This study investigates the perception and production of emotional prosody by native and non-native listeners and speakers, i.e. Chinese and Dutch listeners and speakers, including Dutch L2... Show moreThis study investigates the perception and production of emotional prosody by native and non-native listeners and speakers, i.e. Chinese and Dutch listeners and speakers, including Dutch L2 learners of Chinese. There is an acoustic analysis in this dissertation which shows the differences between three types of production of emotional prosody, i.e., Chinese L1, Dutch L2 and Dutch L1. This study also studies the in-group advantage and the cross-cultural perceptual ability of recognizing emotional prosody in an unknown language. Furthermore, the functional view is tested in this study, predicting that listeners of a tonal language will be less intent on paralinguistic use of prosody than listeners of a non-tonal language. This study describes three judgment studies in total. The first two judgment studies were carried out with native and non-native speakers and listeners of Chinese, and using Chinese native speakers and listeners to provide a baseline. The third study was conducted to test how well novice Chinese and Dutch listeners recognize emotional prosody expressed in their native language and in the other language. The results show that Dutch L2 speakers of Chinese are not able to produce emotional prosody as well as Chinese native speakers do; neither are they able to vocally express emotion as recognizable as they do in their L1. It seems that Dutch L2 speakers of Chinese develop a hybrid system for expressing emotional prosody in the L2. Moreover, the functional view is supported, indicating that Dutch listeners are generally better than Chinese listeners in recognizing emotional prosody, regardless the language in which the emotion is expressed. This dissertation is of interest to linguists, psychologists, phoneticians, language instructors or coaches, and those who work in the perception and/or production of emotion cross-culturally. Show less
How did common people write in the late eighteenth century? Little is yet known on this topic, since our knowledge is mainly based on printed texts written by a small part of the (male) elite... Show moreHow did common people write in the late eighteenth century? Little is yet known on this topic, since our knowledge is mainly based on printed texts written by a small part of the (male) elite population. This dissertation __ written from a sociolinguistic point of view __ gives us new insights into late-eighteenth-century language use. For this purpose a large number of Dutch private letters has been used. These letters were captured by the English in times of warfare between the Dutch and the English and are still preserved at the National Archives in Kew (London). The research is based on a selection of approximately 400 letters, written between 1776 and 1784 by Dutch male and female letter writers from all social ranks. This study into late-eighteenth-century language variation can be regarded as a first broad exploration of this valuable material. Therefore various linguistic phenomena have been examined: forms of address, negation, reflexivity and reciprocity, schwa-apocope, deletion of final -n, diminutives and the genitive and alternative constructions. The case studies clearly establish more variety in eighteenth-century written language than previous studies suggested. Almost every linguistic feature under discussion appears to show social variation, and gender and social class, in particular, are influential factors. Show less
This study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history. While most ethno-linguistic groups have a longstanding history and a clear ethnic and linguistic... Show moreThis study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history. While most ethno-linguistic groups have a longstanding history and a clear ethnic and linguistic affiliation, the formation of the Dolgans has been a relatively recent development, and their ethnic origins as well as their linguistic affiliation have been a matter of debate. According to some scholars, the Dolgans, who inhabit the Taimyr Peninsula and the Anabar district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), are Turkic people who adopted a Tungusic name and certain Tungusic cultural features. Others hold the view that they have Tungusic origins but shifted to a Turkic language. Migrations and frequent contacts with other ethnic groups complicate a reconstruction of their past. Accepting the idea that contact settings may correlate with linguistic outcomes, contact-induced changes in Dolgan are analysed and used to infer information about the nature of the contact settings in which they occurred. The linguistic conclusions are interpreted in a multidisciplinary context, integrating insights from history, ethnography as well as from population genetics. In particular, linguistic patterns of contact influence are correlated with genetic admixture patterns, providing new insights into the prehistoric migration patterns of the Dolgans. Due to its holistic approach, this study provides an example of the innovative ways in which data from different disciplines can be combined to gain a deeper understanding of a people__s past and identity, and provides a valuable contribution to the investigation of Siberian history. Show less
