Résumés des communications
Democracy without language? Lexical creativity in a Nigerian minority language
Emmanuel Aito, University of Regina
In every language, irrespective of the extent of its description or lexicon, an accessible, predictable and stable system of assigning names to places, objects and concepts ensures inter-comprehensibility. Communication is thus indispensable as a democratic polity organizes itself, determines roles, negotiates power and allocates resources; hence the fundamental role of language. But beyond mere instrumentality, what are the connections between a name (a word) and the object or concept it represents? Are there simply logical, necessary or natural relationships in these associations? Or does a name reveal, enhance or denigrate the nature, inherent identity and defining characteristics of its object? Is it tantamount to a window into the essence of what it symbolizes?
Denominative processes are eminently social, and entail the expression, description and communication of objects and concepts in a (linguistic) community. They invariably engender the appropriation of a heritage. They assist in adapting to new knowledge, skills and systems, in order to survive and thrive in times of change. Were a language to successfully integrate desirable alien scientific and cultural phenomena reaching it inexorably due to geography or globalizing factors, it would have harnessed its anthropological potential. Such capacity serves to mediate the tensions within socio-cultural communities seeking to preserve their cultural heritage in the face of pressures attributable to science, technology, economics, politics and novel models of social interaction.
Of particular note are minority languages that confront the daunting burden of perceived inadequacies in their denominative capacities to cope with novelty. Foreign to the lifespace of speakers of these less described or documented languages, vast unrelenting quantities of unfamiliar notions, along with their corresponding terms and complexities, pose enormous challenges to communities that desire the experience, safeguard, transmission and retrieval of their heritage in their own idioms. Thus, in the context of the intersections between language and democracy, this presentation reflects on how a Nigerian minority language, to wit Esan, copes with foreign/novel concepts. In particular, we preview our work on its lexical creativity mechanisms, as its speakers seek relevance in the ongoing democratization processes in Nigeria.
Esan dialects and orthography harmonization: Addressing the Russian Doll effect
Emmanuel Aito, University of Regina
Seventy-seven years after the first colonial attempt by the Catholic Mission to write Esan, a Nigerian minority language with several dialects, serious efforts are finally being made to simplify its orthography. In the main, this renewed attention seeks to reduce the tedium often associated with both its written form and diversity of dialects. Of note, therefore, is the fact that the Esan Orthography Committee, which exclusively comprises Esan-speakers under the able leadership of the late Dr. Christopher Okojie, made strenuous efforts to ratify and adopt new alphabets by eliminating some difficult diagraphs which do not represent actual phonemes, but their confusing contextual variants. The committee also endeavoured to make readily accessible to all and sundry a clear description of vowel harmony, long vowels, consonant phonemes, syllabic nasals, tones and spellings. Thus, these laudable, concerted efforts address major problems that intersperse the uneven, if undulating history of Esan orthography. For those who decry the domination of their minority languages by dominant languages (Kymlicka, 2001; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000; May 2001), including yours truly, these concrete and far-reaching steps are at once meant to encourage literacy in Esan by indigenes, and stimulate the interest of non-speakers associated with it in myriad ways.
However, an important secondary issue deserves mention. While it is proper and highly commendable to enhance the efficiency of phonemic and morpho-phonemic orthography, while simultaneously decreasing defectiveness, it is also opportune to address the Russian doll dimension of language (Bourhis, 2001; Sue Wright, 2007). It refers to the fact that with every language or dialect singled out for codification or standardization in any linguistic territory with competing languages or dialects, there will be those who invariably feel threatened and marginalized. This is the provenance of the concept of displaced marginalization or domination, which creates minorities within minorities.
This paper will therefore discuss the trajectory of Esan, highlight the crucial characteristics of the new orthography and contextualize the difficulties of its harmonization in the context of its various dialects.
Do instruction and exposure make a difference on the learning of orthographic spelling by speakers of a regional variety?
Patricia Balcom, Université de Moncton
Referential French is a complex written code acquired at school by speakers of vernacular varieties (Barbaud, 1997). The goal of this study is to investigate the influence of instruction and exposure on subjects’ production of several elements of Referential French which Lefrançois et al (2005) showed to be problematic and which showed improvement after instruction, that is l’orthographe grammaticale ‘grammatical spelling’. Grammatical spelling is an aspect of spelling in French which involves inflected forms of words.
A controlled production task was administered to 80 speakers of New Brunswick Acadian French who were students at a Francophone university in the Maritime Provinces. There were 40 subjects in their first year of studies and 40 in their fourth or subsequent year. A number of aspects of orthographic spelling were examined: verb forms in the passé simple, past participial forms and subject-verb agreement. Results showed that while there was still variability in the fourth-year students’ use, their performance was significantly closer to Referential French than that of the first-year students.
References
Barbaud, P. (1997). La diglossie québécoise. In M. Dvorak (Ed.), Canada et bilinguisme, (pp. 65-82). Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes.
Lefrançois, P., Laurier, M. D., Lazure, R., & Claing, R. (2005). Évaluation de l’efficacité des mesures visant l’amélioration du français écrit du primaire à l’université. Manuscript, Université de Montréal and Collège Ahuntsic.
Creating awareness of academic writing: Surveying first year level students’ awareness of register differentiation
Christa Beaudoin-Lietz, Saint Mary’s University
This study focuses on the degree to which especially first year level students are aware of register distinctions encountered at the university. The presentation reports on students’ expectations and awareness of linguistic characteristics with respect to written registers at the university level. The research is conducted as a pilot project at Saint Mary’s University, one of several projects dealing with academic literacy.
While descriptions of register-specific linguistic structures exist, this project surveys the awareness of students concerning the use of academic register by asking them to respond to a questionnaire. The questionnaire highlights linguistic differences between spoken and written registers and elicits information concerning students’ awareness of linguistic characteristics focusing on written registers. After completing the questionnaire, students receive a pamphlet with feedback on register distinctions, including statistical information. The basis for the questionnaire is the description of linguistic characteristics as they occur in spoken and written specifically university registers (Biber 2006), as well as the analysis of linguistic structures found in academic prose (Biber et al. 1999). The questionnaire has the following objectives: 1. to evaluate the degree of students’ awareness of register specific use of language structures 2. to raise students’ awareness with respect to linguistic characteristic of written registers 3. to highlight register distinctions.
