The present study focuses on interpersonal relationships as one of the most important sources of contextual variation in the English of Ghanaian University students. The assumption being made is that a well-established variety is one that shows linguistic variation in the wide range of contexts in which it is used (Kachru 1983). When a non-native variety attains this status, it is no longer appropriate to look at it as an interlanguage or of a deviant form of native English (NE). Previous studies have suggested, however, that the salient features of Ghanaian English (GE) include deviations from native norms, general over-formality and unusual lexical items and expressions. Thus the null hypothesis is that GE lacks contextual variation. Chapter 1 is a discussion of the historical and social background to the use of English in Ghana and claims that English is now used in a wider range of contexts including both institutionalised and non-institutionalised domains. This is followed by a review of the related studies (Ch. 2) and a discussion of the sociolinguistic approach adopted in the investigation of formality (Ch. 3). A preliminary study (Ch. 4) conducted to test the null hypothesis and to establish the most important questions for the main study found variation in lexico-grammatical and discourse patterns between the two tests analysed. Following this, both spoken and written data characterised by varying social distance (coded 1-5) were collected during fieldwork (Ch. 5) in Ghana from January to March 1990. This was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively (Chs. 6-9) for variation in respect of selected lexico-grammatical and discourse features and the results discussed in relation to the features of the contexts in which the texts were produced.

In this thesis I set out to test three hypotheses about the organization of the Grammar; (1) That the grammar can be given a declarative interpretation, and thus no extrinsic ordering or rules is available, and that syntactic structures have a compositional semantics; (2) That all transparent concatenation results from operations of the rules of syntax; and (3) That all syntactic projections must be phonetically visible. Further, I have assumed that the relationship between the lexicon and syntactic representations is monotonic. In testing these hypotheses I develop an underspecified tree representation for lexical entries which allows lexical information to be organized in a manner which is immediately interpretable by the syntax. These lexical trees, through the formal processes of unification and tree adjunction and the operation of X-bar, yield D-structure. I propose a parametrization of case-assigning ability into the distribution of the features [+ /-NECESSARY] and [+ /-UNIQUE] and use this to derive the Extended Projection Principle (for English) and to account for agreement in Labrador Inuttus. This move forces me to arrive at a new treatment of passive in English, however, as verbs in English have the case-assigning matrix [-NECESSARY,UNIQUE] (i.e., are profligate case-assigners). The analysis of passive proposed subsumes passive to other focus rules such as topicalization, by assuming that the passive morpheme <i>-en</i> heads a syntactic projection and assigns the sentential theta-role TOPIC to its external argument position. Topicalization in general is also considered, and proposals made concerning the syntactic structure of topicalized sentences in both Topic Prominent and Subject Prominent Languages. In considering a theta-theoretical analysis of passive, I further propose that animacy effects are properly considered as syntactic, and are best considered as part of the information contained in theta-role assignment. Specifier positions are then considered, and the dichotomy between the characteristics of D-structure selected and un-selected specifiers is discussed. This consideration leads me to propose a revival of the Raising-to-Object Analysis, with the embedded subject raising to [SPEC, VP], from this, the parallel is drawn with passive, and the possibility of NP-movement to [SPEC,IP]. [SPEC,VP] is then considered as a similar position to [SPEC,IP] with respect to the possibility of NP-movement. Different types of relative clauses cross-linguistically are examined, and the PF-Licensing Principle is shown to make desirable predictions about the structure of the so-called headless relatives. Data from Piapoco is considered in some detail, and the PFLP is shown to derive certain attractive tree structure. Agreement in Piapoco is considered, and a feature percolation through SPEC-head coindexing is shown to give the effect of morpheme harmony on certain verbal incorporation structures. The prohibition against invisible syntactic projections and general considerations of the relationship between heads and their complements in the lexicon leads me to propose a redefinition of barrier, such that any head which selects in some way its complement L-marks that complement and thus voids its barrierhood. In this case, then barriers only arise relativized by position, i.e., specifier position and adjuncts (not sisters to lexical heads). If this definition of barrier is adopted, then Zero Subjacency holds and no counting of barriers is necessary. An extension to the X-bar schema is proposed which underlies equative or predicative constructions. Finally, the hypotheses of this thesis are tested in some detail in analyses of Labrador Inuttus and Lakhota. These analyses highlight the difference between agreement and pronominal incorporation, and the typological difference between languages with and without grammatical function changing rules and overt case marking.