The thesis discusses Object Shift, weak pronoun shift in the Scandinavian languages, from the intonational perspective, by presenting experimental data from all the Scandinavian languages. It is... Show moreThe thesis discusses Object Shift, weak pronoun shift in the Scandinavian languages, from the intonational perspective, by presenting experimental data from all the Scandinavian languages. It is shown that downstep typically occurs in the Object Shift construction but does not occur in the constructions where Object Shift cannot occur. A new hypothesis on Scandinavian Object Shift is presented: the object pronoun moves to cause downstep. Holmberg__s Generalization is accounted for as follows: When main verb movement takes place, the object pronoun moves and causes downstep to eliminate a focal effect on the sentential element(s) after the main verb. In the environments in which downstep must not occur, i.e. in the constructions where the final pitch peak occurs on the (in-situ) main verb, Object Shift does not occur either. A new generalization on Object Shift is also presented: the earlier the pitch gesture occurs, the more likely is Object Shift to occur; the more delayed the pitch gesture is, the more likely is Object Shift to be absent. Object Shift is thus not a dichotomous property, i.e. either present or absent, but a gradient phenomenon in the Scandinavian languages. Show less
This book presents a description of Konso, a Cushitic language spoken by about 250,000 speakers in South-West Ethiopia. It presents analyses of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language.... Show moreThis book presents a description of Konso, a Cushitic language spoken by about 250,000 speakers in South-West Ethiopia. It presents analyses of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. Aspects of pragmatics including greetings and leave-taking expressions, interjections and ideophones as well as the link between naming of week days and how these relate to the distribution ofbig markets in the Konso area are discussed. A sample of two texts and a list of singular-plural pairs of nouns with their corresponding gender values is included.The data underlying the analyses are based on the author’s native speaker intuition and fieldwork in Konso area where other native speakers are consulted.Konso phonology is characterised by having a full set of labial, alveolar, palatal and uvular implosives but no ejectives which contrasts with what is observed in geographically and some genetically related languages. The language has a rich morphology as evidenced in its nominal and verbal inflection. The work accounts the intricate link between gender and number marking in nominals,it explicates variation in number- and person-marking in affirmative and negative verb paradigms and presents analyses of nominal and verbal derivation.Various clause-linking strategies and the way these relate to person markingof the subject are examined. Word order in simple as well as complex clausesis discussed.A Grammar of Konso is of interest to specialists in Cushitic and Afroasiatic languages for historical-comparative purposes. It will be a valuable source for typological comparison and for testing theoretical claims Show less
Words may have multiple interpretations. Generally, native speakers do not perceive this as a problem, because the context provides enough clues as to what is meant. For non-native speakers and... Show moreWords may have multiple interpretations. Generally, native speakers do not perceive this as a problem, because the context provides enough clues as to what is meant. For non-native speakers and students of dead languages, however, the existence of multiple interpretations sometimes does raise problems. This suggests that the context is not the only clue native speakers use to interpret words.In this dissertation, it is studied what types of context Dutch speakers need to interpret the poly-interpretable word ergens ‘somewhere/anywhere’, modal particle. The results of this investigation were used to find out more about the Ancient Greek form που ‘somewhere, anywhere’, modal particle.This thesis shows that the study of contextual cues that allow native speakers to interpret their language provides insights that may be used in the study of dead languages. The modal interpretations of ergens and που turned out to be quite different, but the context of both words clearly showed recurring (albeit different) patterns. Knowledge of the common interpretation of words in specific contexts seems crucial for their interpretation, suggesting that it is not words themselves that carry meaning, but words-in-context. Show less
This dissertation provides an account of polar questions in Italian dialects from a typological, theoretical and empirical perspective. Both data from the existing literature and new data from the... Show moreThis dissertation provides an account of polar questions in Italian dialects from a typological, theoretical and empirical perspective. Both data from the existing literature and new data from the author’s fieldwork are included in this study. It is shown that Italian dialects display a relatively large number of typologically diverse yes/no question-marking strategies, as opposed to Standard Italian and Romance. The variation found in Italian dialects is surprising, given that they are closely related from a typological point of view. Furthermore, Several Tuscan, Central and Southern Italian dialects display a specific construction that poses a challenge for standard typological classifications of polar questions in the world’s languages. A theoretical analysis is proposed in order to account for the syntactic properties of this yes/no question-marking strategy. Although this construction includes two fully-inflected verbs, it is argued that it should be analyzed as a monoclausal utterance. A number of syntactic tests are developed to shed some light on its underlying structure. Further evidence for the proposed analysis comes from the results of empirical testing. A production experiment was carried out to investigate the phonetic realization of this construction. The results of the experiment show that this constructions patterns with specific phonetic cues, which unambiguously signal its monoclausal status. This study is of relevance to anyone interested in descriptive typology, theoretical syntax and experimental phonetics, as well as Italian dialectology. Show less