The paper reports on research questions, methods, data and preliminary results of the project. A discussion of feedback mechanisms and further research directions conclude the presentation.
La variation dans les formes verbales 3pl à l’imparfait en français acadien
Louise Beaulieu, Université de Moncton
Wladyslaw Cichocki, University of New Brunswick
En français acadien du nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswick, l’accord sujet-verbe à la 3e personne du pluriel a trois variantes : ø-V-ø, la forme généralement associée au français normatif, comme en (1); i-V-ø, une forme commune à plusieurs variétés de français parlé, en (2); i-V-ont, une variante spécifique au français acadien, en (3).
(1) Les usines ferm-ent. Les usines ferm–aient. Les usines ferm-eraient.
(2) Les usines i-ferm-ent. Les usines i-ferm-aient. Les usines i-ferm-eraient.
(3) Les usines i-ferm-ont. Les usines i-ferm-iont. Les usines i-ferm-eriont.
Chez les locuteurs adultes de cette variété, un changement linguistique présentement en cours favorise l’emploi de la flexion postverbale zéro (-ent) et le déclin progressif de la désinence traditionnelle (-ont). Le but de cette communication est d’élucider le patron sociolinguistique d’emploi de la variante i-V-ont à l’imparfait afin de comprendre le rôle que jouent les facteurs linguistiques et extralinguistiques dans ce changement.
Les données ont été extraites d’un corpus de langage spontané recueilli au début des années 90 et stratifié d’après le sexe, deux groupes d’âge et deux types de réseau social – « réseau ouvert » et « réseau fermé ». Dans 48 heures de données provenant de ce corpus, 4500 occurrences 3pl ont été relevées ; 1043 sont des formes à l’imparfait.
La distribution des occurrences à l’imparfait montre que chez les locuteurs du réseau fermé cette variante représente40% (176/438) des occurrences, alors que chez les locuteurs du réseau ouvert seulement 0.17% (1/605) des données sont des formes i-V-ont. Les résultats des analyses quantitatives GoldVarb portant sur les données du réseau fermé montrent que, parmi les facteurs retenus, la relation entre le facteur « radical du verbe » et l’interaction « sexe-âge » est particulièrement révélatrice du rôle des contraintes internes à la langue dans le changement qui affecte -ont.
A report on the Dictionary of Cape Breton English: The defining process
William Davey, Cape Breton University
Richard MacKinnon, Cape Breton University
This paper reports on the long-term project to create a Dictionary of Cape Breton English similar to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English and the Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English. As a regional dictionary, this work will define words that are “distinctively characteristic” (Avis 1967: xii) of Cape Breton English and the Atlantic region. This includes words and senses that have originated in Cape Breton, the so-called Cape Bretonisms, and the more numerous regional words and meanings that are distinctive of the Atlantic region but not widely used elsewhere.
After a brief overview of the collection stage, the presentation examines the process of writing the dictionary articles: selecting the word for inclusion, writing the head note, defining the word, selecting supporting citations and evidence from surveys, and providing a dictionary list and a possible language note on the word’s local usage. The paper examines the various challenges and discoveries made as the editors begin this final stage of the dictionary.
Reference
Avis, Walter, et al., eds. 1967. The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Toronto: Gage.
L’énonciation allocutive en contexte plurilingue : Le cas du Cameroun
Bernard Mulo Farenkia, Cape Breton University
Les interactions verbales au Cameroun se déroulent dans un contexte où l’anglais et le français, les langues officielles (dominantes), sont en contact permanent avec plus de 248 langues autochtones, le pidgin English, une langue véhiculaire et le camfranglais, un parler hybride. Le tout est enveloppé dans un tissu socioculturel marqué par la pluralité et la diversité ethnique. Dans le but de les rendre fonctionnelles pour les interactions quotidiennes, les Camerounais se doivent de s’approprier et d’adapter les deux langues officielles à leur culture. Ainsi chaque locuteur « qui s’exprime en français [ou en anglais] transpose dans cette langue le système de sa langue [ou culture] maternelle » (Onguene-Essono 1995 : 182). Autrement dit : la « personnalité africaine » qui se reflète dans l’usage de l’anglais et du français s’articule, comme l’a souligné Tabi Manga (1993 : 43), dans la créativité néologique et l’adaptation sémantique aux réalités socioculturelles locales.
La présente communication part du constat que le système de l’adresse des langues officielles au Cameroun n’est pas toujours pourvu d’appellatifs adéquats pour traduire fidèlement les intentions communicatives et sociales des locuteurs. Pour combler ce manque, ceux-ci procèdent à l’élargissement du répertoire appellatif à leur disposition. On aboutit inévitablement aux « néologies appellatives ». Il s’agira donc de décrire les différents procédés mobilisés pour créer les appellatifs (néologies morphologiques et néologies sémantiques) et de présenter les contextes et valeurs pragmatiques de certaines « néologies appellatives ».
“Everything old is new again”: The role of memory in the productive repetition of texts
Anne Furlong, University of Prince Edward Island
Repetition in texts is unproblematically productive, as research in stylistics, literary studies, and discourse analysis has demonstrated. However, the repetition of texts – typically in re-reading – raises different issues. It’s not immediately apparent why readers repeat texts, much less what processes are at work when they do. In particular, the role of memory, though clearly central to any account of rereading, is poorly understood and little studied.
It seems uncontroversial that retrieving an interpretation from memory requires less cognitive effort. However, memory, far from being an aid, may be a positive hindrance to satisfactory rereading: simply recovering an existing interpretation will produce inadequate effects for the effort invested. Interpretations constructed primarily from memory – rather than constructed during the rereading process – are therefore irrelevant, as Relevance Theory uses the term. In order to make their cognitive investment worthwhile, rereaders must be processing significant sections of a text on subsequent readings.
