In responses to English questions, prefacing with the particle oh indicates that, from the viewpoint of the answerer, a question is problematic in terms of its relevance, presuppositions, or context. In addition, oh-prefacing is used to foreshadow reluctance to advance the conversational topic invoked by a question; it may also be part of a “trouble-premonitory” response to various types of How are you inquiries in conversational openings and elsewhere. (Conversation analysis, English, utterance design, particles.)

Supported by contemporary evidence, this study discusses the revival of Hebrew a century ago (within two or three decades), with a focus on the actual total shift of pre-Israel Palestine's Jewish community from Yiddish and several other languages to Hebrew as an all-purpose means of communication. First, four “factors” that prevailed prior to and during the revival are discussed: the “communicative”, “political”, “religious”, and “literary.” The study then proposes schematically that the shift to Hebrew evolved in a cycle consisting of four consecutive albeit partially overlapping “steps”: (1) The children are instilled with desired language attitudes. (2) The children acquire the code, Hebrew. (3) The children transfer Hebrew, now a second language, out of the schools. (4) With these children now adults, their newly born receive Hebrew as a first language. Finally, the study suggests that, in the absence of a central authority, the revival can be seen as a case of “micro language planning,” in which potential speakers constituted “language planning agents” active in “language planning cells.” (Language revival, Hebrew, language planning, language shift, vernacular)

The Tamil language has had its current standard written form since the 13th century; but because of increasing diglossia, spoken Tamil dialects have now diverged so radically from earlier norms, including the written standard (LT, or Literary Tamil) that no spoken dialect, regional or social, can function as the koiné or lingua franca. Because LT is never used for authentic informal oral communication between live speakers, there has always been a need for some sort of spoken “standard” koiné for inter-dialect communication. Aside from interpersonal communication, one hears this inter-dialect koiné most clearly in the so-called “social”film, which arose out of its antecedent, the popular or “social” drama. Conversational portions of novels and short stories also exhibit spoken forms, though not always as clearly “phonetic” as a phonetician might expect. The goal of this paper is to examine the concept of “language standardization” as it has been applied to other languages, focusing on the role of literacy and writing in this process; then to present evidence for, as well as the sources of, koinæization of "Standard Spoken Tamil"; and then to determine whether SST is in fact an emergent standard, given the challenges of literacy and writing. (Standardization, Tamil, diglossia, linguae francae, koinés)