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)

Paper presented at the Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (74th, Miami Beach, Florida, November 1967).

Data on the development of fundamental frequency patterns and the emergence of semantic relations during the "one word period" in child language development are reported in this study. The research focuses on the changes that occur as children progress from producing single words to sequences of single words and finally to producing…

Prosodic characteristics of English, German, Spanish, and French are compared and contrasted in this second of a series of articles on general phonetic characteristics of American English. Major attention is given to declarative intonation, place of logical stress in the word and sense group, nature of logical stress, variations in syllable…

Two experiments conducted at the University of Texas at Austin are discussed in this paper. One experiment deals with the production of final syllable lengthening and stress in Spanish and English by native Spanish speakers learning English. The other experiment deals with judgments about the Spanish speakers' production of English by native…

This paper reviews the evidence that Proto-Niger-Congo was a tone language with only two level tones and seeks to find the evidence that will explain how some of the descendant languages have more than two tones. In particular it shows how synchronic tone rules in Cama and consonant correspondences between Cama and Yoruba suggest a new factor in…

The material in this report represents some of the earliest results of field research in the languages of Nepal by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc. Some of the results presented here are tentative hypotheses, subject to revision in the light of continuing research. Part I, the present volume, presents phonological data in terms of…

Three examples are given of cases where differences between Spanish and English syntax and intonation patterns are taught best through direct translation. Grammatical difficulties caused by "gustar" are overcome through the use of translation using "appeal" rather than "please". Similarly, problems for native speakers of English arising with…

By examining the relations among sections of the fundamental frequency contour used in judging an utterance as a question or statement, the experiment described in this report seeks a more detailed understanding of auditory-linguistic interaction in the perception of intonation contours. The perceptual process may be divided into stages (auditory,…

This study investigated some characteristics of intonation patterns in the English spoken by black adolescents in Seattle, Washington. It was hypothesized that if intonation is central to communicating attitude, and if Black English intonation differs systematically from that of Standard English, communication between blacks and whites may be…

Neurophysiological aspects of the development and use of accents in language are considered, including the function of age of the second language learner, left brain hemisphere, language tasks, and other neuroanatomical considerations. (CB)

It is argued that second-language classroom communication is often limited by the lack of instructor use of tonic pronouns. Two uses of the pronoun form that should be used from the beginning of the second-language program to promote authentic communication are described. (MSE)

Describes the development and evaluation of machinery for the visual feedback of intonation at the Institute for Phonetics, Nijmegen (The Netherlands). In terms of possible applications to second language language learning, equipment such as a pitch visualizer could assist the teaching of pronunciation and intonation, as well as be incorporated…