This hypothesis provokes a range of questions: On subsequent readings of the same text, are the cognitive processes of (habitual) rereaders different from those of non-rereaders? Do rereaders produce interpretations that non-rereaders cannot (or do not)? Can the distinction between readings and readers be attributed to the demands of the text (that is, will complex texts be more likely to withstand rereading than comparatively simpler ones)?
This paper will address the process of productive rereading within a relevance theoretic framework. I will argue that we can distinguish repetition within texts from rereading, and also account for different readers’ experiences with rereading. Specifically, I will argue that the role of memory is pivotal: the greater the proportion retrieved, the less likely the reader is to continue processing the text, and the more likely the interpretation is to be strictly irrelevant.
References
Brown, S. (2002). What happens when people reread? Paper presented at the Annual World Congress of the Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée. Singapore. December 16-21, 2002.
Bursey, J. & Furlong, A. (2007). Cognitive Gothic: relevance theory, iteration, and style. In Tabbi, J. & Shavers, R. (Eds.), PapereEmpire: William Gaddis and the world system. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P.
Caws, M. A. (1989). Narrative voice and second reading: relation and response. Poetics Today, 10 (2), 243-253.
Foster, J. B. (1996). Faces of rereading. Poetics Today, 17 (2), 253-261.
Furlong, A. (1996). Relevance theory and literary interpretation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University College, London, UK.
Furlong, A. (2006). You can’t put your foot in the same river once: relevance stylistics and repetition. The State of Stylistics, 26th Annual Meeting of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA). Joensuu, Finland, 26-29 July, 2006.
Furlong, A. (2007). The safety dance: a relevance-theoretic account of verbatim repetition in literary and non-literary contexts. International Pragmatics Association, 10th Biennial Meeting. Göteborg, Sweden, 9-13 August, 2007.
Gerrig, R. J., (1989). Reexperiencing fiction and non-fiction. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 47 (3), 277-280.
Johnstone, B. (Ed.). (1994). Repetition in discourse: interdisciplinary perspectives. New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Jucker, A.H. (1994). Irrelevant repetitions: a challenge to relevance theory. In Repetition. SPELL (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature) 7. A. Fischer (Ed.). Tübingen: Narr, 47-60.
Kawin, B. (1972). Telling it again and again: repetition in literature and film. New York: Cornell UP.
McCormick, P. (1985). Feelings and fictions. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 43, 375-383.
Morreall, J. (1993). Fear without belief. The Journal of Philosophy, 90 (7), 359-366.
Neal, N. (1987). Functions of repetition in conversation. Text 7, 245-64.
Neill, A. (1991). Fear, fiction and make-believe. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 49 (1), 47-56.
Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: cognition and communication. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wilkinson, J. (2000). The paradox(es) of pitying and fearing fictions. South African Journal of Philosophy, 19 (1), 62-74.
The preposed object in Mandarin Chinese and Southern Min
Pei-Jung Kuo, University of Connecticut (USA)
In this paper we discuss the preposed object in two dialects (Mandarin Chinese and Southern Min) of Chinese. The preposed object in Mandarin Chinese is said to be optional, as shown in (1) (cf. Ernest and Wang (1995) and many others). However, as pointed out by Lee (2007), the preposed object is obligatory in Southern Min, as shown in (2).
- a. Abing zhi wan [DP fan] le
Abing eat finish rice PERF
'Abing has finished eating the rice.'
b. Abing [DP fan] zhi wan le
Aing rice eat finish PERF
- a. *Abing chah oan [DP png] a
Abing eat finish rice PERF
'Abing has finished eating the rice.'
b. Abing [DP png] chah oan a
Aing rice eat finish PERF
We argue that the above difference is not because of different syntactic strategies of object preposing in these two dialects, but because of the essential tone combination possibility difference. That is, we propose that the object preposing in both dialects is basically optional. (Following Ting (1995) and Paul (2002), we assume that the object preposing is a type of topicalization.) However, the complicate tone sandhi of Southern Min forces the object to move to the preverbal position. Though both are tone languages, Southern Min has eight tones while Mandarin Chinese only has four. The tone combination in (3) is not allowed in Southern Min. But since there is an escaping way, the object is then forced to move to the preverbal position, making the 'obligatory' impression. On the other hand, there is no such constraint in Mandarin Chinese, and thus both word orders in (4) are allowed.
3. a. *chit3 oan5 png7
eat finish rice
b. png7 chit 3 oan 5
rice eat finish
4 a. zhi1 wan2 fan4
eat finish rice
b. fan4 zhi1 wan2
rice eat finish
References
Ernst, Thomas and Chengchi Wang. 1995. Object Preposing in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 4: 235-260.
Lee, Huichi. 2007. Movement for Focus Agreement and Case Assignment. Paper presented in Multi Development and Application of Language and Linguistics (MDALL). Taiwan, Tainan: National Cheng Kung University.
Paul, Waltraud. 2002. Sentence-internal topics in Mandarin Chinese: the case of object preposing. Language and Linguistics 3.4: 695-714.
Ting, Jen. 1995. Deriving the secondary topic in Mandarin Chinese. In Proceedings of the 7th North America Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-7).
Dialect and language ideologies: Use of written Cantonese by Hong Kong Cantonese speakers
Genevieve Leung, University of Pennsylvania (USA)
A rarity compared to other Chinese vernaculars, Cantonese has its own written form, which includes many characters unknown to standard Mandarin. Since Cantonese is termed a “dialect”, it is often associated with less positive linguistic attitudes even by its own speakers. Though China is supposedly “unified” by a language standard, the continued usage and further development of written Cantonese signifies the personal identities of Cantonese-speaking people and the vitality of the Cantonese language. Though Cantonese is nowhere near extinction, written Cantonese literacy can be seen as a means of cultural and linguistic preservation.
