The rudiments of Latin and English grammar; designed to facilitate the study of both languages, by connecting them together.

"Recommended by the University at Cambridge, (Mass.) to be used by those who are intended for that seminary.

English teachers' choice of language for publication: Qualitative insights from Bangladesh

The aim of this small-scale research was to gain some understanding of Bangladeshi English language teachers' language preference for publication purposes & the extent of the use of Bangla (Bengali), the L1, in their professional practice. Qualitative data for the study were gathered by means of a self-produced questionnaire. Results show that about three-quarters of the teachers published or would publish entirely in English because they believed that it was, among other reasons, the usual professional practice. More importantly, a number of teachers stated that they felt more comfortable writing academic essays in English. Regarding the use of L1, all 37 respondents pointed out that they used it sparingly in the classroom, & only a small number considered it a barrier in learning English, the L2. While emphasising the study's limitations, the paper suggests that English teachers' lack of confidence in L1 academic writing may be seen as indicating the potential direction of a slowly emerging individual bilingualism among university teachers of English. However, the paper also argues that the emergence of this potential bilingualism can be seen only at the individual rather than societal level, &, within the academic context, only in the limited domain of academic writing. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document

Coherence and understanding in informal conversations between native and non-native speakers of English

This study investigates informal conversations between native English speakers and international students living and studying in the UK. 10 NNS participants recorded themselves during conversations with native speakers. The audio-recordings were transcribed and a fine-grained, qualitative analysis was employed to examine how the participants jointly achieved both coherence and understanding in the conversations, and more specifically how the NNSs contributed to this achievement. The key areas of investigation focused on features of topic management, such as topic initiations, changes and transitions, and on the impact which any communicative difficulties may have on the topical continuity of the conversations. The data suggested that these conversations flowed freely and coherently, and were marked by a relative scarcity of the communicative difficulties often associated with NS-NNS interactions. Moreover, language difficulties were found to have minimal impact on the topic development of the conversations. Unlike most previous research in the field, the data further indicated that the NNSs were able to make active contributions to the initiation and change of topics, and to employ a range of strategies to manage these effectively and coherently. The study considers the implications which the findings may have for teaching and learning, for second language acquisition research, and for non-native speakers everywhere.

Topic continuity in informal conversations between native and non-native speakers of English

Topic management by non-native speakers (NNSs) during informal conversations has received comparatively little attention from researchers, and receives surprisingly little attention in second language learning and teaching. This article reports on one of the topic management strategies employed by international students during informal, social interactions with native-speaker peers, exploring the process of maintaining topic continuity following temporary suspensions of topics. The concept of side sequences is employed to illustrate the nature of different types of topic suspension, as well as the process of jointly negotiating a return to the topic. Extracts from the conversations show that such sequences were not exclusively occasioned by language difficulties, and that the non-native speaker participants were able to effect successful returns to the main topic of the conversations.

From Spanish paintings to murder:topic transitions in casual conversations between native and non-native speakers of English

This article explores some of the strategies used by international students of English to manage topic shifts in casual conversations with English-speaking peers. It therefore covers aspects of discourse which have been comparatively under-researched, and where research has also tended to focus on the problems rather than the communicative achievements of non-native speakers. A detailed analysis of the conversations under discussion, which were recorded by the participants themselves, showed that they all flowed smoothly, and this was in large measure due to the ways in which topic shifts were managed. The paper will focus on a very distinct type of topic shift, namely that of topic transitions, which enable a smooth flow from one topic to another, but which do not explicitly signal that a shift is taking place. It will examine how the non-native speakers achieved coherence in the topic transitions which they initiated, which strategies or procedures they employed, and show how their initiations were effective in enabling the proposed topic to be understood, taken up and developed. It therefore adds to our understanding of the interactional achievements of international speakers in informal, social contexts. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

Negotiating topic changes:native and non-native speakers of English in conversation

There is a tendency to view conversations involving non-native speakers (NNSs) as inevitably fraught with problems, including an inability to handle topic management. This article, in contrast, will focus on effective topic changes made by non-native speakers during informal conversations with native speakers of English. A micro-analysis of ten conversations revealed several ways of shifting conversational topics; however, the article concentrates on those strategies which the participants used to effect a particular type of topic move, namely 'marked topic changes', where there is no connection at all with previous talk. The findings show how these topic changes were jointly negotiated, and that the non-native speakers' contributions to initiating new topics were competently managed.

The Pronunciation of the Aspirated Consonants P, T, and K in English by Native Speakers of Spanish and French

This study examines whether explicit phonetic instruction helps Spanish and French speakers more closely approximate native pronunciation of the aspirated variants of the English consonants p, t, and k. The study results indicate that phonetic instruction clearly benefited the subjects, and the findings warrant further investigation.

