Indian Journal of Language and Linguistics
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Erroneous Word-Stress Patterns Used by EFL Yemeni Learners
Get PDFThis experimental study aims at investigating the English word-stress patterns used by Yemenis, learning English as a foreign language, and the erroneous stress patterns used by them. Accent or stress is a feature of high significance in English speech. At the level of a word, one syllable gets accentuated with primary stress. To achieve the purpose of this study, and to find out to what extent word stress of Received Pronunciation English poses difficulty on Yemeni Arabic speakers using English as a foreign language, 120 subjects of various scientific disciplines, were chosen for data collection. They were recorded and their utterances went through deep analysis based on the auditory impression of the researcher and on the spectrographic evidence resulting from the speech analysis of the software program PRAAT. The most significant findings reached by the researcher were that word-stress in the four-syllable target words were the most problematic for the speakers in which 53.2% of them put the stress, randomly, on the wrong syllables in words. Three-syllable target words appeared to be less problematic as 44.4% of the participants placed the stress inaccurately in words. The least difficulties encountered by the speakers were with the two-syllable target words where 70.6% of the speakers managed to pronounce the words with correct stress placement. It is noteworthy to mention that there was a tendency among the speakers who produced wrong stress patterns, to accent either the first syllable or the one including a long vowel or a diphthong in the words
Non- Prototypical Reduplication in Odia
Get PDFThe paper discusses in detail echo formations and expressives found in the Odia language and the strategies for forming them. The complex semantic structure as well as the wide semantic and conceptual space they occupy, make them complex categories that have been ignored both by Western and Asian linguists because they are a prototypical grammatical feature not fitting the traditional grammar writing (Abbi, 2018). Odia has morphological fixed segmentism with the variants /ph/ and /m/. Morphological fixed segmentism is a kind of affixation, and so it resembles affixing morphology generally.
[ɡaɽɪ > ɡaɽɪ phaɽɪ ‘car and other transport’ ; ʧɪra > ʧɪra mɪra ‘ torn and such’ ]
This paper endeavours to find the reason behind this particular choice of phonemes by Odia speakers. Furthermore, the paper investigates if Odia base-reduplicant structures follow the Syllable Contact Law (Vennemann, 1988). According to the Syllable Contact Law, sonority should fall across syllable boundaries. This paper proves that Odia base-reduplicant structures follow the Syllable Contact Law as rise in sonority across syllable boundaries is a marked feature in Odia.
Dialectal intelligibility of Assamese tested functionally
Get PDFThis paper includes a detailed discussion on the intelligibility of the speakers of four regional dialects of the Indo-Aryan language of Assamese. Prior research on Assamese dialects mostly being confined to examining structural variation lends this study relevance and urgency. The dialects of Standard Assamese, Central Assamese, Kamrupi, and Goalparia, covering three varieties each, were considered for the study. Using a functional intelligibility testing approach, the rate of overall intelligibility as well as of inter- and intra-dialectal mutual intelligibility of the dialects were determined. 24 speakers (1 male and 1 female from each variety) were asked to record ‘texts’— words, sentences, and connected speech in their native varieties of Assamese. 11 listeners from each variety (132 in total) were then tested on their comprehension of texts from non-native varieties. Thereafter, their rates of comprehension were used to determine the rates of mutual intelligibility between speakers of the different dialects and varieties of Assamese. This paper establishes that the rates of mutual intelligibility are unequal and asymmetric among the dialects— the native speakers of the Standard and Central Assamese dialects were more intelligible to the speakers of Kamrupi and Goalparia than vice-versa. Finally, the paper finds that the rate of intelligibility is the lowest for words in isolation and reinforces the important role of context in intelligibility
Case Role in the Urhobo Language
Get PDFThis paper examines case role in the Urhobo language. Case theory is used as theoretical frame work, the specific objectives is to investigate type of cases and to relate cases roles to argument structures in Urhobo. The study reveals that in the Urhobo language every lexically headed NP must receive case from a case assigner. The Case theory requires that the case assigner govern the NP to which its assigns case. Tense, verb and preposition are case assigners. The infinitive ‘to’ and the passive participles are not case assigners. Case assignment can take place only when the case assigner and the NP to which it assigns case bear a structural relation to one another. It also reveals that irrespective of the theory and its arguments, Urhobo verbs are the basses and centre of its expansion of its constructions. This research also finds out, that the argument structures identified in universal grammar (UG) align with the argument structure of the Urhobo language; the verb assigns arguments to the noun phrases in a sentence. This is traced to the structure of the Urhobo language which is subject-verb-object (SVO). Finally, the study reveals that the function of the nominative case is to mark the subject of the sentence; the vocative is the case of address; the accusative is used to mark the object of a transitive verb; the genitive is the case of possession, ablative case is to mark the instrument with which something is done and the dative case marks the indirect object in the Urhobo language
Diachronic Study of Phonological Changes in Tiv Language
Get PDFAll levels of language analysis are prone to changes in their phonology, morphology, graphology, lexis, semantics and syntax over the years. Tiv language is not an exception to this claim. This study investigates various aspects of phonological or sound changes in Tiv language. This paper therefore classifies sound changes in Tiv; states causes of sound changes in Tiv and explores implications of sound changes. The research design used in this paper is purposive sampling of relevant data. The instrument used in this paper is the observation method in which the author selected words that showed epenthesis, deletion and substitution. It has been noted that the use of archaic spellings in the Modern Tiv literatures shows their ancientness. Phonological change is not a deviation but a sign of language growth and changes in spellings result in changes in sounds. The author recommends that scholars should write papers or critical works on lexical/morphological, syntactic, semantic, graphological changes in Tiv language. Students should write projects, dissertations and theses on language change and diachronic linguistics. This study introduces Tiv historical linguistics and diachronic phonology which serve as catalysts for the study of Tiv language. The understanding of Tiv sound change provides students with a much better understanding of Tiv phonological system in general, of how Tiv phonology works and how the phonemes fit togethe
