The present research examines the linguistic situation in the Lower South Coast of KwaZulu-Natal where isiZulu is used as the means of instruction and of administration, but IsiCele is used as home language by the Cele clan. The research was carried out in the areas of Ezingolweni, Emawuleni, Emfakuceba and KwaShonkweni, all being the Cele clans. Places known for use of Tekela and Lala dialects (Nhlangwini, Bhaca, IsiZansi, etc) have been investigated by other researchers. The research data was collected by asking questions to school leaving learners. The researcher also contacted educators, community leaders to examine the phenomenon such as language contact, language variations and language usage in the situation under investigation. He was also able to compile a sizeable list of lexical and further identified phonological and morphological variation from the standard language. The picture that emerges from the research is that the people under investigation (amaCele) speak a language with clear connection with their original language, which is isiThonga. The lexicon utilized for the expression of the material culture is however influenced by neighboring Xhosa an element that can be explained by the fact that for several decades the educators for the areas were drawn from the Cape. The material was then tested in taped conversations with elderly oral persons in rural areas. In the multicultural and the multilingual situation in South Africa, each wide spread cultural manifestation has a role to play and must be preserved as a treasure. The researcher suggests that ways should be found to encourage speakers of IsiCele to use with pride their language as an important tile in the cultural mosaic that is South Africa. It would be unwise and short-sighted to pursue a policy of blindly imposing Standard Zulu to obliterate the cultural heritage contained and manifested in IsiCele. / Thesis (Ph.D) - University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, 2006.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

The overall purpose of this study is to correlate features of compliments and compliment responses in Jordanian Arabic with social variables including gender, age, and traditionalism. This research project sets out to investigate the following questions:1. Do men and women give and respond to compliments differently? If so, how?2. Do people of different age groups give and respond to compliments differently? Ifso, how?3. Do traditional and non-traditional people give and respond to compliments differently? If so, how?Naturally occurring examples of compliments/ compliment responses were gathered by 10 fieldworkers in the research site of Irbid, Jordan. The dependent variables that were investigated include the topics, syntactic patterns, positive semantic carriers, the format of compliments, and the types of compliment responses.The results indicate that although the complimenting behavior of Jordanian people is similar in some ways, the social variables do correlate with some systematic differences. Specifically, people who share the same gender, age, or level of traditionalism compliment each other more frequently than persons who differ in any of these categories. Moreover, females and young people primarily use the following complimenting categories: compliments on appearance, explicit compliments, exclamatory syntactic patterns, and compliment plus explanation. Women and men differ in using compliment responses in that the women prefer questions and accounts compared to the men who employ more blessings and disagreements. Explanations forthese variations are discussed, based on the functions of compliments and the nature of the Jordanian culture.This research contributes to socio-pragmatics by analyzing variation in the use of complimenting in a relatively homogenous speech community. It tackles some culture-specific features of politeness and indirectness that are crucial to any politeness theory. The research also serves pedagogical purposes in that the application of its results in the classroom will help to reduce the communication breakdowns often experienced by L2 learners. With respect to methodology, the study provides adequate data to further test the validity of natural data collection in the investigation of speech acts. / Department of English

