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.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a difference between the accuracy with which a child responds to oral instructions that are given in his native dialect (i.e., the dialect that he acquired when learning to speak) when compared to the accuracy of his responses to oral instructions given in a non-native dialect (i.e., a dialect other than the one he learned when he acquired speech). The two dialects used were standard English and black non-standard English. The dialect of the children was determined by use of the Rystrom Dialect Test. A field study was conducted by this researcher to establish criteria for scoring the Rystrom Dialect Test that would apply to this population.Forty-four intermediate grade black non-standard English speaking children and forty-four intermediate grade standard English speaking children were identified. This sample was drawn from three schools in a central Indiana city of 45,000 population.The paper and pencil type tasks used were the seventeen items on the Test 18, Oral Directions, of the Detroit Tests of Learning Aptitude. Two tape recordings were made of these directions, i.e., a standard English version and a black non-standard English version. The children in each dialect group were randomly assigned to receive the oral directions in either a native/non-native dialect or a non-native/native dialect order. For the standard English dialect speakers, standard English was their native dialect and black non-standard English was the native dialect of the black non-standard English speakers and standard English was their non-native dialect.A one way analysis of variance procedure was used to analyze the data. The mean of the scores obtained when the children received the directions in their native dialect was compared to the mean of the scores obtained when they received the directions in the non-native dialect.Analysis of the data revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the accuracy with which a child responds to oral instructions that are given in his native dialect when compared to the accuracy of his responses to oral instructions given in a non-native dialect. This was true of both dialect groups.An auxiliary analysis was conducted by grade level in which the responses to the native dialect presentations were compared to the non-native dialect presentations for each dialect group. The results of this analysis indicated that there were no statistically significant differences for either dialect group on any of the grade levels considered, that is, grade four, five or six. The obtained means in all cases were very near the same value and no trend was observed.and black non-standard English was their non-native dialect.From the results of this study and within the limitations of this research, the following conclusions are drawn:1. There is no statistically significant difference in the accuracy of the responses of the native speakers of black non-standard English to directions spoken in black non-standard English and to the directions spoken in standard English.2. There is no statistically significant difference in the accuracy of the responses of the native speakers of standard English to directions spoken in standard English and to directions spoken in black non-standard English.3. The lack of differences mentioned in one and two above are discernable whether the data are considered on a composite intermediate grade level basis or whether they are considered by individual grade levels.The consistency of the results, i.e., no significant difference, is of interest. The findings do not tend to support the theory that dialect differences do interfere with children's performance nor does this study tend to support the theory that a language barrier exists between the middle class teacher and the lower class child. It is important to emphasize that the findings of this study cannot be construed to indicate that educational discrepancies between the two groups do not exist. It can only be said that on the basis of the findings of this study, educational differences do not appear to be the result of dialect differences.

Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-232). / Electronic reproduction. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xiv, 232 leaves, bound 29 cm

NEGATION is a semantic feature found mainly on clause/sentence level. Negation in Afrikaans is characterised by (a) NEG1-forms represented by various particles which are located within the major constituents of the sentence (eg. in the auxiliary, as part of the subject-nominal etc.), and (b) NEG2 that is the closing particle (= NIE2) in sentence-final position.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Education, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-185).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 81-85) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Also available online.