Although Cantonese has always been at the periphery of Chinese unity and the “Great Tradition” of the standard, given historical evidence, linguistic attributes, the media, technology, and the author’s pilot study it seems Cantonese actually has a stronger hold than people, even its own speakers, give it credit for. Research conducted in Hong Kong during the summer of 2006 revealed that many Hong Kong young people consider being a Cantonese speaker a debilitating educational handicap because it is “only a dialect”. Delving deeper into the issue, however, there is ample evidence to suggest that were it not for certain culturally-embedded language ideologies about dialects, written Cantonese literacy could be used in educational and classroom contexts as an integral asset.
References
Lam, Wan Shun Eva. (2004). Second Language Socialization in a Bilingual Chat Room: Global and Local Considerations. Language Learning and Technology, 8:3, 44-65.
LePage, Robert and Andree Tabouret-Keller. (1985). Acts of Identity: Creole Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Li, David C. S. (1996). Issues in Bilingualism and Biculturalism: a Hong Kong Case Study. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
--- (2000). Phonetic Borrowing: Key to the vitality of written Cantonese in Hong Kong. Written Language and Literacy, 3:2, 199-233.
Luke, Kang-kwong & Owen T. Nancarrow. (1991). On being literate in Hong Kong. Institute of Language in Education Journal, 8:84-92.
Mair, Victor H. (2003). How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language. Retrieved February 22, 2006, from http://www.pinyin.info/
Pierson, Herbert. (1994). Ethnolinguistic vitality during a period of decolonization without independence: Perceived vitality in Hong Kong. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 108: 23-61.
Snow, Don. (2004). Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
The encoding of definiteness, specificity and referentiality in Chinese languages
Yi-An Lin, University of Cambridge (UK)
Compared with English, (in)definiteness in Chinese languages can be exhibited with bare nominals due to the lack of articles; however, as Progovac (1998) maintains that the projection of Determiner Phrases (DPs) is a property of Universal Grammar, it is reasonable to argue that Chinese nominals have a projection of DP with null determiners (cf. Li 1999, Cheng & Sybesma 1999) and share the same mechanism of encoding definiteness, specificity and referentiality with languages having articles. This is contrast to Cheng and Sybesma’s (1999) assumption that Chinese and English have different encoding mechanisms. They believe that definiteness is encoded by the function head, classifier, in Chinese whereas it is encoded by the D head in English.
However, I assume there is only one functional projection (FP) in the nominal phrase which is responsible for the encoding of definiteness. I propose that the head of DP is the source of the [definite] feature whereas the head of ClP is the source of the [referential] feature. The basic syntactic structure that I postulate is schematised as
DP>Num(er)P>Specific(ity)P>Cl(assifier)P>NP.
Each FP above NP carries one interpretable feature and several uninterpretable features related to the other FPs. For instance, the D head is composed of an interpretable [definite] feature and the uninterpretable [number], [specific], [referential] features. According to Chomsky’s (2001) Probe-Goal theory, the interpretable feature under each functional head interacts with the uninterpretable feature under other functional heads through the operation Agree. In contrast to Cheng and Sybesma’s analysis which assumes different mechanisms of encoding definiteness and referentiality for Chinese and English and proposes two different syntactic structures for Cantonese and Mandarin, the current paper provides a unified account for three Chinese languages, namely Mandarin, Cantonese and Taiwanese.
References
Chomsky, Noam. (2001). Derivation by phase. Ken Hale: A Life in Language, ed. byMichael Kenstowicz, 1-52. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Cheng, Lisa L.-S. & Sybesma, Rint. (1999). Bare and not-so-bare nouns and the structure of NP. Linguistic Inquiry 30(4): 509–542.
Li, Audrey Y.-H. (1999). Plurality in Classifier Language. Journal of East Asian Language 8: 75-99.
Progovac, Ljiljana. (1998). Determiner phrase in a language without determiner. Journal of Linguistics 34: 165-179.
Defining postverbal prepositional phrases in Chinese
Anthony C. Lister, Fredericton
It is generally accepted that one of the universals of language word order is that in SOV languages prepositional phrases (PPs) tend to occur in a preverbal position, while in SVO languages such as English or French, they occur postverbally. Moreover, if the SVO word order in a language changes over time, it could be expected that the position of PPs relative to the verb would also change. In Chinese, there is an ongoing debate concerning the general word order, whether it is SVO, SOV, or whether it can be classified at all in terms of subject, verb and object. There is also debate as to whether the order is changing from SVO to SOV. Determining the ratio of pre- and postverbal PPs and ascertaining whether there has been a change over time could be an indication of general word order and whether a change is underway.
One of the main problems with this approach is how to define postverbal PPs. In this paper, a structural and semantic approach was used to classify the various types of PPs, using a corpus of items taken from Hong Kong newspapers. It was found that there were three broad categories of postverbal PPs forming a continuum, from pure prepositions, through verbal prepositions to pure verbs. If the latter at the far end of the spectrum are considered as prepositions, the percentage of postverbal compared to preverbal PPS was 30%. If not, the number was reduced to just 14%.. The former figure would indicate little or no change from 100BC (40% according to Sun Chaofen, 1996:48), while the latter would boost the case for a change towards SOV.
Reference
Sun, Chaofen. 1996. Word-Order Change and Grammaticalization in the History of Chinese. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
The broken stereotype of the ethnic identity of the Polish minority group in Canada
Joanna Lustanski, McMaster University & York University
This paper examines how the ethnic identity of the Polish minority group living in Canada has changed in the last decades. In hitherto published works about ethnic identity, Poles have been noticed as a very religious ethno-linguistic community (Verdoodt 1977, Smolicz 1981, Sekowska 1994, Oakes 2001). In this presentation, I try to revise this opinion and find an answer to the question whether a ‘culture-first’ approach (Crystal 2000) instead of ‘language-first’ and ‘religion-first’ view could be currently applied to the description of ‘Polishness’.
