Language identification (LID) is a critical first step for processing multilingual text. Yet most LID systems are not designed to handle the linguistic diversity of global platforms like Twitter, where local dialects and rampant code-switching lead language classifiers to systematically miss minority dialect speakers and multilingual speakers. We propose a new dataset and a character-based sequ...

Focusing on the process of grammaticization, whereby items with lexical meaning evolve into grammatical markers, this article examines the future temporal reference sectors of three diaspora varieties of African American English which have evolved in linguistic isolates and compares them with those of British-origin rural and mainstream varieties of English. With one exception, the same constra...

A variety of finite monoids is a class of finite monoids closed under taking submonoids, quotients and finite direct products. A language L is a subset of a finitely generated free monoid. The variety theorem of Eilenberg sets up a one to one correspondence between varieties of finite monoids and classes of languages called, appropriately, varieties of languages. Recent work in variety theory h...

Several investigations report a positive effect of childhood bilingualism on executive control (EC). An issue that has remained largely unexamined is the role of the typological distance between the languages spoken by bilinguals. In the present study we focus on children who grow up with Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek, two closely related varieties that differ from each other on all l...

The subtitle of this essay should not be interpreted in the way suggested by Bickerton (1990, 1995, 2002) or Givón (1998). Creoles can inform our research on the evolution of language not because there is anything empirically exceptional or unusual about the way they emerged (see, e.g., DeGraff 2003, 2005) but because the multitude of facts that we have learned over the past couple of decades a...

For large language continua, such as Gbe of West Africa, a major challenge stakeholders concerned with language planning issues are facing is the question of the extensibility of written materials. To adequately inform language development program decisions in terms of literature extensibility, ideally, indepth sociolinguistic studies would be conducted in all of the varieties involved, an unde...

the visual form of writing has not only meaning apart from the content of writing but also different language from the language of writing. based on this claim, graphologists believe that it is possible to recognize writers’ thought through their handwriting. in fact, graphologists constituted some principles for analyzing handwriting as well as semiotic system for interpreting the visual diver...

In this paper, I will vindicate the importance of syntactic change for the study of synchronic stages of natural languages, according to the following outline. First, I will analyze the relationship between the diachrony and synchrony of grammars, introducing some basic concepts: the notions of I-language/E-language, the role of Chomsky's (2005) three factors in language change, and some assump...