My idiolect, a Xin’an idiolect, belongs to the Wuxi dialect, which is the northern Wu dialect. It carries most of the characteristics of the Wuxi dialect, such as the tripartite division of the manner of articulation of initial stop consonants. However, with the special geographic position, on the bounty of Wuxi dialect from the northwest area to southeast area and connected with Suzhou city, my idiolect shows its unique features, such as the condition of the retroflex. This study analyzes the phonological system of the idiolect and discusses the features. Since the dialect of the suburban area of the Wuxi is rare, it was only documented in the local chronicles; therefore the study is a good supplemental material to the Wuxi dialect. Moreover, using the idiolect is like to use the phonological material with the specific area and social identity. It is well known that the variation of the language is related to the area, to the speaker’s social identity and to the situation, therefore the specific idiolect definitely will benefit researchers to analyze the dialect. Furthermore, idiolect is also a good sample to study the language diversity among the different social classes, which need to get more attention from scholars. With the influence of the Mandarin and the surrounding dialects, some phonological features of my idiolect are in the variation, such as the sharp and rounded sounds. In the thesis, the theory of the language contact is applied to explain my idiolect.

This paper aims to discuss specific contact-induced features of Kivu Swahili (DR Congo), taking into account variationist patterns of different ways of speaking. Language contact scenarios in the multilingual landscape of Kivu reveal a discrepancy: While the language of North Kivu contains traces of Kinyabwisha and Kinande, in South Kivu Mashi and Kilega have predominantly shaped the site-specific realization of Swahili. Other languages, such as French or Lingala, which have – lexically and structurally – largely contributed to the present form of the language are not bound to one area or any group of speakers. This paper deals with the question of whether different realizations of Kivu Swahili, with differing levels of contact features (such as a major influence of Lingala lexicon, more or less Kinyabwisha/Kinande morphology etc.), can be understand as “ethnic registers”, serving different social purposes. When analyzed against the background of the ongoing conflict in the area, the differing realizations can be seen to create in-group status, intimidation, protection, mockery or deliberate exclusion. By focusing largely on sociolectal and inter-register variation of poorly documented Kiswahili dialects from the western periphery, the contribution aims to contribute to the description of non-standard realizations of the language and their variability.

The language situation in Tanzania has changed greatly since the overwhelming spread of Swahili, the national language and one of the official languages of Tanzania. Previous studies have reported that Swahili has encroached on the domains of ethnic community languages (Legère 1992, Meka- cha 1993, Yoneda 1996), and its linguistic influence can easily be recognized throughout the ethnic community languages of Tanzania, even in remote areas. This situation has been described as ‘Swahilization’ of ethnic community languages (Yoneda 2010) or ‘language drift’ (Brenzinger & Marten 2016), as opposed to a clear language shift. This study describes the influence of Swahili on Tanzanian ethnic community languages, presenting specific examples to substantiate the previous studies (e.g. Yoneda 2010, Marten & Petzell 2016, Rosendal & Mapunda 2017, among others). It shows that the language shift that Batibo (1992) expected has not taken place. Instead, people have kept their ethnic community languages, developing a new type of language use to enable meaning-making for the community in this changing world. The ongoing process in an ethnic community consists of Swahilization of their language, rather than its disappearance through a complete shift away from its use. In addition, the influence of language contact between Swahili and ethnic community languages is not a one-way effect; Swahili is also affected by the various ethnic community languages. As a result, each language is forced to undergo ‘-ization’ by the other and their differences are, not only sociolinguistically but also structurally and lexically convergent.

No description available.

