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Although there is a substantial amount of linguistic research on standard language acquisition little attention has been given to the mechanisms underlying second dialect acquisition. Using a combination of function-based grammar and sociolinguistic methodology to analyze topic marking strategies the unguided acquisition of a standard by speakers of nonstandard varieties is examined in two distinct linguistic and geographical situations: in a Caribbean creole situation (Belize) with special attention to the acquisition of acrolects by native speakers of basilects and in a noncreole situation (PRC) documenting the acquisition of standard Chinese (Putonghua) by speakers of nonstandard varieties represented in Cultural Revolution literature Wuhan Chinese and Suzhou Wu story-telling style. In both cases psychosocial factors linguistic bias toward nonnative renderings of the standard varieties the social status of their speakers and related political and educational consequences play an important role in the development of second dialects. The broad-ranging analysis of a single feature of oral discourse leads to the formulation of cross-linguistic generalizations in acquisition studies and results in an evaluation of the putative uniqueness of creole languages. Related issues addressed include the effect of linguistic bias on the development and use of language varieties by marginalized groups; the interaction of three major language components — semantics syntax and pragmatics — in spontaneous communication; and the development of methods to identify discourse units. The ultimate goal underlying the comparison of specific discourse variables in Belizean and Chinese standard acquisition is to evaluate the relative merits of substratal superstratal and universal explanations in language development.

‘Think globally act locally’ is the message of Language Policy: Dominant English Pluralist Challenges. The book examines the impact of English in countries in which it is taken for granted — Australia Britain Canada New Zealand and the USA. It explores how the dominance of English impacts on the development of national language policies the maintenance of minority languages the ability to provide services in other languages the efforts to promote first language and bilingual education programs and the opportunities for adult and child second language and literacy training. The book examines language and language-in-education policies in these countries and the extent to which English influences some policies or preludes others. It explores the viability of a statement on national language policies that could be adopted by the International Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) organization as a statement of principles. The book explores how to raise issues of individual social and educational responsibilities that TESOL members must face as they are influenced by and can influence the language policy agendas established in these countries. It explores what can be learned from other English dominant nations and compares language policy and practice developing a more cross-national view on rights and responsibilities in language and language-in-education in these five dominant nations.

Roy Harris’s thoroughgoing attack on the presuppositions underpinning the dominant traditions of Western thought about language and his advocacy of a radically reconceived linguistics focused on the idea that the linguistic sign is contextually created and interpreted as a function of the meaningful integration of communicative behaviour have made him one of the most controversial figures in the field today. In the essays in this volume Naomi S. Baron Bob Borsley Philip Carr David Fleming Rom Harré Anthony Holiday John E. Joseph Frederick J. Newmeyer David R. Olson Trevor Pateman John Sören Pettersson and John R. Taylor offer a critical examination of various aspects and implications of Harris’s views in reponse to which Harris contributes an article that both engages with his critics and develops some of the major themes of his work.

This volume is about various aspects of the theory and application of language contact and language conflict phenomena seen from an interdisciplinary perspective. The focus is on the linguistic social psychological and educational issues (conditions constraints and consequences) involved in the status and use of languages in multilingual settings.

The book is divided into four sections dealing with the following areas: Theoretical issues: This section addresses key issues such as the nature of the concepts of language maintenance language loyalty and language identity language shift language loss and language death. It includes the search for models of the often contradictory theoretical issues involved in language contact.

Language policy and language planning: This section examines the various language policies carried out by official agencies and focuses on the two basic options available to a multilingual nation: assimilation or pluralism.

Attitudes towards languages: The section is geared towards research into determinants of language attitudes the methods for the measurements of attitudes as well as the relationship between language policy and attitude change.

Codeswitching and language choice: The linguistic social psychological and anthropological implications of using two different codes will be examined from different perspectives. Relevant research topics include: the situational uses of code-switching linguistic and social constraints on codeswitching and code-switching vs. borrowing. A further research paradigm deals with the search for relativized constraints resulting from the interaction of universal principles and aspects particular to each codeswitching situation.

The articles of the present volume consist of generative analyses dealing with several current topics of discussion and debate in syntactic theory such as clitics word order scrambling directionality movement. The data in the volume are drawn from a number of typologically diverse languages (e.g. Arabic Berber Dutch Gaelic Greek Malagasy).<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>

This book offers an analysis of the French clitic object pronouns lui and le in the radically functional Columbia school framework contrasting this framework with sentence-based treatments of case selection. It suggests that features of the sentence such as subject and object relations normally taken as pretheoretical categories of observation about language are in fact part of a theory of language which does not withstand empirical testing. It shows that the correct categories are neither those of structural case nor those of lexical case but rather semantic ones. Traditionally anomalies in the selection of dative and accusative case in French such as case government use of the dative for possession and disadvantaging its use in the faire-causative construction and other puzzling distributional irregularities have been used to support the idea of an autonomous non-functional central core of syntactic phenomena in language. The present analysis proposes semantic constants for lui and le which render all their occurrences explicable in a straightforward way. The same functional perspective informs issues of cliticity and pronominalization as well. The solution offered here emerges from an innovative instrumental view of linguistic meaning an acknowledgment that communicative output is determined only partially and indirectly by purely linguistic input with extralinguistic knowledge and human inference bridging the gap. This approach entails identification of the pragmatic factors influencing case selection and a reevaluation of thematic-role theory and reveals the crucial impact of discourse on the structure as well as the functioning of grammar. One remarkable feature of the study is its extensive and varied data base. The hypothesis is buttressed by hundreds of fully contextualized examples and large-scale counts drawn from modern French texts.