The recurrent features of a ‘prestige language’ are broadly reviewed. The prevailing socio-political constellation provides motivations for its rise, the ways of acquiring it, the domains it transmits, and the causes of its decline. The process of its nativization can be analysed synchronically in terms of creolization, and diachronically in terms of stratigraphy. The linking of a native language to the dominant culture results in either substratum or superstratum influences. Nativization may be overt—as lexemic, morphosyntactic or phonological borrowing—or it may be covert, expressing itself in style, calques, and metaphors. The lasting impact of the prestige language consists in standardization, the creation of a sprachbund, and a relatively stable culture of bilingualism.

Clark & Carlson 1982 claim that ‘every traditional illocutionary act is performed by means of an informative’; they therefore propose an additional initial informative illocution to every speech act analysis envisaged by previous theories. I show that C&C's analysis is unjustified; they apparently confuse perlocutionary effects of utterances or coöperative expectations from participants—and even the communicative presumption—with speakers' illocutionary intentions.

In Clark & Carlson 1982a, it was noted that traditional theories of speech acts cannot account for what is said to whom when a person speaks to more than one hearer at a time. The proposal was to add a new type of illocutionary act, the informative, in what was called the informative analysis. Allan 1986 has offered a critique of that proposal. This rejoinder considers the major defects in that critique: the fallacious use of illocutionary points and of the so-called communicative presumption; an unprincipled notion of addressee; a misreading of Clark & Carlson on participants; and a tacit confirmation of the informative analysis of certain indirect illocutionary acts. It is argued that these defects are fundamental, and thus Allan's critique collapses.

That Meso-America constitutes a legitimate linguistic area has been questioned. To address this question, concepts of ‘areal linguistics’ are here surveyed and refined. Proposed Meso-American areal traits are reconsidered against these findings, and are compared with those of other established linguistic areas. Meso-America proves to be a particularly strong linguistic area. These results contribute both to the study of Meso-American languages and to an understanding of areal linguistics generally.

Bickerton 1974, 1981, primarily in his work on Guyanese Creole, takes the position that an ordering Tense–Modal–Aspect is obligatory in creole languages. This paper shows that the situation is much more complex; reanalysis indicates that an ordering Modal–Tense–Aspect is more correct.

Among the important issues dealt with in studies of languages in contact have been the universality of the linguistic processes characteristic of these situations, and the role that a primary language may play in the shaping of the secondary language—as against the possibility of autonomous developments constrained by the linguistic system of the latter. This paper addresses these issues through an examination of the extension of estar in the speech of 27 bilinguals who represent different generations and degrees of Spanish language loss. It focuses mainly on three questions: (a) the path followed by the innovation; (b) the possible changes in the meaning of the form; and (c) the effect of bilingualism on the actuation of the change. The major results of the study are that language contact tends to accelerate internally motivated changes in the system of the less-used language; that direct influence from English is difficult to posit; and that syntactic/semantic changes proceed step by step, in a manner reminiscent of the lexical diffusion of phonological change.

The role of functional processes in language is examined in the context of an empirical study of /s/ deletion in Puerto Rican Spanish. Deletion of /s/ from 2sg. verb forms is shown to result in exceptionally high use of subject pronouns, especially with those verb forms rendered ambiguous by /s/ deletion. These findings are shown to fit in with a general tendency in Puerto Rican Spanish to use pronouns functionally as well as stylistically.

Comparatives of inequality in Italian are introduced by di or che, have a degree or an absolute negative interpretation, and have a modifying or a balancing function. Comparative di phrases are PP's generated as daughters of VP's or of AP's with a degree interpretation; like other PP's, they can modify or balance two items. Comparative che is a coördinator. When it introduces daughters of VP's or AP's, it has a degree interpretation; when it introduces a sister to S, it has an absolute negative interpretation. Because of the coördinating nature of che, it has only a balancing function.