Although it is not traditionally considered part of the “Spanish-speaking world,” Aruba has a significant population of Spanish-speakers due to both tourism and immigration from Latin America. Recognizing the significant presence of Spanish in Aruba, this investigation will focus on contact between Spanish and Papiamento, an Iberian-lexified Creole language that is both one of the two official languages of the country—the other one is Dutch—and the primary language of the local Aruban population. This dissertation has two main goals: (1) to identify the contact features of Aruban Spanish transferred from Papiamento along with the linguistic and non-linguistic factors (tourism, education) that condition their appearance and, (2) to contextualize Aruban Spanish in the broader Caribbean context issues of identity in Aruba. Several methodological strategies were utilized to carry out this research. Six linguistic features were studied and analyzed in the Spanish spoken by Arubans: two phonological features (/r/ and word-final -/s/) and four morphosyntactic features (the pluralization in the noun phrase and past tense, subjunctive mood and aspect in the verb phrase). Through sociolinguistic-style interviews and additional elicitation tools such as the reading of a short text and a word list, a translation activity, a grammatical judgement test and a sentence completion activity, data from 14 participants were collected, transcribed and analyzed. Although the research uses techniques and strategies employed in variationist sociolinguistics, the research questions that guide this project deviate from the statistical analysis that structure Labovian sociolinguistic research. The frequency-based analysis used in this dissertation determined that the realization of the studied features, except for the past tense, exhibit patterns that diverge from those of other Caribbean Spanish varieties. Social factors such as the frequency of Spanish use, occupation in or outside of tourism, context of language acquisition, level of education and gender presented varying effects in the favoring of Papiamento transfer in the Spanish spoken Aruba. Overall, a reduced frequency of Spanish use, occupations in fields with little to no contact with Spanish-speakers, limited exposure to authentic Spanish during acquisition, an increased exposure to the norms of standard Spanish through education and female gender favored increased realizations of Papiamento transfer in the Spanish of the Aruban participants. This dissertation concludes that linguistic transfer from Papiamento contributes to differentiating Aruban Spanish from other varieties spoken in the Caribbean. In Aruba, Spanish is not an official language, and the country’s social history is distinct from the colonial legacy of other Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries. Thus, Spanish becomes a tool of constructing a divergent identity, unique from that of individuals from other Spanish-speaking Caribbean nations. / Spanish

The Bo-Kaap is traditionally a Cape Muslim Afrikaans-speaking community, and sociohistorically it is particularly relevant to the development of Afrikaans at the Cape (Davids 2011, Mahida 1993). The Cape Muslim Afrikaans spoken in the Bo-Kaap is a sub-variety of Standard Afrikaans (Kotzé 1989, Davids 2011) and is distinguishable by its retained lexis (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008) from languages historically spoken by slaves at the Cape, such as Malay, Arabic, Gujarati, and Konkani. Over time a number of socio-cultural, geographic, and historical factors have introduced the use of South African English alongside Cape Muslim Afrikaans in this speech community. The goal of this study was to provide insight into the nature of bilingual talk in the Bo-Kaap community, and to make a useful contribution to the growing body of codeswitching1 (hereafter CS) research generally. Based on natural language data collected during group interviews with members of the community, the study explored the language contact situation in the Bo-Kaap today, taking the viewpoint that what is occurring presently may be considered CS Three aspects of the CS documented were analysed and quantified. Specifically, the study investigated language interaction phenomena (Myers-Scotton 1995, Deuchar et al 2007) triggers (Clyne 1987) and directionality (Muysken 1997, Deuchar et al 2017, Çetinoglu 2017). A quantitative approach was taken to the data analysis. The interview audio files were downloaded and transcribed in ELAN. (Max Planck Institute). The annotations2 produced in ELAN were organised in a spreadsheet for analysis, resulting in a data set comprised of 356 annotations. The full data set was divided into subsets and tagged for language interaction phenomena, triggers, and directionality. These data sets were then sorted and quantified to identify trends in these three areas of interest. The study found Intra-sentential switches to be the most common type of language interaction phenomenon in the CS of this speech community, being present in 79% of the sampled annotations. Results from other CS studies echo this finding in other speech communities (Al Heeti et al 2016, Koban 2012, Falk 2013). The most common trigger for Intra-word switching in this corpus was in the head of the past tense Verb Phrase. Out of 27 occurrences of Intra-word switching, 16 were of this nature. In all of those an English verb head was housed within an Afrikaans past tense structure. No exceptions were observed in the data set, a strong indicator of the relationship status of the two languages involved. Cape Muslim Afrikaans almost certainly playing the role of the Matrix language, with South African English embedded. In terms of directionality, switching from Cape Muslim Afrikaans into South African English was by far the most common, at 85%. This further supports what the findings on triggers suggest about the hierarchy between these two languages.

This ethnographic research examines the social implications of the ethnolinguistic contact that occurs in the U.S.-Mexico border region at a day labor center in Tucson, Arizona. I discuss the multiple values of English and Spanish in this setting and how individuals interpret and negotiate these values in the construction and performance of identity. More specifically, I analyze how discourses of linguistic capital shape the organization of this community and influence the dynamics of employment negotiations. The research setting includes immigrant day laborers (primarily from Mexico and Central America), employers who contract workers, and bilingual volunteers who act as language brokers between workers and their employers; all of whom use language to interactively negotiate their social status as they construct identities vis-à-vis other members of the community. My analysis reveals a discourse that places a high level of linguistic capital on Spanish-English bilingualism in the economic market. Although I have not found evidence that this linguistic capital has a real exchange rate into dollars, my data demonstrates that immigrants rapidly acquire and contribute to this locally constructed discourse. I explore the techniques that workers use to exploit and promote their language abilities through ‘performances’ of bilingualism that are realized not only to secure employment, but also for social positioning within this community of practice. Language, then, is one of the many tools that both workers and employers use in the construction of interpersonal relationships and social hierarchies. In addition, I analyze gatekeeping encounters focusing on the rapid employment negotiations that occur between day laborers and their employers, building on previous research with regard to the concepts of rapport, co-membership, and the presentation of an institutional self. Finally, I propose a model for the study of intercultural communication and contact that reflects the dynamic nature of contact and the complexity of overlapping categories of identity. Identity formation is a multiplex and multidirectional social construction that necessitates pushing beyond binary models of intercultural communication. Identity construction is informed not only by face-to-face interlocutors, but also by the linguistic ecology of dominant and subordinate discourses and the imagined individual and collective interlocutors they evoke.