Factors that Affect Students Interpersonal Communication Skills in English Language and Literature Regular Students at Kabridahar University
Get PDFThis research paper investigates the factors that affect student’s interpersonal communication skills in English language and literature regular students at Kabridahar University. It focused on English Language and Literature regular students in Kabridahar University. The objective of the study was to investigate the major factors that affect student’s interpersonal communication. The researcher collected data from the students by using Questionnaire, Interview and observation in order to get an appropriate finding. The researcher used both qualitative and quantitative methods of data analysis. The study shows that, the students have interest to communicate and interact with each other. But, some of barriers like mother tongue influence and variety of language affect their interpersonal communication as well as their relationship. Also, factors like weak relationship to others, lack of interest, inexperience, lack of practice and gender issues are the major barriers which affected student’s interpersonal communication
Identity Constructions and Gender in Daisy Hasan’s The To-Let House
Get PDFThis paper is a detailed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the novel The To-Let House that represents the indigenous struggles, the politics of identity and the construction of a ‘woman’s identity’ amidst the unsettling environment of violence in the historical context of the North Eastern part of India. The paper would analyse and explore the underlying discourse operating in the novel and investigate the core theories and its impact through the conscious choices of the ‘language in use’ by the author. Daisy Hasan’s The To-Let House is primarily marked with the identity constructions and its gradual evolution. The author not only just unravels the struggles that the characters undergo but also counterfeits a sense of identity instituting it towards one’s self identity. The characters in the novel are unable to affiliate themselves into any one particular cultural identity; rather they constantly are struggling within themselves inwardly, in the midst of the violence surrounding them outwardly. This weakness and inability to assign an identity turns out to be a strong narrative that constructs a powerful discourse highlighting the nuances of ‘belongingness.
Valency in the Urhobo Language
Get PDFThis paper examines verb valency in Urhobo, using minimalism as a theoretical framework. The method of data collection is group into two: the primary and the secondary sources. The primary source is the intuitive knowledge of the native speaker, while the secondary involves documented materials from internet, Journals, conference proceedings and documented books. The study reveals that where we have one argument structure, we have one theta function. Where there are two place predicates, we have two theta roles or functions, and also, three arguments predicates possess three theta roles. This goes a long way to say that Urhobo verbs can take different levels of arguments and its syntactic and semantic well-formeness will still be intact. It also reveals that it involves entity to perform an action, such as òvwèrẹ̀ (sleeping event) in the Urhobo language. Finally, the paper identifies three valency classes in the Urhobo language (Mono-valent verb- takes or involves one entity, Di-valent verb- takes or involves two entities, and Tri-valent verb- takes or involves three entities)
A Study of the Duration of Controlled Speech in Right Hemisphere of the Brain Damaged Male Participants
Get PDFThis is a neuro-linguistic research which compares Bangla speaking right hemisphere damaged (furthermore to be called RHD) male participants to age and gender matched normal males who have been selected from the same family as the right hemisphere damaged participants. RHD or right hemisphere damaged participants are those who have lesions or damages in the right hemisphere of the brain or both. This paper pertains to the understanding how a lesion or a damage in the right hemisphere can cause changes in the pattern of communication of adult males in the age group of 45 to 70. This paper discerns the difference in durations of controlled speech in RHD males compared to age and gender matched normal controls. It will be measured with the help a predetermined passage. A passage will be played to them, using a media player (to make sure everyone listens to the same recording, ruling out chances of error there) and then they will be asked to repeat the same passage, as much as they can remember. In this research, we will be looking at the time they would take to narrate the whole passage without missing out on anything
Nature of English and Tiv Metatheses
Get PDFMetathesis, the transposition of letters and syllables, is a minor phonological process that is found in both English and Tiv languages. This phonological process has not received much attention it deserves because most scholars considered it as a figure of misspelling which is not worthy of researching. This paper investigates the nature of English and Tiv metatheses. The objectives of this paper are to classify English and Tiv metatheses, discuss the formation of metatheses in English and Tiv and state the functions of metatheses in English and Tiv languages. This paper used comparative linguistic theory which compares the nature of English and Tiv metatheses. The researcher used participant observation tool for elicitation of data for this study. Secondary materials such as journal articles, textbooks, dictionaries and encyclopaedias and Internet sources were used. This study links phonology, historical linguistics, onomastics and language pathology (speech disorder). The study has established that metathesis has phonological, orthographic, metrical and onomastic relevance. This paper provides an in-depth material for teaching and learning of English and Tiv languages. It has been recommended that lecturers in the National Institute for Nigerian Languages, Departments of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages should write books and critical works on Nigerian or African languages