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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Language varieties and variation in English usage among native Korean speakers in Seoul

Park, Linda Seojung 01 May 2019 (has links)
In the last few decades, a rise in Korean speakers’ borrowing from English has led to a rich pool of contemporary Anglo-Korean vocabulary, also known as English loanwords. Despite the English roots of these borrowed words, their usage in a Korean context is often non-uniform and non-traditional; this process of borrowing, reshaping, and dispersing borrowed vocabulary provides insights on the dynamics of Korean society and its relationship to global English-speaking communities. In order to investigate the variations on Korean speakers’ use of Anglo-Korean words and their potential correlations with various factors, I conducted interviews with 24 native Korean speakers in Seoul, Korea in the summer of 2018. Subjects were diverse in their age, gender, and occupation. I analyzed the r speakers with a preference of Sino-Korean words, speakers with a preference of Anglo-Korean words, and speakers with a speech mixed of Korean, Korean English, and American English. I identified two variables as the most significant causes of diversity of speech: 1) age and 2) exposure to English. I established that 80% of my subjects over the age of 60 fell into the Sino-Korean-dominant category, and the best indicator of a subject being a translingual speaker was an increased exposure to English. In order to expand on evidence from my interviews, I historically contextualize Korean language in society alongside current ideologies related to language in Korea. In so doing, I explore the relationship between these variables and the language varieties of individual speakers. I argue that because a speaker’s age and exposure to English shapes the language variety they use and the language ideology in Korea touches individual speakers in different ways, native speakers in today’s Korea use several language varieties. These findings challenge the notion of a linguistically and ethnically homogeneous Korea and shed light on the current status of Korean English and American English in Korea.
2

Beliefs regarding accommodation of dialects

Larsson, Magdalena January 2012 (has links)
The aim of this paper is to investigate non-linguists' ideas about dialect accommodation. That is to say, the research questions concern people's beliefs about whether they accommodate their dialects to their interlocutors. In addition, one research question concerns people's suggestions as to why they adjust their speech and if differences between native and foreign languages can be found.   The investigation was carried out as an informant survey and a total of 26 participants, between the ages 20 and 30, answered the questions. The data were analysed and discussed from a sociolinguistic and a sociopsychological perspective, with the theory CAT as a foundation for the interpretations.   The results show that people believed they change their speech depending on conversation partner. This was thought of as subconscious behaviour and was mainly reflected upon afterwards. Furthermore, comments from the questionnaire concern changes in speech when talking to friends, when the interlocutor's dialect is distinct and when the informants visit a different geographical area. In addition, the informants have ideas about efficient communication when it comes to comprehensibility between the conversation partners' vocabularies as well as being on the same communicative level.   The results from a native language accommodation situation and a foreign language accommodation situation showed similar ideas. That is to say, people's perceptions about accommodation did not differ much depending on what language they used.
3

Multilingual Neural Machine Translation for Low Resource Languages

Lakew, Surafel Melaku 20 April 2020 (has links)
Machine Translation (MT) is the task of mapping a source language to a target language. The recent introduction of neural MT (NMT) has shown promising results for high-resource language, however, poorly performing for low-resource language (LRL) settings. Furthermore, the vast majority of the 7, 000+ languages around the world do not have parallel data, creating a zero-resource language (ZRL) scenario. In this thesis, we present our approach to improving NMT for LRL and ZRL, leveraging a multilingual NMT modeling (M-NMT), an approach that allows building a single NMT to translate across multiple source and target languages. This thesis begins by i) analyzing the effectiveness of M-NMT for LRL and ZRL translation tasks, spanning two NMT modeling architectures (Recurrent and Transformer), ii) presents a self-learning approach for improving the zero-shot translation directions of ZRLs, iii) proposes a dynamic transfer-learning approach from a pre-trained (parent) model to a LRL (child) model by tailoring to the vocabulary entries of the latter, iv) extends M-NMT to translate from a source language to specific language varieties (e.g. dialects), and finally, v) proposes an approach that can control the verbosity of an NMT model output. Our experimental findings show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches in improving NMT of LRLs and ZRLs.
4

"What Variety Do You Think I Should Use?" : Seven Swedish EFL Teachers' views on language varieties in the classroom

Alfredsson, Antonia January 2021 (has links)
The aim of this essay is to gain knowledge about attitudes towards the use of different varieties of English in the classroom from the perspective of seven English teachers in Swedish upper secondary school. The study was carried out through interviews with teachers from different upper secondary schools in Sweden. Qualitative interviews were used to gain information from the teachers. The results showed that the language varieties most of the teachers used were American English and British English, which had to do with what variety they were more exposed to. When asked about their students’ choices of language variety in the classroom, the teachers said that they used American English because of the frequent presence of the variety in films and television. The teachers worked with language varieties in the classroom by incorporating different varieties into the teaching using films, clips or listening comprehensions with speakers of, for example, Indian English or Australian English. Regarding the significance of working with language varieties in the classroom, the teachers said that it could develop knowledge and understanding of other people and that it could expand knowledge about the English-speaking world. In conclusion, the results showed that, even though American English and British English are the most commonly used English varieties in Swedish upper secondary schools, there are many ways teachers try to incorporate other language varieties to help students develop their English.
5

