Research in the supporting sciences

This paper reports on the results of a detailed empirical study of word order correlations, based on a sample of 625 languages. The primary result is a determination of exactly what pairs of elements correlate in order with the verb and object. Some pairs of elements that have been claimed to correlate in order with the verb and object do not in fact exhibit any correlation. The author argues against the Head-Dependent Theory (HDT), according to which the correlations reflect a tendency towards consistent ordering of heads and dependents. He offers an alternative account, the Branching Direction Theory (BDT), based on consistent ordering of phrasal and nonphrasal elements. According to the BDT, the word order correlations reflect a tendency for languages to be consistently right-branching or consistently left-branching. This paper reports upon a small-scale pilot study for further investigation into the perceptual development in the acquisition of durational contrasts by different levels of adult English-speakers ofjapanese. Four word-tokens edited by a synthesiser generate word-stimuli varying the duration of a certain consonant/vowel (originally contained in each word-token) along a durational continuum. These synthetic word-stimuli were randomised and presented to both native speakers and English-speaking learners ofjapanese, in four forced-choice word identification tasks. in The reduplicative babbling of five French- and five English-learning infants was examined for evidence of language-specific rhythmic patterns. Three types of patterns were examined: final-syllable lengthening, timing of nonfinal syllables, and number of syllables per utterance. Both English and French exhibit final-syllable lengthening but, because of variable word stress, English tends to lengthen nonfinal stressed syllables, as well as final ones. Thus French final-syllable lengthening is more salient because it is the only regular source of lengthening. There is also some indication that the magnitude of final syllable lengthening is greater in French than in English. In addition, French nonfinal syllables, which are not subject to English variable word stress, are generally equal in length, whereas English tends to have more irregularly timed nonfinal syllables. Finally, French breath-groups often contain as many as four to six syllables, whereas intervals between stressed syllables in English rarely contain more than three syllables. The reduplicative babbling of the French and American infants showed characteristics of the ambient language. In particular, the babbling of the French infants showed a significantly higher percentage of final-syllable lengthening than that of the American infants. The magnitude of their final-syllable lengthening was also greater. The French infants also produced significantly more reduplicative babbles that were four or more syllables in length. Finally, the nonfinal syllables of the French infants tended to be more regularly timed than those of the American infants, although this pattern emerged only in the later stage of the infants' reduplicative babbles. cultural norms. analyses the codes of the dominated groups This paper provides a sociolinguistic description of Maltese are made. Finally a brief discussion is taken English language use in Malta at present, in terms of up as to whether and to what extent it would be who speaks what language, where and when. Some appropriate to consider Maltese English as a new observations on English language contact with institutionalised variety of English. minority children's comprehension of This exploratory study is an attempt to examine linguistic minority (LM) children's comprehension of the language used by the teacher in a fifth grade classroom of Norwegian and LM children. A further goal is to examine how teachers adjust their communication to their pupils' language competence. A language comprehension test was developed on the basis of two hours of recorded instruction on local history by the teacher. Both Norwegian and LM children were tested indi-vidually. A number of teachers were asked to evaluate the expected difficulty of the same test items for both groups. The results show that some of the LM children still have serious comprehension problems despite the fact that they were born in Norway and had all their schooling within the Norwegian school system. Words related to the physical context of the classroom and frequently used abstract expressions were well understood. Words less frequently used posed problems for the weakest pupils even in cases where the words were concrete and understanding context-dependent. The teachers correctly expected the LM children to comprehend less than their Norwegian classmates. However, they systematically accentuated the differences between pupil groups. presents results of a research project on linguistic aspects of migration across the language border The is on French-speaking migrants living in Basle and Berne, two cities characterised by a German/Swiss German diglossia. In order to the question of how migrants experience the redefinition of their identity (what options do they have in this respect? what does the diglossia play in this process ? ) various and qualitative have been combined. The in the Romandie The demography and patterning of multilingualism and multiculturalism in Britain has yet to be fully explored. This neglect is especially evident in the case of the Chinese community. Exploration of the ethnographic background of this community by origin, social background, language and generation reveals the extent of its linguistic and social diversity. As a first step towards investigating the differential social experiences and language development of subgroups of Chinese in the UK, findings from a study of language choice amongst a group of Chinese students are presented. Elicited information on language choice in different situations and language attitudes reveals that the most salient influence on speakers' linguistic behaviour comes from the identity of the audience, with factors such as topic and setting subservient to particular audience types [examples with discussion]. This finding supports Bell's (1984) theory of audience design, which highlights the sociocultural identity and the interpersonal relationship of the participants as an important dimension of language variation and choice. Furthermore, it stresses the need for any investigation into the internal structuring and cultural values of communities to be sensitive to their social and behavioural background; thus we might hope to work towards enhancing interethnic communication in a multicultural context. of certain sociolinguistic findings, citing detailed evidence from research in Northern Ireland and Philadelphia, which emphasise the need for acknowledging the importance of looseknit network ties in facilitating linguistic innovations. They then propose that the link between network and class can be made via the notion of weak network ties using the process-based model of the macrolevel suggested by Thomas Hojrup's theory of life-modes. This paper presents a model to explain structural constraints on code-switching. A major claim is that codeswitching, like other naturally-occurring language data, follows principles which are in-ternally present as part of the speaker's grammatical competence. The model relies crucially on making a distinction in codeswitching between the matrix language, which has the dominant role, and the embedded language(s). It also explains codeswitching data in terms of a distinction between content and system morphemes. Empirical data support these claims. against subsequently heard speakers were judged. These findings were observed using personality descriptors which have similar connotative and denotative meaning across the two languages, allowing comparability of results. Although findings were very similar for both groups, increases in fluency affected ratings more uniformly for Chinese than for American raters. Implications for contextual influences on person perception and social cognition are discussed. Three Canadian-English infants and three Parisian-French bi-weekly from or ;2, naturalistic Their babbled utterances were transcribed phon-etically and categorised according to consonant-type and vowel-type. The contexts for each utterance were described in terms in both specific and more general contextual categories. Observed frequencies of co-occurrences between phonetic and contextual categories were compared to expected frequencies, and deviations were considered to be patterns in babbling. Patterning increased after age 1 ;0 for most infants, and from 15 per cent to 30 per cent of each infant's babbled utterances recurred in particular contexts with a greater-than-expected frequency. Similarities in patterns were found both within and across language groups. These sound-meaning correspondences in babbling are viewed as continuous with early situation-bound meaning in words. The utterances of one French and one American infant at 0;5, 0;8, 0;ll, and l;2 were transcribed and acoustically analysed for syllable duration and vowel formant values. Both general and language-specific effects emerged in the longitudinal study. Initial similarities in the consonantal repertoires of both infants, increasing control in producing target F l and F 2 values, and developmental changes in babbling characteristics over time seem to reflect universal patterns. Yet the babbling of the infants differed in ways that appear to be due to differences in their language environments. Shifts in the infants' sound repertoires reflected phoneme frequencies in the adult languages. The English-learning infant produced more closed syllables, which is characteristic of English, than the French-learning infant. The French-learning infant tended to produce more regularly-timed nonfinal syllables and showed significantly more fina