No description available.

This thesis is about dialogism and translation. It is generally based on Bakhtin's 'Dialogic Principle' as presented by Todorov (1984). The thesis tries to explore the potentiality of this principle for explaining translatability and translation. It also makes use of other literature on Bakhtin. This thesis tries to explain translation by establishing a dialogue with other existing views. Arguments are presented to show that translation cannot be fully explained by existing reductionist approaches, formal or interpretive. A case for synthesizing these views within the 'Dialogic Principle' is proposed. It is also claimed that translation cannot satisfactorily be explained by linguistic means, and that translation is an inter-cultural communicative act. This thesis holds the view that Bakhtin's 'Dialogic Principle' bears within it a coherent general explanation of different issues related to translation studies such as history, context, process and product. In the last two chapters, two dialogical approaches to translatability and translation are proposed. Some examples from actual translated texts are also looked at and discussed. Finally some implications and suggestions for future research are proposed.

We present new observations on the distribution of sentence-final 'then'. We develop an analysis which reveals the need to distinguish between times which are explicitly mentioned and those which are merely implicit in the description of events. The account is expressed formally in DRT (Kamp and Reyle 1993), and involves restricting the introduction of temporal discourse referents to cases where an explicit temporal referent is present. We discuss possible problems with the DRT account in extending to larger fragments, and suggest that incorporating ideas from situation theory (Barwise and Perry 1983), along the lines of Cooper's situation-theoretic DRT (STDRT) (Cooper 1993a, 1993b) may overcome these problems. We present an alternative formalisation expressed in a version of Cooper's situation theoretic grammar (STG) (Cooper 1991). In this fragment, the distinction between explicit and implied temporal referents is made in terms of information about the utterance. Observations are made concerning 'at the time' and 'at the same time'. In order to develop an account, we look at related non-temporal observations, involving 'the X' and 'the same X' in discourse sequences, where X is a relational noun such as 'colour'. We develop an account in STDRT using the notion of generalised role, which we show is related to notions of thematic roles/relations used in the literature. Applying this account to the temporal data, we show how this explains the distribution of 'at the time' and 'at the same time' and allows us to propose a way to formalise the discourse relation known as backgrounding. We show how the incorporation of situations allows us to give a treatment of aspectual class and aspectual composition expressed in terms of event structure.

The elicitation of knowledge from experts for the purpose of building expert systems has been automated with varying degrees of sophistication. The extent of which a human being or a machine can comprehend verbalised expertise depends in part on knowledge of the basic or non-technical words of the language and the domain-independent inferences that it is possible to make from them concerning the technical words of the discourse. Lexical entailments have traditionally been characterised in terms of selectional restrictions. These tend to proscribe all metaphorical language from the most abstruse and poetic to the most ubiquitous and prosaic. A principled method of semantic inference and disambiguation is needed. The Introduction gives an account of the history of the research and its provenance. Chapter 1 surveys existing knowledge elicitation techniques and Chapters 2 and 3 give an account of philosophical and linguistic approaches to the problem of word meaning. Chapters 4 to 7 outline a principled method of lexical inference and disambiguation characterised by the Principles of Prediction and Coercion and Chapter 8 discusses semantic inference in general, from strong uncancellable logical entailments to weak connotative suggestion. Appendix 1 contains the Principles of Prediction and Coercion in a tabular form and Appendix 2 implements these Principles in a program.

No description available.

Little research has been undertaken into high stakes deception, and even less into high stakes deception in written text. This study addresses that gap. In this thesis, I present a new approach to detecting deception in written narratives based on the definition of deception as a progression and focusing on identifying deceptive linguistic strategy rather than individual cues. I propose a new approach for subdividing whole narratives into their constituent episodes, each of which is linguistically profiled and their progression mapped to identify authors’ deceptive strategies based on cue interaction. I conduct a double blind study using qualitative and quantitative analysis in which linguistic strategy (cue interaction and progression) and overall cue presence are used to predict deception in witness statements. This results in linguistic strategy analysis correctly predicting 85% of deceptive statements (92% overall) compared to 54% (64% overall) with cues identified on a whole statement basis. These results suggest that deception cues are not static, and that the value of individual cues as deception predictors is linked to their interaction with other cues. Results also indicate that in certain cue combinations, individual self-references (I, Me and My), previously believed to be indicators of truthfulness, are effective predictors of deceptive linguistic strategy at work

