Dutch youth have been hard to enthuse for literature and reading in recent years, both in private and educational settings. At the same time, however, they are highly attracted to (primarily Dutch... Show moreDutch youth have been hard to enthuse for literature and reading in recent years, both in private and educational settings. At the same time, however, they are highly attracted to (primarily Dutch-spoken) rap, an originally US-American music genre with literary features. In the US, elements of rap and its accompanying hip-hop culture are fruitfully integrated into literature classes to enthuse youth for reading. The combination of hip-hop’s popularity and its intercultural, literary, and educative potential opens up possibilities for a similar implementation of hip-hop in a Dutch context. However, although many teachers are open to trying this, they often lack the prior knowledge to get started. In this article, I present four preparatory ‘lessons to learn’ to help teachers use hip-hop in the literary classroom. These lessons concern hip-hop’s literary qualities, hip-hop-inspired teaching attitudes, and new perspectives on the challenging language and topics of the genre. Show less
Dit proefschrift is gericht op het onderzoeken van verschillende aspecten van de huidige revalidatie rondomgehoorverlies. In de verschillende hoofdstukken wordt ingegaan op de selectiecriteria voor... Show moreDit proefschrift is gericht op het onderzoeken van verschillende aspecten van de huidige revalidatie rondomgehoorverlies. In de verschillende hoofdstukken wordt ingegaan op de selectiecriteria voor volwassen CI-kandidaten (hoofdstuk 2 en 3), de taalontwikkeling bij kinderen met een ABI (hoofdstuk 4), enverschillende ontwikkelingsuitkomsten na revalidatie voor kinderen met gehoorverlies, zoals het sociaalemotioneel functioneren (hoofdstuk 5) en het opleidingsniveau (hoofdstuk 6). Show less
Oloruntoba-Oju, T.; Pinxteren, L.M.C. van; Schmied, J. 2022
The bulk of the book is based on papers presented during two virtual conferences hosted by the University of Leiden (Netherlands) in 2021. At the Africa Knows! Conference, a panel was devoted to ... Show moreThe bulk of the book is based on papers presented during two virtual conferences hosted by the University of Leiden (Netherlands) in 2021. At the Africa Knows! Conference, a panel was devoted to ‘The language issue and knowledge communication in Africa.’ It was initiated by the Universities of Ilorin (Nigeria) and Chemnitz (Germany). The papers by Eleshin, Oloruntoba-Oju, Sanon-Ouattara, Van Pinxteren, and Zatolokina were all first presented at this panel, before being peer-reviewed for this volume. The central theme of the conference was the decolonization of Africa’s knowledge production and related processes. The second conference was the 10th World Congress on African Languages and Linguistics (WOCAL) in June, where a workshop took place under the auspices of the Edinburgh Circle on the Promotion of African Languages, entitled ‘Let’s turn to policy.’ The papers by Alfredo, Dissake, and Nguere and Smith were also first presented during this workshop before being peer-reviewed for this volume. In general, the position taken by the editors is that using indigenous languages in education can make an important contribution to national development as well as to personal empowerment. Africa is characterised in part by its continued use of former colonial languages in education. However, sixty years after independence, it seems high time to question this colonial heritage. In the context of global and digital communication today, old African values of multilingualism and culture-specific communicative strategies should not be neglected, but revalued and revived in new ways. We do not deny the importance of a good command of international languages. However, this should not be at the expense of indigenous languages. The introduction to the book argues that a transition towards increased use of African languages in formal domains will not only be necessary and practically possible, it will become inevitable. Show less
Objectives: To compare the quality of life (QoL) of children with hearing loss (HL) and children with normal hearing (NH) and to examine how the QoL of children with HL changes over time,... Show moreObjectives: To compare the quality of life (QoL) of children with hearing loss (HL) and children with normal hearing (NH) and to examine how the QoL of children with HL changes over time, considering language skills, type of hearing device, degree of HL, and type of education.Methods and materials: This longitudinal study included 62 children with HL and their parents. Developmental outcome data were collected at two time points, when the mean ages of the children were 4 and 11 years. The Pediatric Quality of Life (PedsQL (TM)) questionnaire, which includes assessments of Physical, Emotional, Social, and School functioning, was completed by parents at both time points and by the children with HL at the second time point. Receptive and expressive language skills at 4 years were