The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) To establish William Faulkner's informal theory by comparing interview statements which he made on the subject of dialect with Sumner Ives's formal theory and (2) To uncover broad patterns in Faulkner's use of dialect markers from the beginning to the end of his literary career by making a rigorous statistical analysis of his use of dialect markers in eight Yoknapatawpba County novels written between the beginning and the end of his career.Chapter 1 is an introduction to the study. Chapter 2 contains a review of literature in the field of dialect study in recent years and examines the main relationships between those studies and this one. Chapter 3 discusses the basic principles of Sumner Ives's formal dialect theory, particularly as they may be- applied to William Faulkner's use of dialect. Chapter 4 compares Faulkner's informal dialect theory, as it was expressed in various interview statements which he made on the subject of dialect, with Ives's formal theory. Chapter 5 describes the data gathering procedures for the statistical analysis of Faulkner's use of dialect markers, and Chapter 6 gives the results of the analysis. Chapter 7 presents the conclusions for the entire study.The comparison of William.Faulkner's informal dialect theory and Sumner Ives's formal one reveals that they were, in their broad outlines, essentially the same.For the purpose of analyzing Faulkner's use of dialect markers, his works were divided into three periods-early, middle, and late--with the following novels selected for analysis in these periods: early, Sartoris (1929) and The Sound and the Fury (1929); middle, Light in August (1932), The Unvanquished (1938), and The Hamlet (1940) ; and late, Intruder in the Dust (1948), The Town (1957), and The Reivers (1962). In all 3,7144 dialogue passages were analyzed in the eight novels; these dialogue passages contained 83,619 words.Also for purposes of analysis, a dialect marker was defined as either a phonological spelling or a nonstandard grammatical construction. The statistical analysis of Faulkner's use of dialect markers was an analysis of variance involving seven independent variables and six dependent variables. The independent' variables were the numerical order in which the novels analyzed were published and the numerical order of the literary period in which they were grouped with other novels in the study and the age, sex, class, race, and location of the characters who spoke the dialogue analyzed. The dependent variables were the percentages of words used as dialect markers per utterance under the categories 'total', 'verbs or auxiliaries', 'nouns', 'adjectives or adverbs', 'pronouns or demonstratives', and 'others'.The analysis of Faulkner's use of dialect markers revealed that he made significant change in that use from the beginning to the middle, but not from the middle to the end of his career. It showed that the greatest part of that change was a decrease in marker use by lower class characters rather than middle or upper class characters and by black characters rather than white characters. It also showed significant change on a sex basis with a larger decrease for male than female characters and a significant difference on an age basis with children and old adults using higherpercentages of their words as dialect markers than young middle aged adults. On a parts of speech basis, the analysis indicated that Faulkner's most frequently used and most consistently used dialect marker was the verb.

Whether Hong Kong English (HKE) should be a linguistic variety has been one of the most-debated topics in HKE studies since the landmark study of Luke and Richards (1982). Scholars dispute over whether the set of features in the English spoken or written by Hong Kong people should be regarded as a variety. Given how this decision should not sole depend on the scholars, and how the users' viewpoints should also be considered, it is necessary to survey the opinions and attitudes of Hong Kong people on these features.The variety status is highly dependable on how people's attitudes towards its recognition and agreement in society. However, little attention was given to the people's attitudes towards online HKE and whether these attitudes help to constitute a linguistic variety of online HKE. In this project, I apply the linguistic norms framework (Poon, forthcoming) to test whether Hong Kong people see these features constitute a variety. This study investigated the attitudes of Hong Kong people towards online HKE, and in the process, explored whether the recognition of online HKE might allow us to recognise Hong Kong English as a variety in both online and offline contexts.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The purpose of this study is to give the common words, together with a collection of old expressions or terms, of the oldest residents of Ellis County and to trace their usage to the states in the Old South. The importance of recording these old words and terms is to preserve the oldest forms of the community for those who are interested in the growth and development of local speech and, also, to trace the history of these words.

