Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus
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South Africa’s image as translated in Dutch-language media
Full text linkThis contribution first explores the position of Journalistic Translation Research within the discipline of Translation Studies and, subsequently, describes the relevance of relating it to imagological approaches. It presents a case study that analyses how journalistic discourse in current Dutch-language newspapers (both from the Netherlands and Belgium) represents South Africa(ns). Five recurring images and topical fields are distinguished. They do not only build the imageme, i.e. the imagological range of presentations for South Africa(ns) in Dutch-language journalistic representations, but also confirm the constructed character of national and cultural image-building
Combining Forces: The South African Sign Language Bible Translation Project
Full text linkThis paper reports on the South African Sign Language Bible Translation Project, an ongoing project aiming to translate 110 Bible stories into South African Sign Language (SASL). The project started in 2014 and, at the time of writing, 32 stories have been finalised. A team of three Deaf[1] signers are translating the stories from written English to SASL. As signed languages have no written form, the signed translations are video-recorded. The Deaf translators are working with exegetical assistants, a Bible translation consultant with expertise in signed language (Bible) translations, a signed language interpreter who facilitates the communication between the Deaf translators and hearing collaborators, and an editor. Back translations are done by both Deaf and hearing collaborators who are proficient in SASL and English. The Deaf community of South Africa assists the Deaf translators with signs for Biblical names and terms when required. This paper documents the modus operandi of the team as a sequence of different steps. We focus on the many challenges involved in this process, specifically those related to working between the written form of a spoken language (English) and a visual-gestural language with no written form (SASL) and only a short history of institutionalisation.[1] In the literature in the fields of Signed Language Linguistics, Deaf Education, Deaf Studies, etc., the capital D is sometimes used to refer to people or organisations that self-identify as “culturally Deafâ€. This allows for the differentiation between “deafâ€, which most often refers to the hearing status, and “Deafâ€, referring to a socio-cultural (and linguistic) identity. In view of the importance of self-identification, we have decided to only use capital D in this paper to refer to people and organisations when we know for certain that they self-identify as “Deafâ€; in all other cases, we use “deafâ€
Are focus and givenness prosodically marked in Kinyarwanda and Rwandan English?
No full textIn this paper, we are interested in whether systematic variations in pitch, intensity and duration can be observed as a function of the focused or discourse-given status of a constituent in Kinyarwanda (Bantu JD61), and a relatively recent variety of “New English†in contact with this Bantu language. Kinyarwanda is a tone language, in which the information-structural notion of focus has been reported to be expressed through changes in word order, with focus appearing clause-finally (Kimyeni 1988, Ndayiragije 1999, Ngoboka 2016). In contrast, Standard English is well-known for the prosodic boost associated with narrowly focused words and the prosodic reduction of post-focal items. Cross-linguistically, the prosodic expression of focus and givenness is progressively becoming considered a marked feature. Zerbian (2015) predicts that it should not be found in a second language (L2), or a contact variety, if it is not already present in the first language of a speaker or a group of speakers. Our study finds no evidence that information focus, exhaustive focus or givenness systematically affect the prosody of Kinyarwanda. We also find no systematic effect of information structure in the variety of English spoken by our Rwandan participants, confirming that this is probably an area of English that is difficult to acquire
The grammatical primacy of tone in Cushitic
Full text linkThe current dimensions in the typology of tone are not insightful for understanding the properties of tone in Cushitic languages. Some Cushitic languages are characterised as “pitch-accent†and these cannot be considered stress languages because the criterion of obligatoriness of every word having a stressed unit is not valid for them. In Hyman’s (2006) typology these languages are (restricted) tone languages. Pitch as prominence marker does show stress-like tendencies of culminativity and demarcation in these languages which is why a label pitch-accent has been suggested. The tone properties are better explained by another dimension, namely the fact that the distinctive function of tone hardly plays a role at the lexical level but does play a role at the grammatical leve
