1,720,976 research outputs found
The Grammar of Pitch in South Gyeongsang Korean
No full textMost Korean dialects are non-tonal, and one way of knowing that is that is to ask,\ud
say, a woman from Incheon about the tones of the word !" saram "person." She will\ud
not have any notion of them. However, her tonal indifference does not mean that she\ud
will always produce the same general F0 pattern for all sentences of a given structure,\ud
even if corresponding words in the different sentences have the same number of\ud
syllables, and even in an elicitation setting. Particular phonemes can cause a lot of\ud
variation.\ud
We see lexical tone in the Korean of #$ (Gyeongsang), a southeastern region of\ud
South Korea, and again, a persuasive diagnostic is just the fact that we can ask speakers\ud
about tone and see that they associate information with it. A Gyeongsang woman would\ud
tell us that the first syllable of saram has low tone and the second high tone. We expect\ud
more, though. We can, of course, find minimal pairs for tone, and other pairs close\ud
enough to definitively show contrast, which we would be unable to do in other regions.\ud
Yet resulting from environmentally conditioned variation, we do not always easily find\ud
any one pitch contour at the narrow phonetic level that is exclusively characteristic of a\ud
certain speaker-perceived tonal configuration. Can it be true that the phonetic behavior\ud
of tone is too elusive to be of any straightforward, independent worth in informing our\ud
idea of the phonology underlying it? Can tonal phonology only emerge through internal\ud
comparison within the morphological paradigm? If we had to define high tone\ud
phonetically, could we? Perhaps we could define it for a certain language, but not in\ud
general. If that's the case, if it's so variable, should we even be using the terminology of\ud
high and low tone at all?\ud
Consider another issue. Adjacent nominal roots can band together so that they\ud
exhibit tonal behavior as a unified prosodic phrase. When this occurs, it is sometimes\ud
true that the lexical tone of both original nominal roots affects the tonal pattern of the\ud
unified prosodic phrase—that's as we would expect. However, noun roots with certain\ud
tonal patterns invariably neutralize the tonal influence of the roots following them,\ud
insisting on deciding the tonal contour of the prosodic phrase by themselves. These\ud
roots seem to strip the tones from the subsequent root.\ud
There is a certain category of root that is only one syllable long, yet without fail,\ud
it dismantles the tonal specification of any root that follows it. Here is just such a root:\ud
%\ud
mul\ud
The underline indicates that the root's one syllable forms a summit approach,\ud
which basically means that it's fairly high-pitched, though we'll spend a lot of time\ud
defining that more clearly later.\ud
Now here is another root, much bigger than mul.\ud
!&'\ud
samagwi\ud
Again, the underlined syllables constitute a summit approach and are higherpitched.\ud
When mul precedes samagwi in a prosodic phrase, not only does mul strip samagwi\ud
of its pitch approach, it imposes a tonal pattern on the syllables of samagwi that is the\ud
exact opposite of the original tonal pattern.\ud
%!&'\ud
mul-samagwi\ud
What determines which nouns trigger this neutralization? It seems that nouns\ud
like mul have the power both the strip the tones off a following root and to govern a\ud
specific tonal pattern that extends beyond the scope of their own syllables, such that\ud
they can impose it on the roots they have neutralized. We ask how we might connect\ud
those two phenomena.\ud
The most I can say about Gyeongsang tonal phonology without adopting a certain\ud
ethos of interpretation is that there are some tonal classes wherein one syllable is\ud
encoded, at least at the surface level, as having high tone, and other tonal classes that\ud
do not conform to that system. In deciding how to pin Gyeongsang tonal phonology\ud
down from there, I will compare two thoroughly different analyses, both focusing on\ud
South Gyeongsang Korean.\ud
Russell G. Schuh and Jieun Kim (2008) propose a segmentally-minded scheme\ud
wherein each lexical item is encoded with a certain number of high tones on syllables,\ud
with a default tonal category encoding zero high tones. The placement and behavior of\ud
these underlying tones is divined mostly through a view of what happens to each\ud
syllable across the morphosyntactic paradigm. Akira Utsugi (2007), on the other hand, is\ud
more concerned with word-level tonal behavior and is willing to use word-boundary\ud
tones as an element in the tonal phonology.\ud
I will thus undertake my own reconciliation of their approaches, based on their\ud
data. I will consider other scholarship in the process, and will give more attention than\ud
they have to figuring out just what they mean when they assign high tone to syllables
From Speech to Screen: The Orthography of Colloquial Arabic in Electronically-Mediated Communication
No full textWhat does it mean to communicate textually when one's native language lacks a\ud
standardized writing system? This thesis examines the orthographic systems devised by\ud
Arabic speaking users of mobile and online text-based media. Such electronic\ud
communication has intrigued linguists since the birth of the technologies that facilitate it,\ud
leading them them to debate whether it can be considered speech or writing. They have\ud
observed in the short-form type discourse present in texting, online posting and instant\ud
messaging an interesting array of linguistic phenomena, including changes in\ud
orthography and spelling, novel phrases and abbreviations. However, Arabic texting and\ud
online language remains largely unexplored in the field, and little work has been done on\ud
the emergence of new ways of encoding its previously unwritten dialects in electronic\ud
media. Electronically-mediated communications (EMC) in various dialects of Arabic\ud
world indeed represents a transition from a strictly spoken language to a regularized\ud
written code, composed largely in the Roman alphabet. The popularity and rampant\ud