On the basis of the survey distributed among representatives of two generations of Poles in Canada (Lustanski 2005), the immigrants’ generation and the generation of young Polish Canadians, I examine how the participants position themselves and others with respect to their ethnic identity. I explore their self-reports regarding core values of ethnicity―language, religion, and culture― (Smolicz 1992) in the context of the historical understanding and the contemporary situation of the community. I look for answers to the questions of what connects Polish Canadians to each other, and why this is the case.
In my study, it is the respondents themselves who break the stereotypical vision of Polish identity in which language matters are central. The results of my research show that both generations of Polish immigrants in Canada explicitly indicate respecting Polish traditions and customs as the most fundamental token of Polish ethnic identity, placing the value of the Polish language – identified by speaking Polish and teaching children Polish – in second and third positions. The factor of the Catholic religion takes the last place. This transition from the ethno-linguistic and ethno-religious to the ethno-cultural orientation can be accounted for by two fundamental reasons: 1) the historical conditions and representations living within the community and 2) the specific characteristics of Canada as a country of settlement. I suggest that the Polish minority group in this country may have found itself in specific circumstances requiring unique adaptations (Edwards 1992:134).
References
Crystal, David. 2000. Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, John. 1992. Language in Group and Individual Identity. In G. Breakwell (ed.) Social Psychology of Identity and the Self Concept. Surrey: Surrey University Press/Academic Press, 129-146.
Lustanski, Joanna. 2005. Dialekt polonijny w Kanadzie. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Warsaw University
Oakes, Leigh. 2001. Language and National Identity. Comparing France and Sweden. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Sękowska, Elżbieta. 1994. Język zbiorowości polonijnych w krajach anglojęzycznych. Zagadnienia leksykalno-słowotwórcze. Warsaw.
Smolicz, Jerzy. 1981. Core Values and Cultural Identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies. Vol. 4 (1), 75-89.
Smolicz, Jerzy. 1992. Minority languages as core values of ethnic cultures. In W. Fase, K. Jaspaert & S. Kroon (eds.), Maintenance and Loss of Minority Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 277-305.
Verdoodt, Albert. 1977. Educational Policies on Languages: The Case of the Children of Migrant Workers. In H. Giles (ed.) Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press, 241-252.
Phonetics of Guatemalan fincas
Mariadelaluz Matus-Mendoza, Drexel University (USA)
Few studies have been done analyzing Guatemalan Spanish (Alvar, 1980; Bueno, 1978; Martin, 1978). This paper addresses that gap. Based on interviews done on some fincas in Guatemala in the 1970s and 1990s, the linguistic and extralinguistic constraints of the stops /b/, /d/ and /g/ of Guatemalan Spanish are analyzed here. Embedded in tales of coffee production, wages earned, sickness suffered and life in general on the Guatemalan fincas, the paper extracts these linguistic variables to compute the quantitative analysis of the data using GoldVarb 2001.
References
Alvar, Manuel. (1980). Encuestas fonéticas en el suroccidente de Guatemala, Lingüística Española Actual, 2 245-87.
Bueno, Rolando. (1978). Cambios semánticos en la expresión guatemalteca. Guatemala: Universidad de San Carlos, Facultad de Humanidades.
Canfield, D. Lincon. (1951). Guatemalan rr and s: a recapitulation of Old Spanish sibilant gradation, Florida State University Studies in Modern Languages and Literatures.
Lipski, John. (1985a). /s/ in Central American Spanich, Hispania, 68, 143-9.
Lipski, John M. (1996). El español de América. Iglesias Recuero, Silvia (Trad.). Madrid: Cátedra.
Martin, Laura. (1978). Mayan influence on Guatemala Spanish: a research outline and test case. N. England (ed.), Papers in Mayan Linguistic, 106-26. Columbia: University of Missouri.
Norme contre variations : Les difficultés normatives des étudiants canadiens de français langue maternelle
Jean-Guy Mboudjeke, University of Windsor
Dans les institutions universitaires anglo-canadiennes, les programmes de français accueillent des étudiants de français langue maternelle (désormais FLM) (les Franco-canadiens de souche, les étudiants internationaux ou les immigrants de nationalité française, belge, suisse etc.), des étudiants de français langue seconde (désormais FLS) (les Anglo-canadiens de souche) et des étudiants de français langue étrangère (désormais FLE) (les Espagnols, les Polonais, les Italiens etc.). Dans la présente étude, nous analysons les problèmes normatifs rencontrés par les étudiants de FLM, Canadiens de souche.
Inscrits dans des institutions anglophones, ces étudiants reçoivent non pas un enseignement de FLM (dans lequel un accent égal est mis sur la connaissance de la norme prescriptive et la valorisation de tous les registres de langue), mais plutôt un enseignement de FLS et FLE (axé davantage sur la connaissance des règles de la langue écrite «standard»). Il s’en suit que la norme du français qui leur est enseigné combat la plupart des procédés linguistiques caractéristiques de la variété de français qu’ils pratiquent naturellement et spontanément.
Pourquoi les institutions universitaires anglo-canadiennes opèrent-elles un tel choix? Quelles sont ses conséquences pour l’étudiant canadien de FLM? Que peut faire l’enseignant pour minimiser l’impact de l’écart entre la norme «prescriptive» du français académique et les normes d’usage du français pratiqué par les étudiants canadiens de FLM? Voilà quelques-unes des questions auxquelles nous nous proposons d’apporter des éléments de réponse.
Serbian clitic auxiliaries: Syntactic heads or dependents?
Jasmina Milićević, Dalhousie University
In the Meaning-Text dependency approach to syntax ([5], [11], [12]), the finite auxiliary verb in the construction V(Auxiliary)finite—V(Lexical) is considered the governor and thus the absolute head of its clause. This is consistent with most contemporary treatments of auxiliaries, whether in dependency, constituency or “mixed” approaches to syntax ([1], [3], [4], [6]).