This is a multiple case study of the leadership language of three senior women working in a large corporation in Bahrain. The study’s main aim is to explore the linguistic practices the women leaders use with their colleagues and subordinates in corporate meetings. Adopting a Foucauldian (1972) notion of ‘discourses’ as social practices and a view of gender as socially constructed and discursively performed (Butler 1990), this research aims to unveil the competing discourses which may shape the leadership language of senior women in their communities of practice. The research is situated within the broader field of Sociolinguistics and the specific field of Language and Gender. To address the research aim, a case study approach incorporating multiple methods of qualitative data collection (observation, interviews, and shadowing) was utilised to gather information about the three women leaders and produce a rich description of their use of language in and out of meeting contexts. For analysis, principles of Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) were used to organise and sort the large amount of data. Also, Feminist Post- Structuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA) was adopted to produce a multi-faceted analysis of the subjects, their language leadership, power relations, and competing discourses in the context. It was found that the three senior women enact leadership differently making variable use of a repertoire of conventionally masculine and feminine linguistic practices. However, they all appear to have limited language resources and even more limiting subject positions; and they all have to exercise considerable linguistic expertise to police and modify their language in order to avoid the ‘double bind’. Yet, the extent of this limitation and constraints depends on the community of practice with its prevailing discourses, which appear to have their roots in Islamic and cultural practices as well as some Western influences acquired throughout the company’s history. It is concluded that it may be particularly challenging for Middle Eastern women to achieve any degree of equality with men in the workplace because discourses of Gender difference lie at the core of Islamic teaching and ideology.

Our PhD study focuses on the role of aspectual marking in expressing simultaneity of events in Tunisian Arabic as a first language, French as a first language, as well as in French as a second language by Tunisian learners at different acquisitional stages. We examine how the explicit markers of on-goingness qa:’id and «en train de» in Tunisian Arabic and in French respectively are used to express this temporal relation, in competition with the simple forms, the prefixed verb form in Tunisian Arabic and the présent de l’indicatif in French. We use a complex verbal task of retelling simultaneous events sharing an interval on the time axis based on eight videos presenting two situations happening in parallel. Two types of simultaneity are exploited: perfect simultaneity (when the two situations are parallel to each other) and inclusion (one situation is framed by the second one). Our informants in French and in Tunisian Arabic have two profiles, highly educated and low educated speakers. We show that the participants’ response to the retelling task varies according to their profiles, and so does their use of the on-goingness devices in the expression of simultaneity. The differences observed between the two profile groups are explained by the degree to which the speakers have developed a habit of responding to tasks. This is a skill typically acquired during schooling. We notice overall that the use of qa:’id as well as of «en train de» is less frequent in the data than the use of the simple forms. However, qa:’id as well as «en train de» are employed to play discursive roles that go beyond the proposition level. We postulate that despite the shared features between Tunisian Arabic and French regarding marking the concept of on-goingness, namely the presence of explicit lexical, not fully grammaticalised markers competing with other non-marked forms, the way they are used in the discourse of simultaneous events shows clear differences. We explain that «en train de» plays a more contrastive role than qa:’id and its use in discourse obeys a stricter rule. In cases of the inclusion type of simultaneity, it is used to construe the ‘framing’ event that encloses the second event. In construing perfectly simultaneneous events, and when both «en train de» and présent de l’indicatif are used, the proposition with «en train de» generally precedes the proposition with présent de l’indicatif, and not the other way around. qa:id obeys, but to a less strict rule as it can be used interchangeably with the simple form regardless of the order of propositions. The contrastive analysis of French L1 and L2 reveals learners’ deviations from natives’ use of on-goingness devices. They generalise the use of «en train de» and apply different rules to the interaction of the different marked and unmarked forms in discourse. Learners do not master its role in discourse even at advanced stages of acquisition despite its possible emergence around the basic and intermediate varieties. We conclude that the native speakers’ use of «en train de» involves mastering its role at the macro-structure level. This feature, not explicitly available to learners in the input, might persistently present a challenge to L2 acquisition of the periphrasis.