM)

Examined the comprehension of English restrictive relative clauses containing three universal factors (interruption, word order rearrangement, and parallel function) by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students at American universities studying English as a Second Language. The findings support the dominance of language universals in the course of…

Investigates the contribution of markedness and learning principles to second language (L2)acquisition. Korean language learners of English completed a written sentence-combining task and a written grammaticality judgment task. Results show subjects acquire English relative clauses in the same order and suggests that L2 learners have dual access…

The proceedings of this Georgetown University Round Table on developmental psycholinguistics are divided into four sections: (1) "Children's Language Acquisition: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Theory"; (2) "Children's Language Acquisition and Communicative Disorders"; (3) "Developmental Psycholinguistics and Second…

This collection of 14 papers and articles by Roman Jakobson contains works written and published between 1931 and 1970 which deal either with global aspects of language or with specific grammatical issues. The collection emphasizes Jakobson's concern for finding the links between form and meaning in language. The text is entirely in German with…

This study of the acquisition of kinship terms in English is a test of the hypothesis that lexical items are learned in their order of complexity and of the validity of relational analysis in predicting the order of the acquisition of kinship terms. Earlier studies of kinship terms, Piaget's in particular, are first discussed, as well as the…

The first of two papers on language history broadly defines historical linguistics and considers the activities of the descriptive linguist, who classifies the features of a language; the comparative linguist, who relates languages to one another; and the historical linguist, who is interested in the changes, completed and anticipated, of a living…

This high school teaching guide on the history of the English language consists of 36 short essays written by teachers and assembled under five headings: (1) The Indo-European Language Family, (2) Language Analysis, (3) The Old English Period, (4) The Middle English Period and the Renaissance, and (5) The Modern English Period in America. A…

In one essay of this collection of four, Kenneth L. Pike explores the value of exercises which are based on axioms about language structure and which are designed specifically to develop writing competence; he lists eight tagmemic principles accompanied by suggested exercises. In another essay, Pike differentiates the roles of linguist and…

This paper deals with problems concerning the nature of the input to a phonetic processor. Several assumptions provide the basis for consideration of the problem. There is a phonological level of processing which reflects the sound structure of the language; the rules associated with it are not affected by variables associated either with the…

This paper discusses the validity and role of linguistic theory in terms of philosophy and logic and considers the relationship among these fields of human knowledge. The main objective of linguistic science is to discover the composition laws actually used by speech communities at any given moment in history. Linguistics is therefore not…

This discussion considers the process of subject raising, which takes the constituent subject out of the complement clause and makes it a constituent of the matrix clause and the occurrence of this process in Japanese and in other subject-object-verb (SOV) languages. The first part of the paper demonstrates why subject raising is not a common…

This general bibliography on discourse and related topics lists over 350 books, articles, and papers, written between 1912 and 1971, covering a great variety of linguistic problems and issues. The subjects range from general topics such as "Nouns and Noun Phrases" and "Language as Symbolization" to such specialized articles as "Samoan…

In this study, the author seeks to demonstrate that Swedish is unique in its avoidance of the pronouns of address, extreme in its use of impersonal questions and circumscriptions, and that such language usage is directly related to the perceived relationship of social status, as explicitly and implicitly expressed by informants. The author also…