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 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