assessed by the Reynell Developmental Language Scale. Results were compared with a Dutch normative sample.Results: The QoL of children with HL was similar to that of children with NH at both time points on two of the four QoL scales, Emotional and Physical functioning. On the other two scales, Social and School functioning, children with HL who attended special education and children who switched to mainstream education showed lower scores than children with HL who were consistently in mainstream education and lower scores than children with NH. The School QoL of children with HL decreased over time, as did the School QoL of children with NH. Social QoL of children with cochlear implants decreased over time, but this was not the case in children with hearing aids. Language skills and the degree of HL did not clinically improve the QoL over time of preschool children with HL.Conclusions: The QoL of children with HL in mainstream education and the Physical and Emotional QoL of all children with HL were satisfactory. It is essential to develop specific guidance regarding school activities for children with HL in special education and for children with HL who switch to mainstream education in order to increase their social QoL. Show less
Producing the local: Javanese performance on Indonesian television explores how television represents Javaneseness, as a factor designed to catch and keep the attention of its putative... Show moreProducing the local: Javanese performance on Indonesian television explores how television represents Javaneseness, as a factor designed to catch and keep the attention of its putative audiences. Central is the question of how people make use of national, regional, local, public and private television in Indonesia – each in their own way and with their own goals – to represent the local and, in particular, how they construct images of Javaneseness through the production and dissemination of performance. Performance in Javanese has been used by the Indonesian television industry to achieve various purposes: to entertain and inform its audiences, to represent the local/the regional, to preserve and nurture the traditional and to build national culture, for persuasive (commercial or propaganda) aims, as a counter-voice of diversification towards global or Jakartan influences, and to express multiculturalism. These issues have been put into the framework of discursive practices about local, national and global cultures in the electronic audiovisual media in Indonesia. Three main themes structure the study: representing tradition, localizing persuasion and mediating the local. Above all, this dissertation is a plea for a more thorough study of the role of proximity in the production, dissemination and reception of local television programmes. Show less
In Ayuuk worldview time is generated by the movement of stars and sun, which make their way through the sky and the worldview. Thanks this movement, both light and darkness as well as heat and... Show moreIn Ayuuk worldview time is generated by the movement of stars and sun, which make their way through the sky and the worldview. Thanks this movement, both light and darkness as well as heat and cold are distributed over the surface of the earth. Here the intervention of other divine beings plays an important role, such as water, rain, wind, thunder, and lightning, which lead to different climatic and meteorological conditions. From this perspective the world, the sun, moon, and stars are seen as animated beings with a sacred character. Also, the time that they generate, and the space in which this occurs, are considered sacred. The relationship between time ans space is conceived whithin the Ayuuk culture on a vertical line with a direction of movement that goes from top to bottom, in which the events thah have already occurred remain below and what is still to come is above. The cultural perception of the course of time can be represented as a spiral, wich starts from the center of the world and moves from right to left (counter clockwise in) continously rotating through the four major directions of the universe (east, north, west and south). Show less
The aim of this thesis was to study the link between hearing loss, language skills, and social functioning in deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children. Sufficient language skills are an... Show moreThe aim of this thesis was to study the link between hearing loss, language skills, and social functioning in deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children. Sufficient language skills are an essential prerequisite to develop appropriate communication skills, in order to join in conversations with others. Both their hearing loss and their diminished communication skills prevent DHH children from learning by observing their surroundings (incidental learning). As a result, DHH children showed more difficulty in understanding others’ thoughts and wishes (Theory of Mind or ToM). DHH teenagers reported to have difficulties with understanding others’ emotions and showed lower levels of prosocial behavior. Higher communication skills, but not language skills, were related to better ToM development and higher empathic abilities. Second, the role of early identification and intervention of hearing loss on the social-emotional development of DHH children was studied. This was illustrated in a longitudinal study showing that early cochlear implantation resulted in higher language and communication skills. In turn, these improved skills prevented the development of early signs of psychopathology. To conclude, this thesis shows that in order to stimulate the social-emotional development of DHH children, their opportunities for incidental learning have to be increased. Show less
