This paper examines aspects of variation in child language, and specifically how children express causal relations in complex sentences. Four particular types of variation were observed: (1) the order of clauses and the connectives used to link clauses; (2) mothers' causal statements; (3) interaction of language form and content, in the form of…

This paper analyzes the prophetic speech of Ga spirit mediums in terms of its linguistic style and its socio-religious function. As used in the study, "prophetic speech" is understood to have two major characteristics: (1) glossolalic style, and (2) prophetic message content, and it is used by people believed to be possessed by spirits. Prophetic…

A general observation about the vocabularies of most languages is that they tend to increase in size over time. Little is known about the causal mechanisms involved in this lexical expansion, but most anthropologists and linguists are in agreement that it probably mirrors general cultural evolution. The study of lexical growth becomes important if…

Frequently, government writing is filled with complex and obscure jargon, or "gobbledygook." This book was written for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) employees, in order to call their attention to the need for simple, concise writing. The first two chapters provide a formula for judging the difficulty of a piece of writing and show how writers…

This study compared the vocabulary of the period from 1943 to 1945 to the vocabulary of 1975. In addition to a direct comparison of word use, an indirect comparison was made using Thorndike's word list in the "Teacher's Word Book" (1931). The 1975 vocabulary, based on frequency of word appearance, was derived from 93 speeches made by students in…

Argues that, considering the widespread pluralism in dialects in the Black community, the linguists' use of the term "Black English" to describe the language of only one group of blacks seems an example of poor communication between linguists and the general public; and that linguistists cannot afford to ignore the racial plays for power in the…

A study is reported in which 14 bilingually schooled and 16 conventionally schooled Mexican-American children and their parents were subjects of research over a two-year period. The bilingual program students were found to be using Spanish more after several years and continued this pattern over time. (Author/RM)

The author discusses the pros and cons of using and teaching commonly used phrases in shorthand. (BP)

This article looks at question forms in everyday language usage from a functional point of view. Question forms are used more often in classrooms than in other situations. The advantages and disadvantages of exploiting question forms in the language classroom are examined. (CLK)

Describes exercises using typical expressions used in conversation, including idioms, partial or complete clauses, syntactic structures, etc. Refers to Herder Institute's (1971) five steps in language learning, of which Step Five includes 4000 lexical units to be mastered for active use, plus 3000 for passive recognition. Gives examples and…

Reviews some of the current literature on the sociolinguistic aspects of ESL. (RM)

Latin Americans stand much closer to the person they're speaking to than do North Americans. Why? It's all in our basic concepts of space. The author discusses why some North Americans may be having difficulty accepting the new open-space schools, and what can be done about it. (Editor)

Attitude and use in language do not always coincide. The foreign language teacher should be aware of language variation so that he can decide what forms to teach and when to introduce variants. Several generalizations about variation and acceptability in language are made. (Author/ND)

Second part of article begun in Engl Lang Teaching, v23 n2, Jan 1969.