O presente trabalho apresenta a análise de orações que contêm a preposição para acompanhada de verbos no infinitivo (para+infinitivo), iniciando orações subordinadas em discursos proferidos por alemães residentes em São Paulo, com o intuito de estabelecer se todas as orações, de fato, constituem a ideia de finalidade, ou se apresentam diferentes valores semânticos. O corpus é constituído por ocorrências retiradas de entrevistas com os referidos alemães feitas por mim. São entrevistas de caráter informal sem tema preestabelecido. A estrutura para+infinitivo foi utilizada em contextos semânticos que põem em dúvida seu valor de finalidade, sendo ambíguos ou apresentando desbotamento semântico. Esses outros sentidos, mais abstratos, indicam um processo de gramaticalização na língua portuguesa falada por esses alemães. A estrutura final na língua alemã apresenta variações: um...zu e damit. Além dessas estruturas, a forma zu+verbo no infinitivo responsável, segundo o Hochdeustch (alemão padrão), por indicar verbos no infinitivo, simplesmente, ou orações subordinadas reduzidas de infinitivo, também se apresentou em contextos que geraram dúvidas quanto à sua significação, sendo, por isso, considerada ambígua. Esse fato apontou para um processo de gramaticalização também na língua alemã. Por haver mais de um elemento na língua alemã traduzido para a língua portuguesa com o significado da preposição para, utilizei traduções (para o alemão) do corpus, bem como dados retirados de blogs alemães e jornais digitais alemães, a fim de estabelecer comparações para o desenvolvimento das análises. Este trabalho, dada sua natureza, pode ser uma relevante contribuição para a compreensão do processo pedagógico de ensino-aprendizagem da língua alemã enquanto L2, demonstrando que pode haver diferentes percepções semânticas de estruturas sintáticas tanto por parte dos alunos quanto dos professores ao produzirem discursos em L1 e em L2. / This work presents the analysis of sentences that contain the preposition to (para) accompanied of verbs in the infinitive (to+infinitive), beginning subordinate sentences in speeches uttered by resident Germans in São Paulo, with the intention of establishing if all the sentences, in fact, constitute the idea of purpose, or if they have different semantic values. The corpus is constituted by occurrences that came from interviews with the referred Germans done by me. They are interviews of informal character without a preestablished theme. The structure to+infinitive was used in semantic contexts that question its purpose value, being ambiguous or presenting semantic fading. Those other meanings, more abstract, indicate the grammaticalization process in the Portuguese language spoken by those Germans. The final structure in the German language presents variations: um...zu and damit. Besides those structures, the form zu+verb in infinitive, according to Hochdeutsch (pattern German), for indicating verbs in the infinitive, simply, or subordinated sentences reduced of infinitive, also came in contexts that generated doubts about its significance, being, for that, considered ambiguous. That fact appeared for a grammaticalization process also in the German language. For there being more than an element in the German language translated for the Portuguese language with the meaning of the preposition to, I used translations (for German) of the corpus, as well as data of German blogs and German online newspapers, in order to establish comparisons for the development of the analyses. The purpose of this work is to contribute in the pedagogic process of teaching-learning of the German language while L2, demonstrating that there can be different semantic perceptions of syntactic structures not only of the students but also of the teachers when they produce speeches in L1 and in L2.

