Virgin Islands, British: Language Situation 437
‘Language,’ Viëtor covered the problem of sounds and
writing, the tasks of philology, aspects of grammar
teaching, and the influence of classical models on the
description of modern languages. He remarked caus-
tically that if – on the classical model – the article
were to be given four cases, then nouns ought to have
six:
1. nominative: Berlin
2. accusative: Berlin
3. genitive: ab (or von) Berlin
4. dative: zu (or nach) Berlin
5. locative: in Berlin
6. instrumental: mit (or durch) Berlin.
The second section (‘Teaching’) dealt with first
language pedagogy and the teaching of modern for-
eign languages and classics. Viëtor argued against
the learning of rules and lists for grammar and lexi-
con. He also pointed out that the role of the text in
FLT had become perverted to the point of being sim-
ply a means of confirming the syntactic rules just
taught.
The functions of the text were taken up again in his
discussion of the main principles of FLT (Viëtor,
1902), which cover the language ecology (which lan-
guages ought to be taught, and in which order?),
the role of phonetic instruction, morphological de-
scription (to be based on spoken rather than
written forms), the importance of syntactic principles
(insight) as opposed to rules, and the nature of the
texts to be used.
Viëtor initiated a lengthy process of reform in lan-
guage teaching in Germany (Hüllen, 1979: 1). Through
Virgin Islands, British: Language Situation
Editorial Team
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The British Virgin Islands are an overseas territory of
the United Kingdom with internal self-government,
consisting of more than 60 Caribbean islands that
are part of the West Indies. Only 16 of the islands
are inhabited.
The first settlers of the British Virgin Islands were
Arawak Indians, from South America; these were
followed by Caribs in the 15th century. Christopher
Columbus stopped here on his second trip to the New
World and named the islands Las Vı́rgenes. The first
establishments were Spanish copper mines in the 17th
century. In the second half of that century, the islands
his connections with other members of the reform
movement – Sweet, Passy, and Jespersen – Viëtor
helped to determine the shape of FLT in Europe.
See also: Case; Foreign Language Teaching Policy; Je-
spersen, Otto (1860–1943); Passy, Paul Edouard (1859–
1940); Sweet, Henry (1845–1912).
Bibliography
Howatt A P R (1984). A history of English language teach-
ing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hüllen W (ed.) (1979). Didaktik des Englischunterrichts.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Viëtor W (1876). Die Handschriften der Geste des Lohér-
ains. Halle: Lippert’sche Buchhandlung.
[Viëtor W] (1882). Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren!
Ein Beitrag zur Überbürdungsfrage von Quousque Tan-
dem (3rd edn., 1905). Leipzig: Reisland.
Viëtor W (1884). Elemente der Phonetik und Orthoepie des
Deutschen, Englischen und Französischen mit Rücksicht
auf die Bedürfnisse der Lehrpraxis. Heilbronn: Henninger.
Viëtor W (1885). German pronunciation. Practice and
theory. Leipzig: Reisland.
Viëtor W (1888). Einführung in das Studium der englischen
Philologie (4th edn., 1910). Marburg: Elwert.
Viëtor W (1902). Die Methodik des neusprachlichen Unter-
richts. Leipzig: Teubner.
Viëtor W (1984). ‘Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren.’
In Schröder K (ed.) Ein Pamphlet aus dem 19. Jahrhun-
dert neu gelesen. Munich: Hueber.
Walmsley J B (1984). ‘Quousque tandem: Wilhem Viëtor’s.
Language instruction must do an about-face.’ Modern
Language Journal 68, 37–44.
came under Dutch ownership for a short while, with a
base on Tortola. The next colonizers were the English,
who ousted the Dutch in 1672 and introduced sugar
cane plantations and slavery. Thanks to this and to
hardworking Quakers who settled here, the islands
prospered in the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
with an economy based on sugar, cotton, and spices.
This period was followed by an economic decline,
partly a result of the abolition of slavery in the early
19th century. As a result of economic recession, the
population decreased as well after many planters left
the islands. In the second half of the 19th century, the
islands were incorporated into the British colony of
the Leeward Islands. The word ‘British’ was added to
the name at the end of World War I, after the United
States purchased the ‘Danish West Indies’ from
438 Virgin Islands, British: Language Situation
Denmark in 1917 and renamed them the ‘U.S. Virgin
Islands.’ The 1967 constitution gave the islands
internal self-government.
The population is 22 187 (July 2004 estimate);
83% are related to the slaves brought from Africa.
The rest of the population are of European, Indian,
and Asian origin. The official language is English.
Virgin Islands, U.S.: Language Situation
Editorial Team
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The U.S. Virgin Islands are an unincorporated terri-
tory of the United States in the Caribbean, West
Indies. They comprise the three largest U.S. islands
(St John, St Croix, and St Thomas) and 50 small
islands next to them. The islands were first spotted
by Europeans in the second voyage of Christopher
Columbus. The Carib Indians, who were local inhab-
itants there, resisted the presence of Europeans and as
a result were massively killed in the 17th century.
Ownership of the islands during that time shifted
between Spain, England, France, Holland, and
Denmark. The islands’ economy was mainly based
on sugar and cotton plantations, maintained by
slave labor. During the 17th century, the islands
were divided between the English and the Danish.
The Danes established a permanent colony (Danish
West Indies) on St Thomas in the 17th century and on
Virtual Objects
P A M Seuren, Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The question of virtual objects is basically of an on-
tological nature, but it has direct consequences for the
theory of truth and, hence, for the semantics of natu-
ral language. Around 1900, a discussion arose about
the nature of ‘reality’ or, in other words, about the
question of ‘what there is.’ Two schools of thought
developed, extensionalism and intensionalism. The
extensionalists hold that reality and actual existence
Other languages spoken are Virgin Islands Creole
English, Papiamentu, and Spanish. The literacy rate
is 97.8%, according to a 1991 estimate.
See also: Pidgins and Creoles: Overview.
St John in the early 18th century. They later purchased
St Croix from the French. By the mid-19th century,
slavery was abolished, and the island’s economy suf-
fered a serious recession. Danish control of the major
islands continued (except for two brief periods of
British occupation) until after the first World War,
when the United States bought the territory in 1917
for the highest sum of money they had ever paid for
land.
The population of the islands is 108 775 (July 2004
estimate). The majority of the population is West
Indian (81%), while the rest of the population is
mainly from the U.S. mainland (13%) or from Puerto
Rico (4%). The official language is English. Virgin
Island Creole English, Papiamentu, and Spanish are
also used. Dutch Creole (Negerhollands), which
flourished at the end of the 18th century is by now
extinct.
See also: Pidgins and Creoles: Overview.
are the same: Whatever is, exists; there is no being
outside existence. For an entity e to be said to ‘exist,’
a few criteria must be satisfied, the most important of
which are the following:
1. e is subject to the physical laws of causality.
2. e is fully defined, in the sense that it has all the proper-
ties an entity of that nature is supposed to have – even
if not all the values of those properties are known.
3. e has a well-defined identity, in that at any time t it
is identical with itself and distinct from all other
entities.
4. e cannot both have and lack a given property.