However, treating auxiliaries as absolute heads may look problematic if, like in Serbian, they (can or, under some conditions, must) appear in the clause in a clitic form, i.e., as items whose word-hood is not immediately obvious ([13]). Moreover, being second-position clitics, Serbian clitic auxiliaries are, together with clitic pronouns, gathered into a clitic cluster which is linearly positioned with respect to a clause element acting as the host (= prosodic support) for the cluster [(14)]; thus, it seems paradoxical that they can at the same time serve as the reference point for the positioning of full-fledged clause elements (which is an essential property of absolute heads). Finally, the treatment of clitic auxiliaries as absolute heads has an undesirable practical consequence—massive non projectivity ([7]) of the corresponding sentences.
In spite of this, I will argue that Serbian clitic auxiliaries indeed behave as absolute heads of their respective clauses, based on the following seven considerations: 1) Agreement with the subject; 2) Co-occurrence with negation; 3) Participation in gapping; 4) Capacity to be coordinated with stressed (= non clitic) auxiliaries; 5) Capacity to take a completive clause as a complement; 6) Alternation with stressed auxiliaries in questions/answers; 7) Parallelism with lexical counterparts (= semantically full verbs having clitic forms homophonous with those of auxiliary verbs). The present treatment of Serbian clitic auxiliaries will be compared with that proposed for clitic auxiliaries in other Slavic languages ([2], [8], [9], [10]).
References
[1] Abeillé, A. & Godard, D. 2002. The Syntactic Structure of French Auxiliaries. Language 78: 404-452.
[2] Dimitrova-Vulčanova, M. & Hellan, L. 1999. Clitics and Bulgarian Clause Structure. In: Riemsdijk van H.(ed.). Clitics in the Languages of Europe; 469-514. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
[3] Gazdar, G., Pullum, G. & Sag, I. (1982). Auxiliaries and Related Phenomena in a Restrictive Theory of Grammar. Language 58: 591-638.
[4] Hudson, R. 1984. Word Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
[5] Iordanskaja, L. & Mel’čuk, I. To appear. Towards Establishing an Inventory of Surface-Syntactic Relations: Valency-Controlled Surface-Syntactic Dependents of the Verb in French. In: Mel’čuk, I. & A. Polguère (eds). Syntactic Dependency in Linguistic Description. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
[6] Jackendoff, R. 1977. X̅ Syntax. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
[7] Kahane, S., Nasr, A. & Rambow, O. 1998. Pseudo-Projectivity: A Polinomialy Parsable Non-Projective Dependency Grammar. In: Proceedings of the 36th Annual meeting of the Association for Computational linguistics and 17th Conference on computational linguistics (COLING—ACL), August 10-14, 1998, Université de Montréal, Montréal; 646-653.
[8] Krapova, I. 1997. Auxiliaries and Complex Tenses in Bulgarian. In: Browne, W, Dornisch, E, Kondrašova, N & Zec, D. (eds.). Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Cormell Meeting, 320-344. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.
[9] Kupść A. & Tseng, J. 2005. A New HPSG Approach to Polish Auxiliary Constructions. In: Müller, S. (ed.) Proceedings of the HPSG05 Conference. Department of Informatics, University of Lisbon. CSLI Publications; pp. 22. [http://csli-publications. stanford.edu].
[10] Légendre, G. 2000. Morphological and Prosodic Alignment of Bulgarian Clitics. In: Dekkers, J., Leeuw van der, F. & Weijer van der, J. (eds.). Optimality Theory: Syntax, Phonology, and Acquisition; 423-462. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[11] Mel’čuk, I. 1988. Dependency Syntax: Theory and Practice. Albany: State University of New York Press.
[12] — 2003. Levels of Dependency in Linguistic Description: Concepts and Problems. In: Agel, V, Eichinger L.M., Eroms, H-W., Hellwig, P. Heringer H.J. et Lobin, H. (eds.). Dependency and Valency. An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, vol. 1.Berlin/New York: De Gruyter; 188-229.
[13] Milićević, J. 2005. Clitics or Affixes? On the Morphological Status of the Future Tense Markers in Serbian. In: Dressler, W. U., Kastovsky, D., Pfeiffer, O. E. & Rainer, F., eds., Morphology and its Demarcations. Selected Papers from the 11th Morphology Meeting, Vienna, February 2004. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins; 39-52.
[14] — To appear. Linear Placement of Serbian Clitics: A Description within a Dependency-Based Approach. In: Mel’čuk, I. & A. Polguère (eds). Syntactic Dependency in Linguistic Description. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Concept de monotonicité et distribution du subjonctif : Interface entre morphosyntaxe et sémantique
Cynthia Potvin, Université de Moncton
L'étude de la polarité négative a permis d'expliquer la distribution des termes de polarité négative (TPN) : tout TPN doit apparaître dans un contexte monotonique décroissant (MD) induit par un opérateur affectif (Ladusaw, 1979). En (1), la présence du TPN grand-chose rend la phrase agrammaticale. En (2), sa présence est grammaticale sous l'opérateur affectif ne...pas, lequel induit des contextes MD, voir (3).
(1) *Il a mangé grand-chose.
(2) Il n'a pas mangé grand-chose.
(3) Pierre ne mange pas de fruits. - Pierre ne mange pas de pommes.
Un parallèle a été établi entre distribution des TPN et distribution du subjonctif en espagnol : le subjonctif, tout comme les TPN, doit apparaître dans des contextes MD (Potvin, 2004; entre autres). En (4), la distribution du subjonctif rend la phrase agrammaticale. En (5), sa distribution est grammaticale sous l'opérateur affectif no.
(4) *Cree que María esté enferma.
*'Il croit que Marie soit malade.'
(5) No cree que María esté enferma.
'Il ne croit pas que Marie soit malade.'
Ce parallèle entre distribution du subjonctif et distribution des TPN comporte diverses conséquences :
(6) Le subjonctif est un type de TPN (Potvin, 2004);
(7) Les prédicats qui régissent le subjonctif en espagnol sont des opérateurs affectifs et induisent des contextes MD (Potvin, 2004);
(8) Puisque l'espagnol rend compte de la monotonicité décroissante par l'entremise de la morphologie verbale du subjonctif, nous sommes en présence d'un interface entre morphosyntaxe et sémantique.
