This book is about three West African sign languages with different time-depths, community sizes and patterns of social interactions. Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL), Ghana, is an old village sign... Show moreThis book is about three West African sign languages with different time-depths, community sizes and patterns of social interactions. Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL), Ghana, is an old village sign language used by 33 deaf people. Langue des Signes de Bouakako (LaSiBo), Côte d'Ivoire, is a new village sign language, used by six deaf people. Língua Gestual Guineense, Guinea-Bissau, is an emerging school-based sign language used by around 500 deaf people.In the three sign languages, 45 narratives of personal experiences were analysed to better understand how the time depth, the community size and the socialisation frequency influenced the three sign languages. Four different descriptive analyses of the narratives were carried out. Study 1 analysed the structure of the narratives, following Labov & Waletzky's model (1967) and Freytag's dramatic pyramid (1894). Studies 2, 3 and 4 focus on specific narrative devices that work to make narratives more convincing, as part of Labov's (1972) "evaluation" component. These devices refer to the moments when storytellers give dramatic prominence to narratives through the incorporation of characters, such as the use of different signing perspectives (Study 2), the use of role shifting between characters and constructed dialogues (Study 3) and the use of different types of descriptions of the animal (Study 4).These studies show that AdaSL and male LGG signers use devices that reflect a greater ability to capture the audience's attention, while LaSiBo and female LGG signers tend to show similar patterns in using simpler or reduced devices.This study shows that the frequency of social interaction between deaf peers is the most crucial factor in language change over time. Show less
Little is known about the requirements of a comprehensibly written paragraph. This makes it difficult for Dutch secondary school teachers to teach their pupils how to write a paragraph. This... Show moreLittle is known about the requirements of a comprehensibly written paragraph. This makes it difficult for Dutch secondary school teachers to teach their pupils how to write a paragraph. This dissertation presents a rationale that shows which aspects of language are important when writing paragraphs. It is a didactic design study in which declarative knowledge, skills and self-efficacy beliefs were brought together in toolboxes. An important implication of this study is that the paragraph can play a role in the teaching of formulation skills in secondary education. Show less
This dissertation centers around the question whether syntactic differences between languages can be detected automatically, and if so, how. With the enormous number of natural languages and... Show moreThis dissertation centers around the question whether syntactic differences between languages can be detected automatically, and if so, how. With the enormous number of natural languages and dialects, the very high level of variation they exhibit between one another, and the technically infinite number of possible sentences per language or dialect, systematic manual comparison is a hugely daunting task. The field would therefore significantly benefit from the (partial) automatization of the process, as it would increase the scale, speed, systematicity and reproducibility of research.Over the course of five chapters it is shown through case studies involving English, Dutch, German, Czech and Hungarian that correct hypotheses on syntactic differences between languages can be generated automatically from parallel corpora through the use of the minimum description length principle, counting mismatches between part-of-speech pattern occurrences, word alignment and mapping annotation from an annotated language onto another unannotated language. The tools developed for the purposes of this research work well and can aid a linguist significantly in their search for differences or similarities, but do not replace the human researcher. Show less
This dissertation investigates the social, attitudinal, and linguistic mechanisms behind language choice and language change in postmodern urban China. More specifically, it examines the language... Show moreThis dissertation investigates the social, attitudinal, and linguistic mechanisms behind language choice and language change in postmodern urban China. More specifically, it examines the language choice, use, and pronunciation norm formation of rhotacization in Beijing, due to the normative forces of urbanization, Standard Chinese, native dialects, and the expression of belonging. This dissertation studies the language attitude towards and language use of rhotacization in the Beijing Speech Community in quality and quantity, with the methods of sociolinguistics and phonetics.The language attitude study shows that both Beijing native speakers and migrants report the perceived salience of rhotacization and rhotacization imitation by migrants. In addition, both native and migrant respondents associate migrants with upward social mobility, in the background of Standard Chinese promotion and influx of migrants. The prestige of Standard Chinse, the difficulty of learning rhotacization, and the non-necessity of using Beijing Mandarin are also reported.A significant result in the phonetic study demonstrates that, as an important feature in both Beijing Mandarin and Standard Chinese, rhotacization is undergoing the decline of both tokens and types in native speakers’ natural speech. However, compared to migrants, Beijing native speakers still produce the biggest number of rhotacization tokens, types, and variants. Show less
