Different labels have been used for marking the reciprocity in Swahili dialogue poetry, varying between the more neutral `malumbano´ or `kujibizana´ and the more marked `ukinzani´ or `mashindano´. By showing a sample from the Zanzibari newspaper Mwongozi (1956) of a poetic dialogue on wife-husband relationships, the paper argues that the poetical form and the strong language used are not a mere expression of what has been called `rivalry´, but instruments in expressing views and opinions that have been observed in other literary devices (mithali, misemo, vijembe) and their usage. At the same time it is demonstrated that different types of poems (tenzi, mashairi, nyimbo) and different styles (plain, metaphoric, riddle) are used side by side. The ambiguity, incompleteness and strength of the language that is used in this poetry, make it all possible to express views on sensitive issues in the society.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of French & Italian, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0592. Adviser: Albert Valdman.

ABSTRACT Where do we get our ideas about the concept of `race'? The conceptualization of `race' has long been a topic of interest in the social sciences and society in general. The word `race' has been used and defined in different ways and different purposes throughout U.S. history. The definition of `race' therefore is arbitrary, changing according to the situation, but the consequences of how the word `race' is used are concrete and effect peoples lives daily. This research, in accord with much of the literature on the topic, shows that public schools play a major role in the conceptualization of `race'. Furthermore, what children are learning about `race;' in schools is not in an academic fashion but rather through inferences by the media, textbooks, and interactions with friends, teachers and school staff. I have conducted both qualitative (semi-structured interviews) and quantitative (questionnaires) research in order to explore where young adults say that they began to conceptualize `Race'. The results show that public schools, the home and neighborhoods of the young adults are the places that have influenced their `racial' conceptualization the most. I posit that we should provide the most up to date, accurate and pedagogically appropriate information as possible in public schools to aid our children in their process the conceptualization of the concept of `race'.

abstract / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

Arabic language ideology that views the colloquial as a threat to the standard language and fears a public role for the colloquial register remained prevalent throughout much of the twentieth century. Yet, in late nineteenth-century Egypt, the Nahda project of disseminating knowledge to ‘the masses’ gave rise to several journals that found a public role for Ammiyya, introducing it into the realm of written knowledge. This study analyzes the processes of introducing Ammiyya into the written realm and the subsequent attempt at reeling the register back in from the public sphere. Through a framework of the sociolinguistic analysis of style and the process of iconization, Part I analyzes Abdallah al-Nadim’s use of language variation in his journal, al-Ustaadh, and how it aided in sorting out contradiction between ideology that hailed the standard as the suitable public register and practice that conceded a role to the colloquial. This study argues that even as his journal published didactic dialogues in Ammiyya, Nadim’s language practice chipped away at the prospect of a sustained literary role for the colloquial through the use of ‘styles’ that aligned the standard with authority and a keen understanding of the modernity project and through indexing the colloquial with the backward realm of uneducated women. Through the framework of the process of ‘erasure', Part II analyzes linguistic practices aimed at reeling the colloquial back in from the realm of written knowledge. It demonstrates Nadim’s efforts - near the end of the publication of his journal - to erase the notion that an educated Egyptian would have any use for the register. Nadim removed the salient features of Ammiyya from his dialogues and scolded his interlocutors who displayed their backwardness through the continued use of the features. Late nineteenth- century works, such as Hasan Tawfiq’s Usuul al-Kalimaat al-Ammiyya, represent a continuation of the ideology-practice dialectic from Nadim’s attempted erasure of the colloquial. However, whereas Nadim erased salient features of the colloquial from his writings, these works attempted to trace Ammiyya terms back to their assumed Fusha origins, with the aim of unifying the language by erasing the register. / text