censorship of online social media in the Middle East, along with a relative lack of\ud
research on languages other than English in text and online communication, makes\ud
Arabic dialect in mobile communications a timely topic of study.\ud
After a brief overview of previous literature on the orthography of English and\ud
other languages in EMC, I use a small corpus of data collected in the summer of 2010\ud
from students at the University of Aleppo in Aleppo, Syria, as well as from online\ud
sources. This data is supplemented by the work of linguists who have investigated EMC\ud
in other parts of the Arabic speaking word. This research covers Arabic EMC composed\ud
in both the Arabic and Roman alphabets. I focus primarily on Levantine Arabic, but use\ud
other varieties such as Algerian and Gulf Arabic for comparison and elaboration. Along\ud
with studies conducted in Jordan, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, I\ud
present a portrait of an evolving, user-generated way of transcribing Arabic using the\ud
Roman alphabet. In this “Romanized” orthography, users spell out Arabic sounds\ud
phonologically in a specialized code of Roman characters and use numeric substitutions\ud
for certain Arabic sounds. This multi-dialectal approach to Romanized Arabic EMC\ud
reveals that it has features of both phonetic transcription and transliteration, and follows\ud
certain trends in vowel deletion and change. Lastly, I consider the particularities of\ud
Arabic language EMC in the “speech versus language” detbate that pervades the study of\ud
language in mobile communications. Note: Because of their desire for anonymity, the two\ud
University of Aleppo students interviewed for this paper have had their names omitted
To "Err" is Human: The Nature of Phonological "Errors" in Language Development
No full textIn children, two types of phonological U errors" may occur: slips of the tongue\ud
and pathological speech. A slip of the tongue is considered a normal, nonsystematic\ud
U error", whereas a series of consistent speech U errors" is labeled as a\ud
speech pathology. Both types of U errors" follow phonotactic constraints defined\ud
by the target grammar, and may result in substitutions and omissions of sounds\ud
in conversation. They differ traditionally in two key ways: (1) while slips are\ud
unique utterances that generally occur only once, the disfluencies are consistent\ud
in a pathology, and (2) the speaker is able to notice and correct their error when\ud
they make a slip, but it is not the case in a speech pathology. Relevant research to\ud
both types of U errors" will be presented for comparison purposes, and theoretical\ud
explanations will be offered. I will propose that a deficit in self-monitoring exists\ud
in those with disordered phonology, in order to explain why U errors" repeat
Secrets of Tagalog Headlines Revealed!: An examination of Tagalog headline grammar
No full text"Award to Artist Who Gives Slums a Human Face" -- Ifwe see that on a newspaper, we understand\ud
it despite the fact that it's not a grammatically correct phrase: it's missing articles and verbs,\ud
but we know how to read headlinese. We "speak" it. Armed with our native speaker knowledge\ud
of English headlinese, could we "speak" a different language's headlinese? Or would it be utterly\ud
foreign? Are there different rules to every kind ofheadlinese? This thesis investigates this question\ud
by identifying and describing certain features of the headlinese of Tagalog. I then compare\ud
Tagalog headlinese to that of English. I found that English and Tagalog share certain features,\ud
such as many kinds of ellipsis, or omissions, but differ when it comes to other features, like sentence\ud
inversion and tense usage. Tagalog seems to have a unique headline grammar, most notably\ud
because of the complete syntactic shuffle seen in its headlinese: Tagalog, a vas language,\ud
has headlines that almost always appeared in sva form, much like headlines in English
A Bare Grammar for Japanese
No full textIn this thesis we apply the work of Edward Keenan and Edward Stabler in Bare\ud
Grammar to "Jpnn, a bare grammar for a small fragment of Japanese, to show that the\ud
framework constructed in this monograph, while in need of adjustment and\ud
augmentation to handle the linguistic features of the language, is overall an appropriate\ud
model. A "bare grammar" is a generative framework for syntax, motivated by a desire\ud
for the greatest generality possible in this type of theory. To achieve this generality the\ud
authors use linguistic universals, assuming as little as possible about common crosslinguistic\ud
structure. As Keenan and Stabler point out in their introduction, many\ud
alternative theories proposed prior to Bare Grammar rely upon properties that are\ud
assumed by an individual theory to be general, but are in fact only descriptive of the\ud
language(s) that theory was founded on. (An example is the assumption that\ud
grammatical, or syntactic, categories are uniform across alJJanguages, or that the rules\ud
for generating complex expressions are uniform across all languages.)\ud
In extending the Bare Grammar framework, we first outline the model and the\ud
concept of linguistic universals as given by Keenan and Stabler. Following this, we\ud
discuss the features of Japanese to be modeled in the representative fragment Jpn,\ud
define this fragment, and analyze how well a bare grammar deals with its peculiarities.\ud
We conclude that Bare Grammar requires some change, pointing out areas for\ud
improvement by dismvering features not wholly accounted for
Struggling Languages in a Wired World: How Best to Use the Internet in Language Revitalization
No full textIn this paper, I will examine two such projects, First Voices and Ojibwe.net, and\ud
the ways in which they have been successful. In so doing, I 'will attempt to show\ud
what areas of a language revitalization effort would, in general, be well served by\ud
the use of a website-based project, and what sorts of things the Internet is not well\ud
suited for in this regard
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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