Kepinska, O.; Rover, M. de; Caspers, J.; Schiller, N.O. 2017
Language is a uniquely human trait. All animals have ways to communicate, but these systems do not bear the same complexity as human language. However, this does not mean that all aspects of human... Show moreLanguage is a uniquely human trait. All animals have ways to communicate, but these systems do not bear the same complexity as human language. However, this does not mean that all aspects of human language are specifically human. By studying the language perception abilities of other species, we can discover which parts of language are shared. It are these parts that might have been at the roots of our language evolution. In this thesis I have studied language and music perception in two bird species, zebra finches and budgerigars. For example, zebra finches can perceive the prosodic (intonation) patterns of human language. The budgerigars can learn to discriminate between different abstract (grammar) patterns and generalize these patterns to new sounds. These and other results give us insight in the cognitive abilities that might have been at the very basis of the evolution of human language. Show less
Animal models, songbirds particularly, are increasingly used to study the human capacity for speech and language. In the light of understanding both language evolution and individual language... Show moreAnimal models, songbirds particularly, are increasingly used to study the human capacity for speech and language. In the light of understanding both language evolution and individual language acquisition these models are highly valuable, provided that they are studied within a valid comparative framework. In the past few decades, non-invasive methods such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Near-InfraRed Spectroscopy (NIRS) have become available for human as well as animal brain research. In the studies discussed in this thesis, fMRI is employed to unravel the neural correlates of vocal learning in the human and songbird brain. Specifically, fMRI in both songbirds and humans is used to study the neural mechanisms underlying birdsong learning and human artificial grammar learning. In a series of fMRI studies investigating these neural mechanisms in adult and juvenile zebra finches and human adults, this thesis compares the neural substrates of song learning in birds with those of language learning in humans. Studies in both species show correlations between behavioral learning of song or speech and neural activity. These results contribute to the songbird model for human vocal learning. Show less
This book is the first grammar on Ternate Malay, a local variety of Malay spoken on the island of Ternate, North-Moluccas, Indonesia. It is a language with words flexible in function and meaning,... Show moreThis book is the first grammar on Ternate Malay, a local variety of Malay spoken on the island of Ternate, North-Moluccas, Indonesia. It is a language with words flexible in function and meaning, which do not bear overtly expressed features to indicate grammatical functions. Linguistic tools traditionally used to distinguish between word classes do not work satisfactorily for this language. Certain lexical items and their position in a string of words serve as indicators of relationships between the words and determine the meaning they express. The preference for particular types of constructions and other combinatory abilities serve to limit the number of plausible interpretations and facilitate the determining of meaningful word constructions. The linguistic context and the non-linguistic situation determine the most appropriate interpretation of structures and the meaning they express. Various kinds of constructions are analyzed, described, and illustrated with examples from stories, told by a young Ternate Malay speaker. The word order, different types of possessive constructions, spatial orientation, and other linguistic topics of interest are described and discussed. The grammar aims to complement linguistic descriptions of Malay varieties in general, and particularly those in eastern Indonesia. The Ternate Malay texts and examples display spontaneous and naturally spoken Malay used as the daily language of communication in Ternate. The accompanying CD-rom contains texts with sound files and a Ternate Malay-English wordlist. Show less