La présente communication a pour buts de définir les critères à prendre en considération lors de l'évaluation d'énoncés monotoniques, de rendre compte du type de TPN auquel appartient le subjonctif en espagnol, et d'établir une classification des prédicats qui régissent le subjonctif en espagnol selon le type d'opérateurs affectifs qu'ils représentent. Le tout vise à rendre justice à l'interface morphosyntaxe-sémantique.
Références
Ladusaw, W. (1979) Polarity Sensitivity as Inherent Scope Relations, New York : Garland.
Potvin, C. (2004) Estudio de la distribución del subjuntivo y del indicativo en las proposiciones subordinadas completivas en español de acuerdo con el concepto de monotonicidad en el marco de la teoría de los mundos posibles, Mémoire, Université Laval.
Variation sociolinguistique en français langue seconde
Iryna Punko, University of Western Ontario
Kanstantsin Tsedryk, University of Western Ontario
Dans notre communication nous nous concentrons sur l’étude de deux variantes de politesse en français, les pronoms d’adresse tu et vous dans l’usage des apprenants anglophones intermédiaires et avancés. Étant donné que le professeur et les manuels sont souvent la seule source d’input pour les apprenants, ces derniers acquièrent la compétence grammaticale plus facilement, puisqu’elle est plus systématisée et plus facile à apprendre, même sans les contacts avec les locuteurs natifs de la langue cible. Par contre, la compétence sociolinguistique est plus difficile à formaliser en règles précises à cause de la complexité de l’interaction entre les diverses variables indépendantes qui entrent en jeu (Dewaele 2002).
Quoique le nombre de pronoms d’adresse en français soit limité (il n’y en a que deux), le choix d’un pronom approprié pose souvent des questions pour les locuteurs natifs eux-mêmes. Ce choix est encore plus problématique pour les apprenants dont la langue première ne contient pas de distinction de politesse dans son système pronominal. Souvent les étudiants n’utilisent qu’une seule variante ce qui amène à l’aplatissement sociolinguistique des registres de l’interlangue.
Nous présentons les résultats de notre étude pilote menée auprès des apprenants du niveau universitaire, qui cherche à découvrir les particularités et les facteurs déterminant l’usage des pronoms d’adresse tu/vous. Il s’agit surtout des apprenants qui semblent ne pas avoir développé la grammaire variable en français L2. Cette lacune se manifeste (i) par l’emploi catégorique soit du pronom tu, soit du pronom vous, (ii) par le flottement des pronoms tu/vous (une situation où les deux pronoms tu et vous sont employés faisant référence à la même personne) et (iii) par l’emploi aléatoire des pronoms en question.
Les résultats de notre recherche fournissent de l’évidence en faveur de la position de ceux des sociolinguistes qui insistent sur l’introduction des matériaux authentiques dans l’enseignement du français L2, et qui soulignent l’importance pour les apprenants de soutenir des contacts avec des locuteurs natifs de la langue cible.
Référence
Dewaele, J-M. 2002. Vouvoiement et tutoiement en français natif et non natif. Une approche sociolinguistique et interactionnelle. La chouette, 33:1-13.
The use of articles in non-standard dialects of British English and in Cameroon English: A comparative analysis
Alain Flaubert Takam, Dalhousie University
This paper is concerned with the various uses of articles in certain non standard dialects of established Englishes, especially some dialects of the United Kingdom on the one hand, and in New Englishes in general and Cameroon English in particular on the other. Variations in the use of definite and indefinite articles are clearly dealt with. More specifically, the paper examines various contexts in which articles are used: institutional and non-institutional meaning, specific and non-specific reference, among other uses.
The data to be analysed were collected from primary and secondary sources: the primary sources included first-hand data from Cameroonian teachers, journalists and politicians. The secondary sources included data from existing literature on a number of non-standard dialects of established varieties of English spoken in the United Kingdom, and, subsidiary, in North America.
It has been observed that articles in those varieties of English have different meanings or different shades of meaning from those of Standard English. More importantly, some New Englishes speakers use the articles in much the same way as speakers of non-standard dialects of the British Isles. One of the conclusions this paper arrives at is that the history of settlement, imperialism and colonization has played a major role in the transportation to, and transplantation into, the colonies of dialects of the United Kingdom, many features of which eventually got rooted.
Variation casuelle en français L2
Egor Tsedryk, Saint Mary's University
Kanstantsin Tsedryk, University of Western Ontario
Notre communication porte sur les alternances casuelles dans l'interlangue des anglophones apprenant le français L2. Plus précisément, nous nous concentrons sur l'acquisition de l'accusatif (ACC) et du datif (DAT) dans le cas des pronoms clitiques illustrés en (1).
| (1) |
a. |
J'ai salué |
mon voisin
ma voisine
mes voisins
|
- Je |
le
la
les |
ai salué (+ accord) |
| |
b. |
J'ai parlé |
à mon voisin
à ma voisine
à mes voisines |
- Je |
lui
leur |
ai parlé |
Nous montrons que, tout en maîtrisant la syntaxe des clitiques et les propriétés sélectionnelles des verbes, les apprenants ne font pas de distinction systématique entre les traits morphologiques de DAT et ACC.
Des résultats préliminaires, obtenus auprès des apprenants intermédiaires (n = 21, 41%) et avancés (n = 38, 59%), font preuve d'un apprentissage graduel de la cliticisation, ce qui confirme l'hypothèse de Transfert complet / Accès complet (Schwartz et Sprouse 1994) et justifie les études antérieures portant sur le positionnement des clitiques (White 1996, Herschenson 2004, Granfeldt et Schlyter 2004). En même temps, le test de traduction a révélé quelques cas de syncrétisme entre ACC et DAT. Notre seconde étude, incluant uniquement un test de jugement de grammaticalité, montre que le syncrétisme existe même si les apprenants sont capables d'identifier correctement la rection des verbes. En fait, il n'y a pas de différence significative entre les apprenants avancés (n = 15, 33%) et intermédiaires (n = 30, 67%) par rapport à la reconnaissance de DAT et ACC.
