CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

On Conditionals provides the first major cross-disciplinary account of conditional (if-then) constructions. Conditional sentences directly reflect the language user's ability to reason about alternatives, uncertainties, and unrealised contingencies. An understanding of the conceptual and behavioural organisation involved in the construction and interpretation of these kinds of sentences therefore provides fundamental insights into the inferential strategies and the cognitive and linguistic processes of human beings. The present volume brings together studies from several perspectives - philosophical, linguistic and psychological - and aims to emphasise the intrinsic connections between the issues to be addressed and to point to new directions for interdisciplinary work.

Language in the USA is a volume of specially commisioned studies on the language situation in America, how it came to be the way it is, and the forces of changes within it. The USA has its own unique pattern of languages: American English, the principal language, different in structure and use from other kinds of English in the world; two hundred American Indian languages, some of them flourishing as never before; Spanish, spoken in North America before English and now the second most important language in the country; a cost of immigrant languages, each with a different history of accommodation to the American scene. The book explains the place of these various languages and how they are used in education, the professions, and general communication. One objective of the editors was to provide background information on such issues as legalese, Black English, bilingual education, Indian alphabets, correct English. Another objective was to stimulate interests in the facts of language use in local communities and in the nation. Language in the USA is a work of reference, which gives an accessible account of the very considerable research in this area done in the last twenty years or so by linguists, sociologists, educationalists, and anthropologists. There is no comparable published source, and it should prove of great value to all those who are professionally involved in these issues or who wish to take a responsible interest in them.

First published in 1977, this book draws together various contributions on the area of speech used by parents with their children. Numerous perspectives on the topic include the comparison of baby talk with other simplified registers by linguists, the analysis of cross-cultural differences in mother and child interaction by anthropologists, and the relation of language development to differences in styles of childcare and the child's social environment in general by psychologists. The text had its origins in a conference sponsored by the Sociolinguistics Committee of the Social Science Research Council. It will be of value to anyone with an interest in language acquisition and development.

The work of the linguist Charles A. Ferguson spans more than three decades, and is remarkable for having been consistently at the forefront of scholarship on the relationship between language and society. This volume collects his most influential and seminal papers, each having expanded the parameters of sociolinguistics and the sociology of language. Taken together, they cover a wide range of topics and issues, and, more importantly, reflect the intellectual progress of a founder of the sociolinguistic field. The volume is divided thematically into four sections, and an introduction by Thom Huebner outlines the evolution of Ferguson's ideas and the impact they have had on other scholars. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in the field of sociolinguistics.

The work of the linguist Charles A. Ferguson spans more than three decades, and is remarkable for having been consistently at the forefront of scholarship on the relationship between language and society. This volume collects his most influential and seminal papers, each having expanded the parameters of sociolinguistics and the sociology of language. Taken together, they cover a wide range of topics and issues, and, more importantly, reflect the intellectual progress of a founder of the sociolinguistic field. The volume is divided thematically into four sections, and an introduction by Thom Huebner outlines the evolution of Ferguson's ideas and the impact they have had on other scholars. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in the field of sociolinguistics.

Additional Authors Include Mary I. Shamburger, Vera R. Lachmann, Russell K. Alspach And Others.

Contributing Authors William Bright, M. Shanmugam Pillai, Edward C. Dimock And Others. International Journal Of American Linguistics, V26, No. 3, Part 3.

Although grammatical agreement or concord is widespread in human languages, linguistic theorists have generally treated agreement phenomena as secondary or even marginal. All the papers in this volume, however, take agreement phenomena seriously, as presenting either a general issue in theory construction or a descriptive problem in particular types of languages. The theoretical perspectives range from purportedly theory-neutral typological frameworks to assumptions about the validity of one or another current formal model. Further, the degree of generality ranges from a universalist nature-of-human-language agenda to concern with one or another aspect of grammatical agreement or with agreement in a single language or language group.