This thesis investigates the grammar of Makhuwa-Enahara, a Bantu language spoken in the north of Mozambique. The information structure is an influential factor in this language, determining the... Show moreThis thesis investigates the grammar of Makhuwa-Enahara, a Bantu language spoken in the north of Mozambique. The information structure is an influential factor in this language, determining the word order and the use of special conjugations known as conjoint and disjoint verb forms. The thesis consists of two parts. The first part is a grammatical description of the language, covering the basic properties in the phonology, prosody and morphology of the nominal and verbal domain, as well as an overview of the conjugational system. The chapter also examines some syntactic issues, such as relativisation and non-verbal predication. The second part is concerned with the question how syntax and information structure interact in Makhuwa-Enahara. The elements in a sentence are positioned before or after the verb on the basis of their information structure. Elements in the preverbal domain are interpreted as more accessible, functioning as topics. The disjoint verb and elements in the postverbal domain form the comment. The element immediately following the conjoint verb form is interpreted not just as new information, but as exclusive, meaning that the proposition holds for that referent and not for (some) other referents. These data can be accounted for if insights from syntax and information structure are combined. Two such approaches are discussed: a cartographic model and an interface model. Two interface rules are proposed to account for the interpretation of word order and the conjoint and disjoint verb forms in Makhuwa-Enahara. Show less
interventions in village life. Doing all this work for the community has also schooled them in the use and meaning of Sa‟vi. For those who do not know how to read and write, the process starts with... Show moreinterventions in village life. Doing all this work for the community has also schooled them in the use and meaning of Sa‟vi. For those who do not know how to read and write, the process starts with the office of Mayor de Vara del Ayuntamiento. For those who do, with that of Síndico Municipal. In these offices they start speaking the Sa’vi, when delivering messages to the citizens. If one does not have the necessary experience or knowledge of this special way of oral expression, one asks the immediate superior in the same line of duty to help out and teach it. If that is not sufficient, one goes to a trusted experienced and respected elder in the community to learn from him the usages, times and places of this discourse. The apprenticeship commences with short messages, e.g. thanks for an invitation.The central question of this study is: How are the ideas and values of a culture, specifically of the culture of Ñuu Savi (the Mixtec people in Southern Mexico), transmitted and perpetuated? This prompts exploration of a specific genre of oral literature, the Sa’vi or “ceremonial discourse”, which plays a prominent part in the construction of community and cultural memory. Although this genre is obviously important for many studies of Mesoamerica, it has so far received little attention. Consequently our first task was an adequate representative documentation, both of the texts and of their contexts, with their linguistic and anthropological dimensions. With the help of many local people a corpus of discourses (“parangones”) from Yutsa To‟on (Apoala), situated in the Mixtec Highlands in the Mexican State of Oaxaca, was taped, transcribed, translated and commented upon. An important aspect of this research is the historical dimension, because from the same region a number of precolonial pictorial manuscripts has been preserved, in which Yutsa To‟on also appears prominently. As these manuscripts must also have functioned as a basis for public discourses and performances within a ceremonial context, the question arises whether there is a relation and continuity between the pictographic scenes in those codices and the Sa’vi of today, in composition, style, contents and social function. The ceremonial language is employed in solemn acts of family or community life – such as baptism, compadrazgo, asking the hand of a woman, traditional weddings, the receiving and honouring of municipal authorities, thanksgiving for the harvest to Mother Earth, healing ceremonies, mayordomías etc. In all of these events the discourse invites reflection through counselling and exhorting respect and mutual support among the individuals, searching for solutions to problems by making explicit or implicit references to the ancestors and their norms of conduct and living together. The Sa’vi is also the language in which to address the gods, and to refer to different sacred symbols, such as the Tukukua, Itakutsa, staff of office, mat and throne (el Yuhuitayu analyzed by Kevin Terraciano and Angeles Romero), the Rosary, and the authorities themselves (Tade’e), as those who carry the responsibility for the well-being of the people. Thus