This dissertation presents results from a study on the expression of emotions in a second language in order to address two overarching research questions: 1) What does the acquisition of L2 emotion lexicon and discourse features tell us about the pragmatic and communicative competence of late learners and the internalization of L2-specific concepts, and 2) Knowing that expressing emotions in L2 is one of the most challenging tasks for L2 learners (Dewaele, 2008), what can late L2 learners do at end-state, with regards to ultimate attainment and the possibility of nativelikeness? Narratives of positive and negative emotional experiences were elicited from late L2 learners of English and French at end-state, both in their L1 and L2. First, the acquisition of L2 emotion words was analyzed through the productivity and lexical richness of the emotion vocabulary of the bilinguals. Analysis of L2 emotion concepts was also conducted through the distribution of emotion lemmas across morphosyntactic categories. Lexical choice of emotion words was also investigated. Results showed that although L2 English and L2 French bilinguals' narratives were shorter than the monolinguals' and the proportion of emotion word tokens were fewer than that of monolinguals', bilinguals showed greater lexical richness than the monolinguals. In terms of morphosyntactic categories, bilinguals behaved in a nativelike pattern such that L2 English bilinguals favored adjectives and L2 French bilinguals preferred nouns/verbs. This pattern was held constant across the first languages of the bilinguals. With respect to lexical choice, bilinguals used the same emotion lemmas used the most by monolinguals. On occasion, non-nativelike patterns also emerged, suggesting both L1 transfer on L2 (L2 English bilinguals favoring nouns/verbs) and L2 transfer on L1 (L1 English bilinguals favoring nouns/verbs). However, these rare instances could be explained by individual and typological variability. The findings suggest that late L2 learners can achieve nativelike levels of attainment in L2, providing evidence against the existence of a critical period for the acquisition of L2 pragmatics and culture-specific L2 lexicon. In a separate analysis, the L2 discourse of emotion was investigated under a corpus linguistic framework, in order to shed some light into the ways late L2 learners of English and French talk about emotions in narratives of personal stories. The use of stance lemmas and tokens, and the distribution of these stance markers across categories of certainty and doubt evidentials, emphatics, hedges, and modals, as well as lexical choice of stance were analyzed. This was followed by an analysis of discourse features, such as figurative language, reported speech, epithets, depersonalization, and amount of detail. Results showed that although bilinguals produced significantly less stance lemmas and tokens than monolinguals, in terms of the distribution of stance categories, the French group (L2 French and L1 French bilinguals) behaved in a nativelike pattern, favoring emphatics, certainty evidentials, doubt evidentials, hedges, and modals. The English group's results, on the other hand, were somewhat inconsistent, in that neither L2 English bilinguals, nor L1 English bilinguals followed the distribution pattern of English monolinguals. In terms of nativelike performance, we conclude that the L2 French bilinguals did perform nativelike with regards to stance marking, and that L2 English bilinguals also performed nativelike, but only for certain categories of stance. Also, L2 English transfer on L1 French was evidenced for L1 French bilinguals. Analysis of discourse features revealed between 1 up to 10 bilinguals (L2 English or French) out of 31 who used those features which were only evidenced in native speech in previous research. The findings here, once again suggest that late L2 learners can acquire aspects of L2 discourse to a nativelike degree. / text

This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of Yongning Na (Mosuo), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in southwestern China. The theoretical approaches taken are functional syntax and the discourse-based approach to language description and documentation. The aim of this dissertation is to describe the ways that the language's features and subsystems intersect to make Na a unique entity: analyticity; zero anaphora; OV word order; topic/comment information structure; a five-part evidential system; a conjunct/disjunct-like system that intersects with evidentiality and verbal semantics; prolific grammaticalization; overlap between nominalization and relativization and associated structures; representation of time through aspect, Aktionsarten, adverbials, and discourse context; and the Daba shamanic register. / text

This dissertation combines psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and cognitive linguistic approaches to study the language production phenomenon of crosslinguistic influence (CLI). Modern psycholinguistics has taken an active interest in language production studies, offering a particularly influential model of speech production that is examined in detail. And yet, as many researchers have argued, language data alone are insufficient to paint an accurate portrait of a given speaker’s language use. Whether mono- or multilingual, a speaker’s system of language(s) is itself a sub-system of the language system of the speaker’s family, community, culture, etc. At the same time, recent cognitive linguistic advances in the study of conceptual blending and construction grammar offer unique insights into the structure of the lexicon and even concepts themselves. This dissertation examines the speech production of multilinguals whose English language system has been acquired but is still developing. Such a system is dynamic and subject to unpredictable dynamic effects, here grouped under the general rubric of CLI. The psycholinguistic aspects of this study are concerned with establishing the psychology of students’ language use. The sociolinguistic aspect addresses the need to research the sociocultural background within which the English language system has been acquired. The cognitive linguistic aspects allow in-depth insights into the cognitive and conceptual mechanisms underlying the... [to full text] / Šioje disertacijoje, siekiant ištirti kalbos produkavimo fenomeną, taikomi psicholingvistikos, sociolingvistikos ir kognityvinės lingvistikos metodai. Šių dienų psicholingvistai atliko daugybę kalbos produkavimo tyrimų, siūlydami itin svarbų kalbos produkavimo modelį, kuris bus išsamiai išnagrinėtas. Tačiau, kaip dauguma mokslininkų įrodinėjo, vien tik kalbos duomenų nepakanka norint pateikti išsamų konkretaus kalbos vartotojo kalbos vartojimo vaizdą. Nepriklausomai nuo to, ar kalbantysis yra vienakalbis, ar dvikalbis, jo kalbos (-ų) sistema pati yra kalbančiojo šeimos, bendruomenės, kultūros ir kt. kalbos sistemų posistemė. Be to, dabartinės kognityvinės lingvistikos progresas nagrinėjant konceptualiąją metaforą, konceptualųjį derinimą ir konstrukcijų gramatiką teikia unikalių įžvalgų apie žodyno ir net pačių sąvokų struktūrą. Šioje disertacijoje yra nagrinėjamas daugiakalbių, kurie jau yra įsisavinę anglų kalbos sistemą, tačiau kurių kalbos įgūdžiai tebesivysto, kalbos produkavimas. Tokia sistema yra dinamiška ir priklauso nuo iš anksto nenumatomų kintamųjų, kurie šiame darbe pateikti bendrame skyriuje tarpkalbinė įtaka. Psicholingvistiniu šio tyrimo požiūriu siekiama nustatyti studentų kalbos vartojimo psichologinius aspektus. Sociolingvistiniu šio darbo aspektu pabrėžiamas poreikis išnagrinėti sociokultūrinę aplinką, kurioje tiriamieji įsisavino anglų kalbos sistemą. Kognityvinės lingvistikos aspektai leidžia giliau pažvelgti į kognityvinius ir konceptualius mechanizmus... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Bakalauro darbe iš gautų anketinių duomenų ištirtos Skuodo apylinkių – Vižančių, Kervių, Šarkės, Luknių – šnektos sociolingvistiniu aspektu. Svarbiausios analizuotos sritys yra kalbos vartojimas, požiūris į kalbos vartojimą, tautinė ir tarminė savimonė. Iš įrašų, transkribuotų rišlių šnektų tekstų aprašytos fonetinės ypatybės, būdingos šnektoms. Apklausti ir įrašyti 28 skirtingų kartų pateikėjai: jaunesniosios, vidurinės, vyresniosios. Tyrimas parodė, kad tarminė kalba vyrauja bendraujant šeimoje, su pažįstamais, kaimynais, gyvūnais, galvojant, skaičiuojant. Kalbėjimas žiniasklaidoje, rašto kalba kaip tinkamesnė suvokiama lietuvių bendrinė kalba. Dainuoti derami abu kalbėjimo variantai. / The Bachelor's paper examines the sub-dialects of Skuodas District - Vižančiai, Kerviai, Šarkė, Luknės - in sociolinguistic perspective based on the obtained questionnaire data. The main analysed areas are the use of language, approach to the language use, and ethnic and dialectal self-consciousness. We have described the phonetic features characteristic of the sub-dialects from the records and transcribed cohesive texts of the sub-dialects. 28 informants of different generations: younger, middle, senior were interviewed and recorded. The research showed that the dialectal language prevailed in communication with family, friends, neighbours, animals, as well as when thinking, counting. The Lithuanian standard language is perceived as more appropriate for speaking in the media and for the written language. Both speech versions are proper for singing.