A Spin to Preserve Contrast: Taiwanese Tone Sandhi
Full text linkChain-shifts, particularly circular ones such as the tone sandhi of Taiwanese Min has been a longstanding challenge to which phonologists of various persuasions have attempted. This paper appeals to markedness against contour tones in non-final positions as the point of departure that sets off a chain reaction due to the need to preserve underlying contrasts in surface forms. The account has implications on the historical development and acquisition of the Min tone circle that awaits verification
A usage-based investigation of Afrikaans-speaking children’s holophrases and communicative intentions
Full text linkChildren of all languages use their first lexical items to express a variety of meanings or communicative intentions. The phase during which young children start to use their first lexical items is commonly characterised from a usage-based approach as a holophrastic stage because these lexical items, although just a single linguistic unit, are often used to fulfil more complex communicative intentions. The meaning of the lexical item is therefore mostly derived from the communicative context in which the utterance takes place. A holophrase is defined as one linguistic symbol that functions as a whole utterance and expresses more than the conventional meaning of that symbol. Studies on the communicative functions of children’s holophrases do exist, but this phenomenon has not yet been studied in Afrikaans first language acquisition. Tomasello (2003: 37) provides a list of what young children from around the world normally do with their language (i.e. intentions typically expressed), and this study investigates to what extent these communicative intentions can also be applied to novel usage-based data of 20 Afrikaans-speaking children’s first lexical items. This study reveals that the communicative intentions as expressed by Tomasello also describe the Afrikaans data set although some of the descriptions of the categories are expanded to include a larger variety of samples from the Afrikaans data. Furthermore, two other types of communicative intentions are identified in the Afrikaans data, namely to express an emotion/feeling, and to respond to a conversation partner by means of imitation. Other studies done on children’s expression of emotions and imitations of words provide further evidence that children also use their language to communicate these intentions. As such, this article contributes to the body of literature on Afrikaans first language acquisition as an under-researched field
Yoruba vowel deletion involves compensatory lengthening: evidence from phonetics
No full textA phonetic study of Yoruba vowel deletion shows that the vowel that remains after deletion is slightly but significantly longer than a short vowel in non-deletional contexts (p<0.001). The experiment controlled for inherent vowel duration and voicing/manner of articulation of the surrounding consonants. Previous phonological accounts (e.g. Akinlabi & Oyebade 1987, Ola Orie & Pulleyblank 2002) analyze this process as full vowel deletion, this account is revised and the process is treated as a type of compensatory lengthening. This also relates to a similar result with Yoruba tone (Ajiboye et al. 2011) in the same syntactic configuration
Afrikaanse taalvariasie: Uitdagings vir regverdige meting van jong kinders se taal
Full text linkSowat 5% van alle kinders toon ʼn taalagterstand (Law, Boyle, Harris, Harkness en Nye 2000) en daar is aanduidings dat hierdie syfer hoër is in Suid-Afrika, veral onder baie jong kinders (Van der Linde, Swanepoel, Sommerville, Glascoe, Vinck en Louw 2016). Geen voldoende instrument bestaan waarmee vasgestel kan word watter jong Afrikaanssprekendes hulp sal benodig om toekomstige taalverwante akademiese probleme te oorkom nie. Hierdie artikel lewer verslag oor uitdagings wat weens Afrikaanse taalvariasie ervaar word tydens die ontwikkeling van ʼn ouervraelys waarmee jong kinders se taal gemeet kan word. Hierdie vraelys beslaan vrae oor vroeg-ontwikkelende kommunikatiewe gebare, eerste woorde en vroeë sinskonstruksies, en ouers word versoek om op die lys aan te dui watter gebare, woorde en konstruksies hul kind verstaan en/of voortbring. Die vraelys kan nie onbeperk verleng word nie, want die voltooiing daarvan moet ʼn realistiese taak bly, ook vir ouers met lae geletterdheidsvlakke (vgl. Alcock, Rimba, Holding, Kitsao-Wekulo, Abubakar en Newton 2015). Besluite oor die insluiting of uitsluiting op die vraelys van woorde uit spesifieke Afrikaanse variëteite is egter gereeld nie voor die hand liggend nie.Bestaande taalmetingsinstrumente diskrimineer wêreldwyd tipies teen kinders wat nie deel van die dominante kultuur en taalgemeenskap