Language contact has presumably had an impact on all of the world’s languages. This Ph.D. dissertation provides a thorough description of the lexical outcomes of the contact between the arguably... Show moreLanguage contact has presumably had an impact on all of the world’s languages. This Ph.D. dissertation provides a thorough description of the lexical outcomes of the contact between the arguably young American Spanish and the youngest variety of Southern Hemisphere Englishes, thus closing a gap in the literature on Spanish and English as contact languages.Situated at the crossroads of toponomastics, lexical semantics, and language attitudes, and embedded within a theoretical framework of contact linguistics, this thesis addresses the contact history of Falkland Islands English with Spanish and examines to what extent such contact played a part in the shaping of the archipelago’s official language. To do so, an innovative mixed-methods approach is used to broaden the analytical depth of the results. Furthermore, a range of sources are used, i.e., archival research, literature reviews, and ethnographic fieldwork.The findings show that (i) Spanish-English contact in the Falklands has left two main linguistic products: loanwords and place names; (ii) even though the Falklands currently host an English-speaking community, the Islands have a long history of Spanish-speaking settlers; (iii) Spanish loanwords are mainly related to horse tack and horse types, and most words are tightly connected to gaucho vernacular but not exclusively with their equestrian duties, and (iv) Falkland Islands English hosts a handful of loanwords that are originally from autochthonous South American languages.This dissertation will be of interest to scholars working on language contact, toponomastics, world Englishes, and ethnolinguistic approaches to data collection. Show less
This thesis deals with differential indexing, i.e. intra-linguistic variation in bound verbal person marking, and the referential and discourse-structural factors which trigger it. Although the... Show moreThis thesis deals with differential indexing, i.e. intra-linguistic variation in bound verbal person marking, and the referential and discourse-structural factors which trigger it. Although the same underlying factors for differential indexing, such as animacy and definiteness, can be encountered again and again across languages, the exact manifestation of these factors has to be viewed language-specifically. Not only can languages differ with regard to the relevant factors themselves, but also with regard to where aline is drawn on the respective hierarchies associated with those factors, or whether there is a precise line to be drawn at all. Additionally, if there is more than one factor identified as being involved in indexing, the extent to which these impact or depend on one another remain to be determined. This thesis comprises four articles, viz. three in-depth case studies on differential indexing in the languages Ruuli (Bantu), Maltese (Semitic) and Gutob (Munda), and one typologically informed discussion of the phenomenon,looking into structural and functional differences and similarities of differential indexing for the A as well as the P role. Show less
In linguistic research, present-day Dutch has been characterized as a pluricentric language, meaning that there are multiple centers from where language norms spread. Within the Dutch language area... Show moreIn linguistic research, present-day Dutch has been characterized as a pluricentric language, meaning that there are multiple centers from where language norms spread. Within the Dutch language area, we can discern a center in the Northern Netherlands (the Randstad area) and the Southern Netherlands (around the province of Brabant). Traditional histories of the language suggest that pluricentricity for Dutch is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. However, based on findings from empirical historical-linguistic research, we could expect to situate pluricentricity at least 100 years earlier in time. This dissertation therefore provides an in-depth study in which pluricentricity is put into a broader historical perspective.Through systematic corpus analyses, this dissertation aims to assess the usefulness of the modern concept of pluricentricity in Dutch language history. A total of six linguistic features is examined in the Historical Corpus of Dutch (HCD), a new multi-genre, diachronic corpus, involving central and peripheral regions in both the North and the South. Moreover, by integrating Northern and Southern varieties of Dutch in the study, and by mapping the interactions between the different regions, we want to lay the foundation for an integrated history of Dutch. Show less
This dissertation investigates the linguistic contacts between Tocharian A and B and Khotanese and Tumshuqese, four languages once spoken in the Tarim basin, whose manuscripts can be dated from the... Show moreThis dissertation investigates the linguistic contacts between Tocharian A and B and Khotanese and Tumshuqese, four languages once spoken in the Tarim basin, whose manuscripts can be dated from the 5th to the 10th c. CE. It offers the first comprehensive analysis of the Khotanese and Tumshuqese loanwords in Tocharian A and B. One of the conclusions of this dissertation is that the influence of Khotanese and Tumshuqese on Tocharian was much more extensive than previously thought and it spanned over almost two millennia, from the early Iron Age until the extinction of the four languages at the end of the first millennium CE. In fact, it is possible to distinguish this group of loanwords from the loanwords from Old Steppe Iranian, an unidentified Old Iranian language only known from loanwords into Tocharian, by means of precise sound correspondences. Moreover, the relative chronology of the Khotanese and Tumshuqese loanwords in Tocharian allows a unique glimpse into the linguistic prehistory of the two Eastern Middle Iranian languages. Show less
This dissertation evaluates a Wapishana-English bilingual education programme that has been advocated for by The Wapishana community and approved by the Ministry of Education, currently piloted in... Show moreThis dissertation evaluates a Wapishana-English bilingual education programme that has been advocated for by The Wapishana community and approved by the Ministry of Education, currently piloted in three nursery schools in Guyana, beginning September 2018. This evaluation strives to determine what practices promote biliterate, bilingual, intercultural and academically-oriented children, with an eye to improve existing practices of the above-mentioned programme. This study offers a conceptual model and some recommendations to improve existing practices so that the Wapishan-English bilingual education programme is meaningfully integrated into the mainstream curriculum. Show less