Šioje disertacijoje, siekiant ištirti kalbos produkavimo fenomeną, taikomi psicholingvistikos, sociolingvistikos ir kognityvinės lingvistikos metodai. Šių dienų psicholingvistai atliko daugybę kalbos produkavimo tyrimų, siūlydami itin svarbų kalbos produkavimo modelį, kuris bus išsamiai išnagrinėtas. Tačiau, kaip dauguma mokslininkų įrodinėjo, vien tik kalbos duomenų nepakanka norint pateikti išsamų konkretaus kalbos vartotojo kalbos vartojimo vaizdą. Nepriklausomai nuo to, ar kalbantysis yra vienakalbis, ar dvikalbis, jo kalbos (-ų) sistema pati yra kalbančiojo šeimos, bendruomenės, kultūros ir kt. kalbos sistemų posistemė. Be to, dabartinės kognityvinės lingvistikos progresas nagrinėjant konceptualiąją metaforą, konceptualųjį derinimą ir konstrukcijų gramatiką teikia unikalių įžvalgų apie žodyno ir net pačių sąvokų struktūrą. Šioje disertacijoje yra nagrinėjamas daugiakalbių, kurie jau yra įsisavinę anglų kalbos sistemą, tačiau kurių kalbos įgūdžiai tebesivysto, kalbos produkavimas. Tokia sistema yra dinamiška ir priklauso nuo iš anksto nenumatomų kintamųjų, kurie šiame darbe pateikti bendrame skyriuje tarpkalbinė įtaka. Psicholingvistiniu šio tyrimo požiūriu siekiama nustatyti studentų kalbos vartojimo psichologinius aspektus. Sociolingvistiniu šio darbo aspektu pabrėžiamas poreikis išnagrinėti sociokultūrinę aplinką, kurioje tiriamieji įsisavino anglų kalbos sistemą. Kognityvinės lingvistikos aspektai leidžia giliau pažvelgti į kognityvinius ir konceptualius mechanizmus... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / This dissertation combines psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and cognitive linguistic approaches to study the language production phenomenon of crosslinguistic influence (CLI). Modern psycholinguistics has taken an active interest in language production studies, offering a particularly influential model of speech production that is examined in detail. And yet, as many researchers have argued, language data alone are insufficient to paint an accurate portrait of a given speaker’s language use. Whether mono- or multilingual, a speaker’s system of language(s) is itself a sub-system of the language system of the speaker’s family, community, culture, etc. At the same time, recent cognitive linguistic advances in the study of conceptual blending and construction grammar offer unique insights into the structure of the lexicon and even concepts themselves. This dissertation examines the speech production of multilinguals whose English language system has been acquired but is still developing. Such a system is dynamic and subject to unpredictable dynamic effects, here grouped under the general rubric of CLI. The psycholinguistic aspects of this study are concerned with establishing the psychology of students’ language use. The sociolinguistic aspect addresses the need to research the sociocultural background within which the English language system has been acquired. The cognitive linguistic aspects allow in-depth insights into the cognitive and conceptual mechanisms underlying the... [to full text]