O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o léxico empregado em cartas familiares, escritas em língua italiana, por falantes italianos provenientes da região Lombardia e por seus descendentes nascidos no Brasil e residentes em São Paulo, sob duas perspectivas diferentes. Na primeira, elencaremos quais eram os assuntos mais recorrentes nas cartas, analisaremos as escolhas lexicais e verificaremos a função destas no contexto em que foram empregadas. Pretendemos, portanto, entender quais são os relatos, as histórias, as informações contidas nesses escritos, bem como o léxico empregado para a composição das cartas. A segunda perspectiva, diz respeito ao contato linguístico que houve entre italiano e português em nível lexical. Nossa proposta será demonstrar, por meio de excertos das cartas, exemplos de léxico que revelam o uso corrente da língua italiana, mesmo em contexto estrangeiro, no qual prevalecia aquele do português. Dessa forma, é nosso propósito tanto identificar e analisar o enriquecimento do leque comunicativo e cultural que esses imigrantes tiveram ao escreverem em italiano, não inibindo, porém, o uso do português (seja de maneira implícita ou explícita); como também entender se houve a formação de uma eventual variedade de italiano no interior dessa pequena comunidade. / The purpose of this study is to analyze the lexicon used in family letters, which were written in Italian by native Italian speakers from Lombardy and by their descendants who were born in Brazil and lived in São Paulo, from two different perspectives. The first one will list the most recurring topics in the letters, the lexical choices will be analyzed and their functions will be verified in the context in which they were used. Therefore, this study intends to understand the accounts, stories, and information contained in the letters, as well as the lexicon used when writing them. The second perspective is about the language contact that occurred between Italian and Portuguese at the lexical level. Excerpts from the letters were used to show examples of the lexicon, which revealed that the Italian language was widely used, regardless of the international context, in which Portuguese predominated. As a result, the study aims to identify and analyze the language and cultural enrichment that such immigrants had by writing in Italian, although it did not prevent them from using Portuguese (either explicitly or implicitly), and also understand if there has been an accidental variety of the Italian language in that small community.

A presente tese realiza uma descrição e análise da marcação de terceira pessoa de plural nas comunidades quilombolas de Mamuna e Itamatatiua, localizadas em Alcântara (MA). Esta marcação está no centro dos debates sobre a formação do português brasileiro, ora sendo tomada para explicar a deriva (Naro & Scherre, 2007), ora para explicar o contato linguístico (Lucchesi et al., 2009; Silva, 2005, entre outros). Esta pesquisa parte do princípio de que o contato ocorrido na época colonial entre o português trazido para o Brasil àquela época, as diferentes línguas africanas trazidas para cá, especialmente as línguas bantas (LBs), e as diferentes línguas indígenas existentes neste território, é o responsável pelas particularidades do português falado no Brasil. Nesse sentido, as especificidades da marcação de terceira pessoa das comunidades alcantarenses podem ser explicadas a partir do contato linguístico estabelecido na formação dessas comunidades. O plural de terceira pessoa em Mamuna e Itamatatiua traz um terceiro tipo de marcação, que emerge a partir do processo fonológico de redução dos ditongos nasais pós-tônicos finais. Esta marcação revela-se como a mais produtiva não só em termos quantitativos, mas também por aparecer em contextos distintos aos de outras comunidades, como verbos no presente do indicativo, verbos de segunda conjugação e verbos irregulares. Os processos fonológicos para evitar encontros vocálicos das LBs e o contexto final átono poderia explicar essa redução, apontada por diferentes autores como característica da fala de pretos (Mendonça, 1933; Raimundo, 1933, entre outros). Adicionalmente, a ecologia externa de formação das comunidades alcantarenses poderia ter ajudado não apenas na manutenção desse final reduzido, mas na sua reinterpretação como morfema plural de terceira pessoa, bem como na sua expansão para contextos nos quais uma redução fonológica para uma vogal posterior não seria prevista no português brasileiro. / This thesis presents a linguistic description and analysis of the third person plural mark in the Quilombola communities of Mamuna and Itamatatiua located in Alcântara (MA). This mark is in centering of debates about formation of Brazilian Portuguese and may be used to explain linguistic drift and language contact (Naro & Scherre, 2007), (Lucchesi et al., 2009; Silva, 2005, among others). This research assumes that linguistic contact between the Portuguese brought to Brazil in the colonial era, different African languages, especially Bantu languages (LBs), and different Native Brazilian languages spoken in the territory, is responsible for peculiarities of the Portuguese spoken in Brazil. In this sense, specificities of the third person plural of Alcântara communities can be explained by linguistic contact established in formation of these communities. These third person plural in Mamuna and Itamatatiua have a third type of plural that emerges from the phonological process of reduction of nasal diphthongs in a final post-tonic position which proves to be the most productive in quantitative terms that appear in different contexts, i.e. verbs in present indicative, verbs of second conjugation and irregular verbs. The phonological processes to avoid vowel encounters of LBs and final unaccented context could explain the reduction that characterize black speech or fala de pretos, as pointed out by different authors (Mendonça, 1933; Raimundo, 1933 among others). In addition, the external ecology of Alcântara communitiess formation could have helped not only maintain the final reduced mark but in its reinterpretation as plural morpheme of third person, as well as its expansion into contexts in which phonological reduction for posterior vowel would not be anticipated in Brazilian Portuguese.