Formal and philological inquiries into the nature of interrogatives, indefinites, disjunction, and focus in Sinhala and other languages

In this thesis I examine a variety of linguistic elements which involve ``alternative'' semantic values---a class arguably including focus, interrogatives, indefinites, and disjunctions---and the connections between these elements. This study focusses on the analysis of such elements in Sinhala, with comparison to Malayalam, Tlingit, and Japanese. The central part of the study concerns the proper syntactic and semantic analysis of Q[uestion]-particles (including Sinhala "da", Malayalam "-oo", Japanese "ka"), which, in many languages, appear not only in interrogatives, but also in the formation of indefinites, disjunctions, and relative clauses. This set of contexts is syntactically-heterogeneous, and so syntax does not offer an explanation for the appearance of Q-particles in this particular set of environments. I propose that these contexts can be united in terms of semantics, as all involving some element which denotes a set of ``alternatives''. Both wh-words and disjunctions can be analysed as creating Hamblin-type sets of ``alternatives''. Q-particles can be treated as uniformly denoting variables over choice functions which apply to the aforementioned Hamblin-type sets, thus ``restoring'' the derivation to normal Montagovian semantics. The treatment of Q-particles as uniformly denoting variables over choice functions provides an explanation for why these particles appear in just this set of contexts: they all include an element with Hamblin-type semantics. However, we also find variation in the use of Q-particles; including, in some languages, the appearance of multiple morphologically-distinct Q-particles in different syntactic contexts. Such variation can be handled largely by positing that Q-particles may vary in their formal syntactic feature specifications, determining which syntactic contexts they are licensed in. The unified analysis of Q-particles as denoting variables over choice functions also raises various questions about the proper analysis of interrogatives, indefinites, and disjunctions, including issues concerning the nature of the semantics of wh-words and the syntactic structure of disjunction. As well, I observe that indefinites involving Q-particles have a crosslinguistic tendency to be epistemic indefinites, i.e. indefinites which explicitly signal ignorance of details regarding who or what satisfies the existential claim. I provide an account of such indefinites which draws on the analysis of Q-particles as variables over choice functions. These pragmatic ``signals of ignorance'' (which I argue to be presuppositions) also have a further role to play in determining the distribution of Q-particles in disjunctions. The final section of this study investigates the historical development of focus constructions and Q-particles in Sinhala. This diachronic study allows us not only to observe the origin and development of such elements, but also serves to delimit the range of possible synchronic analyses, thus providing us with further insights into the formal syntactic and semantic properties of Q-particles. This study highlights both the importance of considering various components of the grammar (e.g. syntax, semantics, pragmatics, morphology) and the use of philology in developing plausible formal analyses of complex linguistic phenomena such as the crosslinguistic distribution of Q-particles.

Investigating Miami English-Spanish Bilinguals' Treatment of English Deictic Verbs of Motion

This investigation focused on the treatment of English deictic verbs of motion by Spanish-English bilinguals in Miami. Although English and Spanish share significant overlap of the spatial deixis system, they diverge in important aspects. It is not known how these verbs are processed by bilinguals. Thus, this study examined Spanish-English bilinguals’ interpretation of the verbs come, go, bring, and take in English. Forty-five monolingual English speakers and Spanish-English bilinguals participated. Participants were asked to watch video clips depicting motion events and to judge the acceptability of accompanying narrations spoken by the actors in the videos. Analyses showed that, in general, monolinguals and bilinguals patterned similarly across the deictic verbs come, bring, go and take. However, they did differ in relation to acceptability of word order for verbal objects. Also, bring was highly accepted by all language groups across all goal paths, possibly suggesting an innovation in its use.

Preposition Stranding in Heritage Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

Influential bodies of work in language acquisition studies single out heritage bilingualism as a discrete acquisition process within the bilingualism continuum. In regards to the acquisition of WH-/QU- interrogatives containing prepositional phrases (PP), the present study examined whether heritage speakers (HS) of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) produce preposition stranding (P-stranding) constructions in their heritage language, in contrast to monolingual and adult speakers of BP, where prepositions are pied-piped to form the interrogative. Participants were HS of BP born in the USA and in Brazil, monolinguals, and late bilingual adults. The experiment consisted of an elicited production task and a grammaticality judgment task, both carried out in BP and then in English. Results showed that HS born in the USA use P-stranding in QU- interrogatives productively and systematically, in contrast to the other three groups. Moreover, no evidence of protracted acquisition was found in this group. No signs of attrition were detected among bilinguals.

Evaluating the Java Virtual Machine as a Target for Languages Other Than Java

The portability and runtime safety of programs which are executed on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) makes the JVM an attractive target for compilers of languages other than Java. Unfortunately, the JVM was designed with language Java in mind, and lacks many of the primitives required for a straighforward implementation of other languages. Here, we discuss how the JVM may be used to implement other object-oriented languages. As a practical example of the possibilities, we report on a comprehensive case study. The open source Gardens Point Component Pascal compiler compiles the entire Component Pascal language, a dialect of Oberon-2, to JVM bytecodes. This compiler achieves runtime efficiencies which are comparable to native-code implementations of procedural languages.

Implementing languages other than Java on the Java Virtual Machine

The portability and runtime safety of programs which are executed on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) makes the JVM an attractive target for compilers of languages other than Java. Unfortunately, the JVM was designed with language Java in mind, and lacks many of the primitives required for a straight forward implementation of other languages. Here, we discuss how the JVM may be used to implement other object oriented languages. As a practical example of the possibilities, we report on a comprehensive case study. The open source Gardens Point Component Pascal compiler compiles the entire Component Pascal language, a dialect of Oberon 2, to JVM bytecodes. This compiler achieves runtime efficiencies which are comparable to native code implementations of procedural languages.

On the Classification of Recursive Languages

A one-sided classifier for a given class of languages converges to 1 on every language from the class and outputs 0 infinitely often on languages outside the class. A two-sided classifier, on the other hand, converges to 1 on languages from the class and converges to 0 on languages outside the class. The present paper investigates one-sided and two-sided classification for classes of recursive languages. Theorems are presented that help assess the classifiability of natural classes. The relationships of classification to inductive learning theory and to structural complexity theory in terms of Turing degrees are studied. Furthermore, the special case of classification from only positive data is also investigated.