This dissertation reconstructs the history of Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken in east Indonesia, by combining perspectives from oral history and historical linguistics. The social history... Show moreThis dissertation reconstructs the history of Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken in east Indonesia, by combining perspectives from oral history and historical linguistics. The social history of the Alorese people is reconstructed through migration stories based on narrative accounts from fourteen Alorese villages. The historical linguistic study of Alorese begins with a grammatical description of the Alorese dialect spoken in northeast Pantar. This is followed by a study of Alorese historical phonology, in which varieties of Alorese are compared with varieties of its sister language, Western Lamaholot. This dissertation also examines lexical borrowing from the Alor-Pantar (Papuan) languages into Alorese and vice versa. Based on a combined investigation of lingusitic and oral history, this dissertation proposes that the homeland of the Alorese people may have been in northeast Pantar. The study of Alorese historical phonology results in the bottom-up reconstruction of the sounds of Proto-Alorese and its vocabulary, and the establishment of Alorese as a subgroup of the Flores-Lembata languages, the next higher group within Malayo-Polynesian. In addition, the investigation of loanwords also provides insight into the history of contact between the Alorese and the speakers of the Alor-Pantar (Papuan) languages in the Alor archipelago. Show less
Conditionals, or if-then sentences, form a crucial ingredient of everyday reasoning and argumentation, as they enable us to express our thoughts about possible states of the world. They are used in... Show moreConditionals, or if-then sentences, form a crucial ingredient of everyday reasoning and argumentation, as they enable us to express our thoughts about possible states of the world. They are used in very different ways, and the main aim of this dissertation is to investigate to what extent these different uses of conditionals are connected to one another and to their grammatical features.The first part of this dissertation presents an analysis of conditionals in terms of implicatures of 'unassertiveness' and 'connectedness'. Insights from semantics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and neighbouring fields are combined. In the second part, the analysis is tested on a corpus of spoken and written Dutch discourse. To investigate the relation between the meaning and grammar of conditionals, several cluster analyses are conducted. The results show that grammatical features such as verb tense and modal marking do not, or only weakly, license generalised implicatures of unassertiveness and connectedness. This outcome sheds light on difficulties in applying general categories of conditionals to language use data, and it suggests that the fundamentals of categorising conditional constructions need revision.The dissertation shows the benefits of combining semantic and pragmatic analyses of conditionals. It provides an extensive discussion of classifications of conditionals, an overview of the grammatical features of Dutch conditionals, and it presents cluster analyses using state-of-the-art machine-learning techniques. The study should therefore be of interest to anyone concerned with the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of conditionals, and to anyone working on Dutch grammar, corpus linguistics, theories of argumentation, and the interface between semantics and pragmatics. Show less
This dissertation investigates the properties of a particular type of question, namely wh-in-situ questions in French. It examines their properties from two perspectives related to the context in... Show moreThis dissertation investigates the properties of a particular type of question, namely wh-in-situ questions in French. It examines their properties from two perspectives related to the context in which a question is uttered. These are (a) the information structure of the sentence, specifically focus and givenness, and (b) the distinction between regular information seeking questions and echo questions.An important result is the insight that French has two mechanisms to interpret wh-in-situ questions, yielding potentially identical looking questions with different properties. While certain speakers only have one of these mechanisms to interpret wh-in-situ questions in their grammar, others, often younger speakers, have both. This explains much of the data confusion regarding the properties of French wh-in-situ questions.The investigation also provides more general insights into the relation between wh-questions and aspects of the preceding context. While it is often assumed that the focus in wh-questions necessarily equals the wh-phrase, the dissertation shows experimentally that this is not the case in all languages. In languages like French, what is focused may depend on the preceding context, as in declaratives. The dissertation also suggests a direction of research for contextually restricted wh-in-situ in wh-fronting languages like English and German Show less
