This article looks at certain verbs in Ikalanga, a Bantu language of the Shona group as used in Botswana. This language is classified in Guthrie (1967-71) as S.16. In this language, just as in the English language, verbs form one of the open grammatical categories. While it is obvious that the bulk of these verbs are “main verbs” as is the case in the English language, there is a small subset of verbs which appear to have a dual status in the sense that in some cases they act as main verbs while in other cases, they perform the function of helping verbs or auxiliary verbs. Following Greenbaum and Quirk (1990) above, we refer to these verbs as “primary verbs”. 

    This paper studies the hosting system of object clitics cluster(ing) (Henceforth OCC) in Guezenaya Tarifyt Berber (Henceforth GTB) as based on their (i) distributional zones and (ii) syntactic correlations with (non-)attracting functional heads. It is argued in previous studies that the (cluster) of object clitics is selectively distributed into pre-verbal and post-verbal positions depending on the presence or absence of a functional layer in the clause. When the functional layer is lexicalised by functional heads, the proclisis/pre-verbal distribution of OCC arises. (cf. Ouhalla 1988-2002 and Boukhris 1998). However, it is shown that there is an intralanguage micro-variation in the distribution of OCC and which can be  divide into three classes viz (i) an enclisis distribution of OCC with V and without a functional layer in the clause, (ii) a proclisis / pre-verbal distribution with an activated functional layer and (iii) an enclisis distribution of OCC with a lexicalised functional layer. Within a Minimalist program framework (Chomsky 1995, 2001) and the basis of these observations, it is argued that the occurrence of a functional head to the left of V does not necessarily induce proclisis /preverbal distribution of OCC and that these functional heads actually fall into two classes: those which attract OCC to the preverbal position and those which fail to do so. These patterns of distribution seemto indicate that the hosting system of OCC and the mapping of the cliticisation sites is determined by the presence or absence of an operator in the functional superstructure of GTB sentences.

    Contact between different speech communities represents one breeding ground for change and accommodation which can affect the forms as well as the functions of language. Code switching (CS), as one result of this contact situation, is an important site to display the dominance of one language over another, or to witness the resolve of a speech community to incorporate another language so as to satisfy their needs, be them syntactic, lexical or pragmatic. The aim of this article is to trace down the formal manifestations of this type of language negotiation whereby switching occurs between two or more languages. It will be shown that, in a CS situation, collision of languages is highly regularised by specific syntactic features. A particular approach based on the analysis of selectional properties of the functional heads is advocated; this I will call the Functional Parameter Constraint (FPC). The underlying assumption of the FPC, which owes its theoretical motivation to recent syntactic research (e.g. Abney 1986, Ouhalla 1991, Chomsky 1995), is that interlanguage parameters, as opposed to language universals, constrain CS. Parameters are restricted to the features of functional categories given that their lexical counterparts are conceptually selected entries which are drawn from an invariant universal vocabulary, and therefore, are not to be parameterized (Chomsky 1995).

    Following Ouhalla (1991), three selectional properties for which functional categories can be parameterized cross-linguistically are identified, namely c-selection, m-selection and grammatical features. A corpus consisting of naturally occurring data was gathered to test the empirical validity of the hypothesis set for the study. The results of the examination of Moroccan Arabic/French bilingual conversations provide the sought empirical support.

    There is an increasing interest in Morocco to elaborate programmes that help overcome the learning difficulties the pupils face in the acquisition of MSA both in the kindergarten and the primary school. Nonetheless, it has been pointed out by educational scholars and the pupils’ parents alike that the children who have been able to finish the primary school and even those who finished their university education still suffer from learning problems that hinder efficient literacy acquisition. There is further a general feeling expressed in many reports that the Moroccan educational system has not been so far good enough in realizing the expected objectives. This is why there is an urgent need to find out the origins of those learning difficulties as they are experienced by teachers inside the classroom setting, their types, and how serious they are. There is, however, a dearth of research in this regard. Such studies are very likely to help determine the nature of the problems faced and, thus, to enable the educational policy makers to take the appropriate decisions to solve them. This article is, albeit, a modest step in this direction. I investigate the linguistic problems faced by the 5^th grade Moroccan learners of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). I used a questionnaire which I administered to the teachers of this language as a methodological means to elicit the most frequent learning difficulties they think the children encounter. I realised, on the basis of the collected data and the statistical analyses, that there were many such linguistic difficulties at the four levels of the language, i.e., speaking, listening, writing, and reading. Relying on the findings, I propose a few preliminary suggestions for educational policy makers.

    There is no doubt that the reading skill is one of the language learning skills that works together with the remaining skills in enabling a learner to have a sound command of the language. This is why many applied linguists think that reading should be given at least as much emphasis as the other language skills in any foreign language programme. However, the ability to read is not an easy task to achieve particularly among Saudi learners of English. This article, which aims to measure the reading skill among Saudi learners of English, reveals that the ability of students in reading is not good enough to help them pursue further studies. Thus, remedy work and corrective measures are necessary to improve Saudi learners’ reading skills.