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Language and cultural preservation efforts among different communities of language speakers in the United States have received increasing attention as interest in linguistic rights and globalization continues to deepen. In addition to mounting evidence of the cognitive, psychological, and academic benefits of heritage language/community language (HL/CL) maintenance for linguistic-minority children, scholars have advocated for the recognition, support, and utilization of the potentially rich pool of HLs/CLs as a resource for filling linguistic and cultural voids in professional and political sectors of society. Throughout U.S. history, the most significant efforts for HL/CL instruction outside the home have occurred in community-based HL/CL schools. journals, centers, and university programs dedicated to HL/CL education and research. This article examines the contributions of community based HL/CL education programs to the promotion of language diversity in the United States. The authors begin by defining HL/CL and framing the boundaries of HL/CL education as distinct from language instruction programs offered in U.S. schools, where the attention has been primarily on English acquisition. Then, they review the history of HL/CL education in the United States, focusing on how educational language policy and politics have influenced the instructional models as well as the learning outcomes of HL/CL education. Next, the authors offer a synthesis of the challenges and needs faced by community-based HL/CL programs. Following this synthesis, they present contrastive examples of the different approaches to HL/CL education taken by two different communities, the Korean American and the Cambodian (Khmer) American. The authors conclude by arguing for a rediscovery of community-based HL/CL programs as an alternative but legitimate educational space, where critical discourses about and practices supportive of multilingualism and multiculturalism can flourish.

This comparative research study examined Grade Five Malaysian Aboriginal pupils’ mathematical performance on 30 computation and 20 word problem items in the academic Malay language and community Temiar language. The items were constructed in the Malay language before adapting and audio recording into the Temiar language using experienced Mathematics teachers and native speakers. One test consisting of monolingual test items written in Malay language (MAL) and, another bilingual test with audio test items in Temiar language and written items in Malay language (BCL) were constructed. These two tests with identical content validity, were administered spirally among 237 pupils from eight schools in two states. Findings indicated that for computation and word problem items, pupils found the BCL test easier. They performed significantly better in computation items than in word problem items for both tests, with Cohen’s d medium to high effect. The community language helped to alleviate the linguistics complications.

Vietnamese, the official language of Vietnam, is spoken natively by over seventy-five million people in Vietnam and greater Southeast Asia as well as by some two million overseas, predominantly in France, Australia, and the United States. The genetic affiliation of Vietnamese has been at times the subject of considerable debate (Diffloth 1992). Scholars such as Tabard (1838) maintained a relation to Chinese, while Maspero (1912), despite noting similarities to Mon-Khmer, argued for an affiliation with Tai. However, at least since the work of Haudricourt (1953), most scholars now agree that Vietnamese and related Vietic languages belong to the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic family.

In typological literature, there has been disagreement as to whether there should be distinction between relative clauses (RCs) and nominal sentential complements (NSCs) in pro-drop languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Khmer and Thai. In pro-drop languages, nouns can be dropped when its reference can be retrieved from context. Therefore, what has been defined as a gap in RCs (i.e., the controversial element hereafter) and has often been used for differentiating RCs from NSCs might actually be a zero pronoun, making syntactic structures of RC and NSCs indistinguishable. This article reviews the study of the processing of RC attachment in Thai and discusses how its results provide preliminary evidence supporting that RCs and NSCs in Thai are syntactically different constructions and the controversial element in RCs is not a zero pronoun. The article suggests a new promising tool for investigating an unresolved typological problem.

The Chong language uses a combination of different acoustic correlates to distinguish among its four contrastive registers (phonation types). Electroglottographic (EGG) and acoustic data were examined from original fieldwork on the Takhian Thong dialect. EGG data shows high open quotient (OQ) values for the breathy register, low OQ values for the tense register, intermediate OQ values for the modal register, and rapidly changing high to low OQ values for the breathy-tense register. Acoustic correlates indicate that H1-A3 best distinguishes between breathy and non-breathy phonation, but measures like H1-H2 and pitch are necessary to discriminate between tense and non-tense phonation. A comparison of spectral tilt and OQ measures shows the greatest correlation between OQ and H1-H2, suggesting that changes in the relative amplitude of frequencies in the upper spectrum are not directly related to changes in the open period of the glottal cycle. OQ is best correlated with changes in the degree of glottal tension.