This book comprises a synchronic description of Tagdal a Songhay-Berber mixed language spoken in the southeastern and central regions of the Republic of Niger. It begins with a summary of the... Show moreThis book comprises a synchronic description of Tagdal a Songhay-Berber mixed language spoken in the southeastern and central regions of the Republic of Niger. It begins with a summary of the historic and general sociolinguistic situation in Niger and how it affects speakers of Tagdal, followed by a description of the sound system, beginning with the consonant and vowel inventories, as well as some phonological processes. The largest sections include a description of the grammar, starting with the morphology. The intricate interactions between stress placement, vowel and consonant length, and certain aspects of the morphology are described in detail. Special attention is given to the idea that Tagdal contains two prosodic sub-systems, one for vocabulary of Songhay origin and another for vocabulary of Berber-Tuareg origin. This leads to processes such as suppletion of Songhay cognates, with suppletive stems of Tuareg origin. The syntax of Tagdal is also described, including descriptions of how clauses are combined to form both simple and complex sentences. Attention is also paid to how Tagdal combines sentences into higher-level units such as paragraphs, sections and discourses. Show less
Why has Africa not been doing so well and what is the way forward? This book starts with the analysis of Vansina and Prah: the old cultural traditions in Africa have been destroyed in colonial... Show moreWhy has Africa not been doing so well and what is the way forward? This book starts with the analysis of Vansina and Prah: the old cultural traditions in Africa have been destroyed in colonial times; new ones are currently taking shape, based in part in African languages. The book uses cross-cultural psychology to show that such new cultural traditions are indeed forming in Africa. However, almost all African countries currently use a former colonial language in secondary and higher education. The book demonstrates that if more and more people get educated, this system will no longer scale. Over the next decade, more and more African countries will have to make a transition towards increased use of African languages. The book proposes a distinction between discerned and designed languages. All over the world, designed languages are made to serve speakers of several discerned languages. This could and should happen in Africa as well. The book contains a number of brief case studies, showing how in fact such a transition is practically possible. In future, African countries will be able to achieve success in their educational systems by using a small number of languages as medium of instruction. Such a transition will also help to form the new cultural traditions that are already taking shape on the continent. Show less
Ancient rhetoricians such as Cicero and Quintilian advised orators to apply memoria strategies to memorize their speech. Modern public-speaking textbooks recommend various rhetorical techniques to... Show moreAncient rhetoricians such as Cicero and Quintilian advised orators to apply memoria strategies to memorize their speech. Modern public-speaking textbooks recommend various rhetorical techniques to make messages memorable for audiences. However, the effect of these techniques on information retention has been sparsely studied.This dissertation investigates how rhetorical techniques in speeches can enhance information retention by the audience. Using a three-way approach, it connects rhetorical theory, advice and practice to insights from memory psychology.First, an analysis of influential English-language and Dutch-language public-speaking textbooks showed that frequently advised retention techniques are related to organization, elaboration and visualization—three encoding principles that contribute to information storage. Authors prefer the conclusion of a speech for influencing retention.Secondly, the study describes how scholars, politicians and TED speakers use organization and elaboration techniques (e.g. summaries and anecdotes) in public-speaking practice. Results indicate discrepancies with textbook advice and context-dependent technique variants.Thirdly, two experiments were performed that focused on three organization techniques applied in conclusions of informative presentations. Results show that announcing the conclusion and providing an informative summary can enhance information retention by the audience. We are one step closer to knowing what makes messages memorable. Show less
This book provides a description of Cuvok, a language spoken by about 10,000 people in the far north of Cameroon. The study of the linguistic elements addresses and provides an analysis of the... Show moreThis book provides a description of Cuvok, a language spoken by about 10,000 people in the far north of Cameroon. The study of the linguistic elements addresses and provides an analysis of the language through the examination of phonological and morphological aspects, as well as some notes on syntax and a bilingual lexicon.The issue of prosodies is central to the discussion of vowel segments. The harmonic domain of the word has a prominent place in the morpho-phonological discussion. The noun and the verb are the only grammatical categories that exhibit harmonic domains within which the features +palatalization and -palatalization are observed. All satellite elements of these two categories are either palatalized or non-palatalized depending on the opposition between the two phonemic vowels in the final position of the nominal or verbal complex. The perception of the Cuvok world is revealed through the study of prepositions, markers of temporal and spatial location. The expression of the four cardinal points shows a fixed orientation of the Tchouvok people.Particular emphasis was placed on the ethnolinguistic aspect, which deals with the role of the blacksmith as a key actor in the development of the society. This monographic section examines the role of the blacksmith in a society that is undergoing rapid change and is prey to new ideas and habits.The Cuvok grammar is a work that constitutes a decisive step towards the development and standardization of this language and hence of the central Chadic languages in general. Show less