手稿本. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學. / Shou gao ben. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 655-663). / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue. / 引言 --- p.1 / Chapter 第一章 --- 语音 --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- 描寫语音 --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- 歷史音韻比較 --- p.75 / Chapter 第二章 --- 句子的成份 --- p.115 / Chapter 2.1 --- 主语和謂语　 --- p.117 / Chapter 2.2 --- 宾语 --- p.156 / Chapter 2.3 --- 修饰语 --- p.188 / Chapter 第三章 --- 谓補結構 --- p.213 / Chapter 3.1 --- 結果補语 --- p.216 / Chapter 3.2 --- 狀態補语　 --- p.225 / Chapter 3.3 --- 強化補语　　 --- p.233 / Chapter 3.4 --- 方向補语 --- p.239 / Chapter 3.5 --- 能性補语　 --- p.258 / Chapter 3.6 --- 肯定與否定補语 --- p.267 / Chapter 3.7 --- 重叠式補语 --- p.272 / Chapter 3.8 --- 谓語性補语 --- p.278 / Chapter 3.9 --- 黏附性詞組補语 --- p.290 / Chapter 3.10 --- 謂補結構中的宾语　 --- p.296 / Chapter 第四章 --- 體詞類 --- p.309 / Chapter 4.1 --- 概说 --- p.309 / Chapter 4.2 --- 名词 --- p.314 / Chapter 4.3 --- 專有名称 --- p.322 / Chapter 4.4 --- 地方词 --- p.327 / Chapter 4.5 --- 時间词　 --- p.335 / Chapter 4.6 --- 定词 --- p.341 / Chapter 4.7 --- 位词 --- p.357 / Chapter 4.8 --- 代词 --- p.367 / Chapter 4.9 --- 量词 --- p.383 / Chapter 第五章 --- 谓词類及其他 --- p.391 / Chapter 5.1 --- 谓词 --- p.391 / Chapter 5.2 --- 介词 --- p.473 / Chapter 5.3 --- 副词 --- p.491 / Chapter 5.4 --- 連词 --- p.515 / Chapter 5.5 --- 嘆词 --- p.522 / Chapter 5.6 --- 助词 --- p.527 / Chapter 第六章 --- 外来词 --- p.555 / Chapter 6.1 --- 概说 --- p.555 / Chapter 6.2 --- 外来词的来源 --- p.557 / Chapter 6.3 --- 借用的方式 --- p.563 / Chapter 6.4 --- 语音的对譯　 --- p.571 / Chapter 6.5 --- 词義的變遷　 --- p.598 / Chapter 6.6 --- 文法的適应　 --- p.606 / Chapter 附錄： --- 星加坡閩南話的外來词词彙 --- p.613 / 參攷書及譌文目錄　 --- p.655

手稿本. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學. / Shou gao ben. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [1-8](3rd group)). / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue. / 前言 / Chapter 第一章： --- 詞類 --- p.1 / Chapter 第二章： --- 主語和謂語 --- p.39 / Chapter 2.1 --- 主語 --- p.39 / Chapter 2.2 --- 謂語 --- p.70 / Chapter 第三章： --- 修飾語 --- p.86 / Chapter 3.1 --- 定語 --- p.90 / Chapter 3.2 --- 狀語 --- p.108 / Chapter 第四章： --- 賓語 --- p.138 / Chapter 4.1 --- 直接賓語和间接賓語的次序 --- p.147 / Chapter 4.2 --- 冈事實語和普通賓語的次序 --- p.162 / Chapter 4.3 --- 假賓語 --- p.172 / Chapter 4.4 --- 謂賓復合詞的游離化 --- p.174 / Chapter 第五章： --- 謂補結構 --- p.185 / Chapter 5.1 --- 目的補語 --- p.186 / Chapter 5.2 --- 程度補語 --- p.199 / Chapter 5.3 --- 描寫補語 --- p.208 / Chapter 5.4 --- 結果補語 --- p.222 / Chapter 5.5 --- 可能補語 --- p.231 / Chapter 5.6 --- 方向補語 --- p.252 / Chapter 5.7 --- 狀態補語 --- p.272 / Chapter 5.8 --- 強化補語 --- p.278 / Chapter 5.9 --- 回複補語 --- p.285 / Chapter 第六章： --- 連謂式 --- p.290 / Chapter 6.1 --- 一般連謂式 --- p.294 / Chapter 6.2 --- “把´ح字句 --- p.334 / Chapter 第七章： --- “被´ح字句 --- p.365 / Chapter 第八章： --- 謂詞詞尾 --- p.387 / Chapter 第九章： --- 句尾詞 --- p.458