Berber (or Tamazight) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by an estimated 15–25 million in North Africa. It is mainly spoken in Morocco, Algeria, and by the Touareg population in Niger and Mali. Berber is also a native language of populations living in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, though their numbers are less significant. Large Berber communities also live in Diasporas mainly in France, Spain, Holland, and Belgium. Three varieties of Berber are spoken in Morocco: Tarifit, spoken in northern Morocco, Tamazight, spoken in the Middle-Atlas, and Tashlhiyt, spoken in southern Morocco. Tashlhiyt, the variety presented here, is sufficiently homogeneous for all native speakers, who number an estimated 7–9 million, to communicate without difficulties (Stroomer 2008). There is nonetheless a measure of sub-dialectal variation, which affects mainly the way some stop consonants are produced. Three subsystems, corresponding roughly to three distinct geographical locations, can be identified: the ‘occlusive’ subsystem spoken in Agadir and its suburbs, the ‘fricative’ subsystem spoken mainly in the High-Atlas area, which spirantizes noncoronal obstruents /b k g/ in some contexts, and the ‘sibilant’ subsystem spoken in the Anti-Atlas area, where /t/ and /d/ are realized in some contexts as [s] and [z], respectively (Boukous 1994). This study is based on the speech of Tashlhiyt speakers who originate from Agadir. The text of ‘The North Wind and the Sun’ was read by a 27-year-old female speaker.

Goemai is an Afroasiatic (Chadic, West Chadic A, Angas-Goemai group) language spoken in Central Nigeria. The name Goemai [ɡ m i] is used by the speakers themselves to refer to both their language and their ethnic group. To outsiders, they are better known under the name Ankwe – a name that is also commonly found in the older linguistic, anthropological and historical literature. The Goemai live as farmers, fishermen and hunters in villages throughout the lowland savannah region south of the Jos Plateau and north of the Benue River, an area that is known geographically as the Great Muri Plains. The economy is based on agriculture (yam, millet, guineacorn, groundnut, beniseed) and is supplemented with fishing and hunting. Politically, the area belongs to Plateau State, and more specifically to the Local Government Areas Shendam and Qua’an Pan. Smaller Goemai-speaking communities are found in surrounding Local Government Areas as well as in Jos, the capital of Plateau State.

This short report draws attention to an interesting kind of configuration in the lexicon that seems to have escaped theoretical or systematic descriptive attention. These configurations, which we dub SEMPLATES, consist of an abstract structure or template, which is recurrently instantiated in a number of lexical sets, typically of different form classes. A number of examples from different language families are adduced, and generalizations made about the nature of semplates, which are contrasted to other, perhaps similar, phenomena.

ABSTRACT Learning the Malay language has been a challenging task for foreign language learners. Learners have to learn Malay grammar structure rules in order to write simple sentences. The word choice is important in constructing a sentence. Therefore, the study focuses on the use of adjectives in television advertisements among Korean learners at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea. The objectives of the study were to identify and discuss adjectives incorporated into the advertisements. The students involved in the study were ten male and female subjects from a Malay language class. The subjects had to choose one television advertisement and view it several times. They were given three weeks to identify and discuss the adjectives in the advertisements. The subjects were interviewed on their views about the adjectives in the advertisements. The interviews were video recorded and analyzed for the purpose of the study. The results of the study revealed that each subject managed to identify five adjectives per advertisement. They also managed to offer their views on the adjectives, which were not directly uttered by the models in the advertisements. It is hoped that a future study will focus on the use of adjectives via other means of media technology.

Santali presents structures with subject clitics in “P minus 2” (P-2) position, before the final verb and enclitic on the preverbal element, a position called “Backernagel” by Kidwai (2005). P-2 is commonly considered to lack clear cross-linguistic support; moreover, while generative accounts can accommodate utterance-second position (P2) as adjunction to a left-peripheral projection, they have no ready way of accommodating P -2. The history and synchrony of Munda “P-2” have elicited several accounts. Anderson (2007) considers three possibilities: Reanalysis of Proto-Munda subject proclitics as enclitic; extension of postverbal object clitics to preverbal subject function; attachment of original resumptive pronouns to the preverbal element. I present evidence for a different hypothesis: The Santali Backernagel clitics originate as P 2 or classical Wackernagel elements. A more fine-grained definition of Wackernagel in terms of different prosodic domains (such as utterance/theme vs. rheme) permits the hypothesis that the apparent P -2 is still a W ackernagel position, but within the rheme rather than the entire utterance, and that within the rheme, the prosodically strongest, preverbal-focus element is the most attractive clitic host. I support my account with evidence from Santali and other Kherwarian languages (which offer traces of an original P 2 position) and parallel developments in Iranian (where the different stages in the development can be traced in greater detail). Backernagel, thus, is a subtype of Wackernagel, and there is no need to assume a typologically problematic P -2 position for Munda (or for various Iranian varieties).