Attested in cuneiform, hieroglyphic and alphabetic texts dating to the first two millennia BCE, the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family is intriguing already by itself. But... Show moreAttested in cuneiform, hieroglyphic and alphabetic texts dating to the first two millennia BCE, the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family is intriguing already by itself. But Anatolian is also of central importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, the last common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Not only is it the earliest attested branch, it has also long been suspected that Anatolian reflects an earlier stage of the proto-language than that underlying the rest of the family.Focusing on the three best-attested Anatolian languages, Hittite, Luwian and Lycian, this book aims to further our understanding of Anatolian, and by extension Proto-Indo-European, by offering in-depth analyses of essential issues in Anatolian historical morphology and semantics. Various well-known as well as several newly adduced topics are scrutinized to determine whether the innovations leading to the discrepancies with the rest of Indo-European took place on the Anatolian or on the non-Anatolian side.The present study suggests that Anatolian is in many respects closer to the ancestor of the other Indo-European languages than is often claimed. Nevertheless, the investigation has also led to new evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Anatolian was the first branch to split off from the family. Show less
The Luwian language belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and was spoken around 3000 years ago (approx. 1500 – 700 BCE; Turkey northern Syria). Even though this... Show moreThe Luwian language belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and was spoken around 3000 years ago (approx. 1500 – 700 BCE; Turkey northern Syria). Even though this language hasno living descendants and left no significant traces in any language currently spoken in the area, we do have a steadily growing corpus of texts, written on clay, stone and metal, in two different writing systems: cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing. This dissertation is concerned with the question of how Luwian must have sounded (phonetics) and how its sounds were systematically organised (phonology). It also treats the language’s history, tracing the origins of its sounds back to Proto-Anatolian and Proto-Indo-European. Five chapters, each of which has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or offered for publication, cover the most important domains of Luwian phonology: vowels, consonants and syllable structure. At the same time, this thesis illustrates various methods used to retrieve phonetic and phonological details from a dead language. These involve etymology, diachronic and synchronic typology and rigorous orthographical study. Along the way, various proposals are made to refine our phonetic interpretation of the writing systems in which the language was documented. Show less
This dissertation presents a description of Mankanya, an Atlantic language spoken by about 65 000 speakers in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and the Gambia. It includes a sketch of the phonology and a... Show moreThis dissertation presents a description of Mankanya, an Atlantic language spoken by about 65 000 speakers in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and the Gambia. It includes a sketch of the phonology and a detailed description of the morphology and syntax of the language. Some aspects of discourse level structure are also discussed and two interlinearised sample texts are included.Mankanya has a rich morphology with both nominal and verbal inflection, and a range of derivative morphemes. Like many other Atlantic languages, nouns can be grouped into classes based on the agreement of the inflections between nouns and their modifiers. Verbs have prefixes that agree with the subject. Though some verbal affixes indicate different aspects, most distinctions of tense, aspect and mode are made by using verbal auxiliaries. Clause chaining is possible with reduced subject agreement if the subject is unchanged. Where the subject does change a different subject marker is often used.A Grammar of Mankanya will be of interest for those studying of Atlantic languages, as well a resource for wider typological comparison. Show less
This dissertation investigates how sound change is adopted by speakers and listeners, based on a currently-ongoing cluster of changes in Dutch termed the ‘Polder shift’. The main aim of the... Show moreThis dissertation investigates how sound change is adopted by speakers and listeners, based on a currently-ongoing cluster of changes in Dutch termed the ‘Polder shift’. The main aim of the dissertation is to form a bridge between five key areas of linguistics: historical phonology, sociophonetics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and quantitative linguistics. A unified account of these different angles to the study of sound change is not trivial. This dissertation uses psycholinguistic experiments combined with detailed quantitative analysis to study the contributions of the different components to the adoption of sound change in the medium and long term. The population studied in this dissertation is sociolinguistic migrants: in this case, Flemish speakers of Dutch who have migrated to the Netherlands, and thereby migrated from a non-Polder-shift area to a Polder-shift area. The methods adopted in this dissertation include a corpus study of regional variation, longitudinal psycholinguistic experiments over nine months’ time, cross-sectional psycholinguistic experiments spanning multiple decades of apparent time, and two neurolinguistic studies using EEG. Results show that the sociolinguistic migrants rapidly acquire allophonic variation at the phonological level (albeit not necessarily the associated sociolinguistic knowledge), but that it takes a long time (more than nine months, up to multiple decades) for this to carry forward to their behavioral production and perception, and moreover is subject to significant individual differences. The contributions by this dissertation show how the fundamentally sociolinguistic phenomenon of sound change can be studied empirically using psycho- and neurolinguistics, and profit from recent innovations in statistics. Show less