Les données obtenues nous amènent à conclure que les anglophones connaissent les différences conceptuelles entre le datif et l'accusatif (distinction thématique entre le Thème et le But), mais ces différences ne sont pas encodées morphologiquement dans leur grammaire. Notre étude implique que les traits morphologiques sont acquis indépendamment des propriétés structurales d'une langue.
Références
Granfeldt, J. et S. Schlyter. 2004. Cliticisation in the acquisition of French as L1 and L2. In The acquisition of French in different contexts : Focus on functional categories, sous la dir. de P. Prévost et J. Paradis, 333-370. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Herschensohn, J. 2004. Functional categories and the acquisition of object clitics in L2 French. In The acquisition of French in different contexts: Focus on functional categories, sous la dir. de Philippe Prévost et Johanne Paradis, 207-242. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Schwartz, B.D. et R.A. Sprouse. 1994. Word order and nominative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German Interlanguage. In Language acquisition studies in generative grammar, sous la dir. de T. Hoekstra et B.D. Schwartz. 317-68. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
White, L. 1996. Clitics in L2. In Generative perspectives on language acquisition, sous la dir. de Clashen, H., 335-368. Amsterdam : Benjamins.
Identity marking and affiliation in an urbanizing Newfoundland community
Gerard Van Herk, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Becky Childs, Coastal Carolina University (USA)
Jennifer Thorburn, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Both historic retentions and innovative linguistic forms are affected by the factors associated with urban development. Traditional rural/urban differences are levelled, and innovative features and norms emerge in the dialects of young speakers (Thomas 1997, Tillery & Bailey 2003, Durian 2006). Such changes are particularly amenable to study in Newfoundland, whose highly traditional and distinct rural economy and culture are rapidly urbanizing and interacting with mainstream norms. Sociolinguistic consequences of these changes are already evident in urban St. John's (Clarke 1991, D’Arcy 2005, Boberg 2005). Here, we investigate the linguistic effects of urbanization in Petty Harbour, a community near St. John's that has undergone even more drastic social and economic change. Our cross-generational study demonstrates how speakers orient themselves within a newly situated urban landscape through their use of highly salient, locally-affiliated features from two different linguistic domains.
Interdental stopping (e.g., dis ting for this thing) and non-standard verbal s-marking (e.g., That's something I remembers) are stereotypes of performed Newfoundland English, but also remain an active part of traditional rural speech. We examine these totemic variables through analysis of phonological and syntactic constraints on their use, as well as lexical effects and such social factors as age, gender and degree of identification with the community.
Our findings indicate that urbanization forefronts language stereotypes. The totemic status of these variables interacts with speaker consciousness and identity to produce new (and still emerging) constraints on their use. There is a predictable pattern of dissipation from older to younger age groups, but rates of decline and constraints (especially lexical effects) are distinct for each variable. In particular, speaker identity emerges as highly significant. Externally-affiliated young speakers diverge from their older or internally-oriented neighbours, with a highly ideologized sociolinguistic framework surrounding their use of totemic variables.
References
Boberg, Charles. 2005. Canadian Features in the Structural Phonology of Newfoundland English. NWAV 34, New York.
Clarke, Sandra. 1991. Phonological variation and recent language change in St. John's English. In Jenny Cheshire (ed.), English Around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
D'Arcy, Alexandra. 2005. A pan-grammatical look at regional dialect leveling. Methods XII, Université de Moncton.
Durian, David. 2006. Getting [S]tronger every day? More on urbanization and the socio-geographic diffusion of (str) in Columbus. NWAV 35, Columbus, OH.
Thomas, Erik R. 1997. A rural/metropolitan split in the speech of Texas Anglos. Language Variation and Change 9:309-332.
Tillery, Jan, & Bailey, Guy. 2003. Urbanization and the evolution of Southern American English. In Steven J. Nagle and Sara L. Sanders (eds.), English in the Southern United States, 159-172. Cambridge UP.
In Search of post-modern Chinese
Jennifer M. Wei, Soochow University (Taiwan)
In this paper, we present a post-modern view on language and identity, using Chinese as a case in point to present tensions and contentions among speakers of different Chinese varieties. We use Taiwan’s emerging experience with democracy to argue for a post-modern model of language and identity. The model can be achieved, first, by deconstructing the myth of a unified Chinese language family model, and second by constructing a marginal view of the Chinese identity in which the hybridity and ambiguity characteristic of post-modern identity politics is evident. A plural-centric and denationalized view of the default “national language” (Guoyu, or Mandarin) is further proposed in order to sidestep the seething ideological cauldron that China-centered groups and Taiwan independence radicals occupy. In other words, a decoupling of language and identity perspectives is called for, bearing vivid witness to all the damage that a modern “one nation, one language” nation-state model of language and identity has done (cf. Heller 1999, 2003). This premise is further backed by the modern Taiwan history of twice over nationalism, first by the Japanese (1895-1945) and then by the 1945-1987 martial law-era of the Kuomingtang (KMT), in which a non-indigenous language, Japanese first and Mandarin second, was chosen as the national language. The foisting on Taiwan of successive single views of identity created many grievances among the island’s people, and the historical legacy of these policies still serves as virulent seeds of contention in a young democracy rankling with perceived ethno-linguistic injustices. Further analyses of these issues are based on language and identity policy changes in Taiwan’s efforts to come to terms with the seemingly opposed forces of globalization and indigenization, the former well armed with economic rationalism and a vision of the weakening of nation-state boundaries, and the latter backed by ethnic groups’ vocal demands for rights and resources in a democratizing context.
In achieving optimum goals, a liberal language policy providing a forum for different voices as well as a political structure that institutionalizes “equality” and prevents “domination,” is needed for the equal development of the various varieties of Chinese as well as aboriginal languages in a multicultural context (cf. Spolsky 2004, Wright 2004).