the discourses fulfill several objectives at the same time, expressing normative and explicatory ideas about nature, religion, history, politics, morality etc., and exposing the knowledge of earlier generations and different segments of society. The Sa’vi is interactive: on the one hand it may be an opening discourse or a responding one , on the other there is always the relation between the canonical message and the specific moment in which it is pronounced (cf. RAPPAPORT 1999). Susana Cumming y Tsuyoshi Ono stress that discourse and context generate and limit each other (van DIJK 2001:174). As a specialized speech genre Sa’vi is the reserved domain and competence of a the group of elders known as Tanisa’nu, who have accumulated social prestige and moral authority because of their community services, i.e. by passing through the hierarchy of social, communitarian municipal and ecclesiastic offices (cargos), which has provided them with a detailed knowledge of customs and prestige because of their positiveFrom the familial and personal environment we move on to the social and political life of the town, focusing on the discourses pronounced at the occasion of the change of municipal authorities and discussing the meaning of the symbols used and referred to in this context, e.g. the bush of flowers (Chapter V). We pay attention to the complex social organisation, which is connected to the worldview, rooted in the precolonial period but remodelled later under Catholic influence. This aspect of syncretism is even more present in the religious festivities with their corresponding mayordomías (Chapter VI). All these activities imply also the participation of family members, compadres, authorities, neighbours and other helpers, which has to be solicited and for which thanks is given for by a Tanisa’nu with adequuate phrases. Obviously the Sa’vi is also used during ceremonies that clearly have a precolonial background, such as the celebration of the Days of the Dead. The abovementioned social contexts, with their corresponding symbolisms, are, indeed, also present in the Mixtec codices. With a deeper understanding of the form, function and contents, we may achieve a more adequate reading of the pictorial scenes and propose new interpretations of specific elements. In Chapter VII the following important examples are analysed: - the staff of office as symbol of power, - the throne and the mat as signs of the unity of the community and civil authority recognising the seated couple as Tade’e, “father and mother of the people”, - the flint knife as symbol of justice, - the processions of protagonists as an expression of social organisation, comparable with the contemporary authorities lined up with their staffs, - the symbolism of the four directions that is manifest in the so-called Venus Staff, corresponding to the contemporary wooden frame known as Tukukua, - the bush of flowers (Itakutsa) as part of the public recognition of power, - the Sacred Bundle as a container of abstract force and luck, - elements of the sacred landscape of Apoala itself, which appear in the codices, - the symbolic meaning and ritual use of maize, epitome of the Mesoamerican cosmos. Each of the chapters of this dissertation moves us to reflect on the use of the language: this analysis makes us understand its grammatical richness, but the focus on ceremonial speech is especially significant as it makes us aware of the persistence and continued transmission of cultural memory and philosophy among our peoples. Observing that this is the very language which our ancestors used to express their thoughts in the different codices they painted before the Spanish conquest, we not only discover that through the surviving manifestations of this special language, Sa’vi, we understand better several important passages of those ancient books, but also the continuity of that ancient thought and worldview in our present-day perspectives and identity. On the other hand, this language is dwindling: the new generations generally do not know and do not want to speak the common Mixtec language, much less the Sa’vi. Among the causes we may point to poverty (exploitation), discrimination, migration, alienating education with its modernisation „Western‟ style, the mass media, acculturation to „Western‟ thought, the lack of transmission and teaching of our own language and otherfactors that together provoke the displacement and extermination of the Mesoamerican languages, and in fact endanger the languages of all indigenous peoples of the planet. In this context we may understand the lack of consciousness and even apathy among the cultural descendants, which contributes to the further erosion of forms of knowledge, meanings, historical and philosophical values still existent in indigenous communities. To confront this problem, the challenge is that those of us who are conscious of our culture take an active approach, creating more reflection and understanding of this matter and of our cultural heritage. It is with that aim in mind that this dissertation was written. Show less