vorm nie. Gegee Suid-Afrika se bevlekte geskiedenis wat die erkenning van sprekers van niegestandaardiseerde taalvariëteite betref (vgl. bv. Hendricks 2012; Williams 2016), is die opstel van ʼn geldige ouervraelys ononderhandelbaar. Daar moet dus noukeurig oorweeg word watter woorde op die lys verskyn, want ʼn goeie ouervraelys sal bydra tot kultureel- en talig-regverdige taaltoetsing van jong Afrikaanssprekende kinders. Dit sal help om kinders te identifiseer wat sukkel om hul taal te verwerf en wat ekstra hulp benodig sodat hul taal genoegsaam kan verbeter vóór hul formele skoolloopbaan begin. Sodoende sal hulle ʼn groter kans hê om die kurrikulum te verstaan, skoolsukses te ervaar en’n lang genoeg skoolloopbaan te hê om hul potensiaal te verwesenlik.AbstractApproximately 5% of children show a language delay (Law, Boyle, Harris, Harkness and Nye 2000), and there are indications that this figure is higher in South Africa, especially amongst very young children (Van der Linde, Swanepoel, Sommerville, Glascoe, Vinck and Louw 2016). There are no adequate instruments with which to ascertain which young Afrikaans-speaking children will require assistance to overcome future language-related academic problems. This article reports on the challenges experienced owing to Afrikaans language variation during the development of a parent questionnaire with which the language acquisition of young children can be measured. This questionnaire comprises questions on early developing communicative gestures, first words, and early grammatical constructions, and parents are requested to indicate on the list which gestures, words and constructions their child comprehends and/or produces. The length of the questionnaire needs to be contained, because the completion of the questionnaire should remain a realistic task for parents, also for those with low literacy levels. Decisions regarding the inclusion or exclusion on the questionnaire of the words found in specific varieties of Afrikaans are however often not straightforward.Existing language assessment instruments the world over typically discriminate against children who are not part of the dominant culture and language community. Given South Africa’s stained history with regard to the recognition of speakers of non-standardised language varieties (cf., e.g., Hendricks 2012; Williams 2016), the compiling of a valid parental questionnaire is non-negotiable. It is thus necessary to consider carefully which words should appear on the list, because a good parental questionnaire can contribute to culturally and linguistically fair language assessment of young Afrikaans-speaking children. Such a questionnaire will assist in identifying children who struggle to acquire their language and who need extra assistance in order for their language to improve sufficiently before the commencement of their school careers. That way, they will have a better chance of accessing the curriculum, of experiencing academic success, and of having a sufficiently long school career to realise their potential
Effects of morphology in the nativization of loanwords: The borrowing of /s/ in Xitsonga
Full text linkThis paper argues that the nativization of loanwords can result from pressure from morphology based on patterns of English loanword adaptations in Xitsonga, a southern Bantu language. The /s/ in /sC/ clusters of English is always realized in Xitsonga borrowings as [s] in non-initial positions, but the /s/ is realized with variations when it appears in the initial position: faithfully with an alveolar fricative [s], or with a palatal fricative [ʃ]. A loanword adaptation experiment confirms that this position-sensitive variation is part of the grammatical knowledge of Xitsonga speakers. The adaptation of initial /sC/ clusters to [ʃiC] in the nativization process is argued to result from pressures to incorporate loanwords into the existing noun class system: a case where morphology triggers phonological changes. What is also important is the non-occurrence of palatalization in non-initial positions. Since non-initial consonants are not subject to the same morphological pressure, the nativatization process of /sC/ to [ʃiC] is blocked
Buriat dorsal epenthesis is not reproduced with novel morphemes
Full text linkIn Buriat, the consonant realized contextually as dorsal or uvular alternates with zero at stem- suffix boundaries. This alternation has been analyzed as phonological epenthesis and has been known as a challenge to the existing theories of phonological markedness. The analysis of this alternation has also been debated. This paper presents new fieldwork and experimental evidence addressing the ways in which the reported epenthesis pattern is generalized to new environments. The results do not fully support the phonological insertion account of the alternation. An alternative analysis of Buriat dorsal-zero alternation in terms of floating features is proposed