Thesis (doctoral)--Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität zu Frankfurt am Main, 1980. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 369-380).

The current study implements a speech perception experiment that interrogates local perceptions of Spanish varieties in Miami. Participants (N=292) listened to recordings of three Spanish varieties (Peninsular, Highland Colombian, and Post-Castro Cuban) and were given background information about the speakers, including the parents’ country of origin. In certain cases, the parents’ national-origin label matched the country of origin of the speaker, but otherwise the background information and voices were mismatched. The manipulation distinguishes perceptions determined by bottom-up cues (dialect) from top-down ones (social information). Participants then rated each voice for a range of personal characteristics and answered hypothetical questions about the speakers’ employment, family, and income. Results show clear top-down effects of the social information that often drive perceptions up or down depending on the traits themselves. Additionally, the data suggest differences in perceptions between Hispanic/non-Hispanic and Cuban/non-Cuban participants, although the Cuban participants do not drive the Hispanic participants’ perceptions.

This thesis examines evidence for language contact between Oscan and Greek in the corpus of Oscan inscriptions from Lucania, Bruttium and Messana. These inscriptions were written in an adapted form of the Greek alphabet from around the fourth to first century BC, with a few of the latest texts written in the Latin alphabet; as a group, these texts are referred to as ‘South Oscan’. The work draws on modern sociolinguistic theory of bilingualism and language contact alongside previous scholarship on ancient linguistics, epigraphy and archaeology. It also suggests a series of general principles for dealing with small epigraphic corpora from a sociolinguistic viewpoint. After laying out these frameworks, this work gives an introduction to the sites of the region and past scholarship on language contact in this corpus. The main body of the thesis deals with the corpus of texts from a number of complementary angles. Firstly, the adaptation of the South Oscan alphabet from the Greek alphabet is explored in detail. In particular, the development of various signs for /f/ and the use of ‘extra’ Greek characters like chi, theta and phi are investigated as evidence of ongoing contact between the languages. The rest of the thesis deals with the corpus by genre or inscription type: this includes dedications, curse tablets, legal texts, official texts (including coin legends) and funerary texts. While some types of text, such as curse tablets, show pronounced influence and borrowing from Greek, other genres such as legal or official texts show far fewer contact phenomena, even within the same community. In other instances, language contact appears to have resulted in regional linguistic developments: for example, some of the formulae used in South Oscan dedicatory and funerary texts appear to be creative adaptations arising from a combination of influences from both Oscan and Greek, without fully adopting existing models from either language. This thesis therefore stresses that communities developed norms about the appropriateness of borrowing from Greek in various kinds of texts. In many instances, linguistic and epigraphic borrowing from Greek in written texts seems to be determined by individual choice and variation within these community norms, rather than the result of incompetence.

<p>  </p> <p>The present study describes the pragmatic functions and the social meaning of the discourse marker (DM) <em>órale</em>. <em>Órale </em>is a recognized and salient DM in Mexican Spanish (Mejía-Gómez, 2008; Mendoza-Denton, 2011; Navarro, 2005), but research on its pragmatic meanings and use in interaction and society is minimal. Considering previous literature on discourse markers and descriptions of <em>órale</em>, two research questions were addressed to examine the pragmatic and sociolinguistic uses of <em>órale</em>: (1) What are the pragmatic functions of <em>órale</em>? and (2) Do gender, age, and educational level affect the use of <em>órale</em>? By answering these research questions, the current investigation represents the largest and most systematic analysis of <em>órale</em> to date, and it offers both pragmatic and sociolinguistic understandings. </p> <p>The analysis considered all 189 <em>órale </em>tokens in the Corpus Sociolingüístico de la Ciudad de México (CSCM) (Butragueño & Lastra, 2011–2015)<a href="https://hammer.purdue.edu/account/home#_ftn1" target="_blank">[1]</a>. The pragmatic analysis relied on an iterative approach, using open coding and axial coding (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). In addition, it relied on the triangulation of prior descriptions of <em>órale</em>, turn position, and the speakers’ positioning in the social narrative. For the sociolinguistic analysis, descriptive statistics and statistical models were used to understand the effect of gender, age, and education on <em>órale</em> in general and its different functions.</p> <p>Results indicated three discourse functions of <em>órale</em> (i.e., exhortation, affirmation, reorientation), each with two subfunctions. Exhortation functions appeared in first pair part positions (i.e., initiating) and aided speakers in positioning as authoritative. Affirmation functions were in second pair part positions (i.e., responsive) and reflected a more agreeable positioning, and reoriention functions were turn­ medial. Quantitative analysis of the distribution of <em>órale</em> indicated that affirmation was the most frequent function, followed by reorientation and then exhortation. Regarding the sociolinguistic variables, a quasi-Poisson regression model and multinomial logistical models revealed that gender had a statistically significant effect on <em>órale</em> use, in that men used the DM more than women. In addition, in the analysis of the effect of the social categories on function of <em>órale</em>, education had a significant effect. The middle educational level relied more on <em>órale </em>for affirmation compared to other functions than the other groups. The interaction between social categories and functions was discussed with respect to the findings related to gender and level of education.</p> <p>A main contribution of this investigation was the typology of the pragmatic functions of <em>órale</em>. The analysis was sufficient to explain all data and more economical than some prior descriptions. Furthermore, the proposed typology relies on a triangulation of pragmatic function, turn position, and the positioning made by the speaker, which taken together provide validity to the analysis. Other contributions were the distribution of the functions of<em> órale </em>in discourse and among social categories. In addition, a theoretical contribution was made by the proposal of the core meaning, leading to more precise understanding of <em>órale</em>. </p> <p>  <br>    </p> <p><a href="https://hammer.purdue.edu/account/home#_ftnref1" target="_blank">[1]</a> The CSCM is a balanced corpus of 108 interviews with men and women across three social classes and three age groups. Interviews addressed thematic modules, including life threatening situations.</p>

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.