A linguistic description of language varieties in Venda

Mulaudzi, Phalandwa Abraham 08 1900 (has links)
Bibliography: leaves 232-239 / This thesis investigates the various language varieties of Venda. In traditional descriptions, researchers were mainly concerned with linguistic differences which characterised the socalled Venda 'dialects'. These are spoken forms which are mutually intelligible to one another and which occur within identifiable regional boundaries. Each of these forms in turn, is mutually intelligible to the so-called standard form, commonly known as Tshiphani. Various factors contributed to the evolvement of · the Venda dialects and, as this study shows, in some cases these factors are historical in nature and in others, they are determined by adjacent ethnic groups of people. The linguistic differences which characterise each of these dialects are identified and discussed. It is then argued that the term 'dialect' is far too restricted to account for the various spoken forms which characterise the Venda language, and the term 'language variety' is introduced to deal with the shortcomings of the traditional approach to language differences. The nature of different spoken forms is then discussed within the ambit of the definition of 'language varieties'. This is a term used in general linguistic studies and accounts for the many different forms that may characterise a language.+ To this end, a detailed discussion is presented of the social rural and urban varieties which are found in Venda. Some of these varieties are secretive in nature, and are not generally known to the general public. They include language varieties which characterise various institutions such as murundu, vhutuka, musevhetho, vhusha, thondo and domba . Then there are those varieties which are referred to as 'open' rural varieties which are not, generally speaking secretive in nature, for example those which characterise traditional religious beliefs, taboo forms, and those referred to as musanda and malombo. Finally, reference is made to the language varieties which permeate urban as well as rural areas, including those of divination, the church, tsotsitaal, gender, a variety which is referred to as the the linguistic restriction variety and finally the varieties used in the courtroom as well as that used by politicians. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
6

Language variation and change in a Soshanguve high school

Nkosi, Dolphina Mmatsela 03 1900 (has links)
This study takes place within a school situated on the north eastern side of Soshanguve, a township to the north of the capital city, Pretoria, also called Tshwane. The school draws most of its learners from an area that started as an informal settlement. Certain parts of this settlement are now well structured and it is gradually becoming a formal settlement. The children who form part of this study are those whose parents have migrated from neighbouring provinces such as Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga, as well as from neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Owing to this migration, the community around this school is multilingual. Multilingualism has led to phonic, grammatical, semantic and stylistic language interference. This interference has caused language change, which in turn has led to variations that affect the standard form of Sesotho sa Lebowa, the first language of the school. The school selected for this study has achieved very average matriculation results since its establishment in 1994. Although the school generally achieves a 100% pass rate in the subject Sesotho sa Lebowa, marks are generally low despite the fact that the learners are supposedly first language speakers of Sesotho sa Lebowa. The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons for the poor quality of these results. Matriculation results over the past four years attest to the fact that something needs to be done in order to reverse the negative trend of these results. / Linguistics / M.A. (Sociolinguistics)
7

Factors influencing performance in the learning of IsiZulu at Ekurhuleni South District secondary schools

Mkhombo, S. M. (Sibongile Margaret) January 2011 (has links)
The background in this study is that over the years analysis of grade 12 results in Ekurhuleni South District indicates that most secondary schools obtain 100% pass rate but not quality results isiZulu home language. IsiZulu home language quality results often range from 20% to 40%. The research findings point at two casual factors: (1) inside the classroom and (2) outside the classroom. Inside the classroom refers to quality of educators teaching isiZulu home language and outside the classroom refers to what is supposedly isiZulu home language’ yet a close analysis of the kind spoken in the township Zulu homes is in fact pidgin Zulu. In terms of quality evaluation this so called isiZulu home language can never pass quality assurance. The researcher recommends that educators of isiZulu home language be put through vigorous quality training in the teaching of isiZulu (HL). / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)
8

Language variation and change in a Soshanguve high school

Nkosi, Dolphina Mmatsela 03 1900 (has links)
This study takes place within a school situated on the north eastern side of Soshanguve, a township to the north of the capital city, Pretoria, also called Tshwane. The school draws most of its learners from an area that started as an informal settlement. Certain parts of this settlement are now well structured and it is gradually becoming a formal settlement. The children who form part of this study are those whose parents have migrated from neighbouring provinces such as Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga, as well as from neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Owing to this migration, the community around this school is multilingual. Multilingualism has led to phonic, grammatical, semantic and stylistic language interference. This interference has caused language change, which in turn has led to variations that affect the standard form of Sesotho sa Lebowa, the first language of the school. The school selected for this study has achieved very average matriculation results since its establishment in 1994. Although the school generally achieves a 100% pass rate in the subject Sesotho sa Lebowa, marks are generally low despite the fact that the learners are supposedly first language speakers of Sesotho sa Lebowa. The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons for the poor quality of these results. Matriculation results over the past four years attest to the fact that something needs to be done in order to reverse the negative trend of these results. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Sociolinguistics)
9

Factors influencing performance in the learning of IsiZulu at Ekurhuleni South District secondary schools

Mkhombo, S. M. (Sibongile Margaret) January 2011 (has links)
The background in this study is that over the years analysis of grade 12 results in Ekurhuleni South District indicates that most secondary schools obtain 100% pass rate but not quality results isiZulu home language. IsiZulu home language quality results often range from 20% to 40%. The research findings point at two casual factors: (1) inside the classroom and (2) outside the classroom. Inside the classroom refers to quality of educators teaching isiZulu home language and outside the classroom refers to what is supposedly isiZulu home language’ yet a close analysis of the kind spoken in the township Zulu homes is in fact pidgin Zulu. In terms of quality evaluation this so called isiZulu home language can never pass quality assurance. The researcher recommends that educators of isiZulu home language be put through vigorous quality training in the teaching of isiZulu (HL). / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)
10

Facebook as Transnational Space: Language and Identity among 1.5 and Second Generation Mexicans in Chicago

Christiansen, Martha Sidury Juarez Lopez 08 August 2013 (has links)
No description available.

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