“She Didn't Say Nothing About That”. Gender Difference and Similarities in the Use of Negative Concord for the Regional Dialects of England in the BNC
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Conservative and Innovative Behaviour by Female Speakers in a Multilingual Micronesian Society*
Conservative and innovative behaviour by female speakers in a multilingual Micronesian society* Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain Department of Language and Linguistics University of Essex Wivenhoe Park Colchester CO4 3SQ U.K. [email protected] [email protected] Abstract The focus of this article is the supposed ‘Gender Paradox’, proposed by Labov (1990, 2001), that women are both sometimes conservative and sometimes innovative in terms of linguistic variation and change. Here we explore the paradox from two perspectives: we both investigate its applicability to multilingual as opposed to multidialectal communities as well as question whether the paradox is methodological or real. Although much sociolinguistic research on the paradox has been on macro studies of men vs. women in monolingual multidialectal communities, this paper presents quantitative analyses supplemented by in-depth ethnographic observation and data collection in communities of practice in a multilingual Japanese-Palauan community of the Western Pacific. What is more, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the ‘conservatism’ and ‘innovation’ of women in the community under scrutiny is represented by the use of the very same language –Japanese. For older Japanese Palauan women, the greater use of Japanese represents adherence to their heritage language. Among younger Japanese-Palauan women (most of whom are bilingual in Palauan and English), however, the use of Japanese represents a change towards a language highly valued in the economy as essential for the promotion -
PERSONALITY, GENDER, and the NORTHERN CITIES SHIFT By
PERSONALITY, GENDER, AND THE NORTHERN CITIES SHIFT By Steve Leonard Johnson III A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Linguistics 2012 ABSTRACT PERSONALITY, GENDER, AND THE NORTHERN CITIES SHIFT By Steve Leonard Johnson III Studies of sound changes in sociolinguistics have shown a consistent trend that women tend to be linguistically innovative and lead most of the major sound changes. Additionally, women have been shown to use more standard variants than men in stable sociolinguistic variables, giving rise to the “gender paradox” where women are both linguistically conservative and innovative. Studies that examine variation within sex groups unravel this paradox by showing that different women behave differently— some being conservative language users while others are innovative. Traditional methods that aim to examine the role of gender in ongoing sociolinguistic change often use sex as a binary variable instead of socially defined degrees of masculinity and femininity. These methods group all women, innovative and conservative, into one sex-based group, and the distinction between those who lead the change and lag behind is lost. Additionally, qualitative studies of leaders of linguistic change have shown similarities in leaders, but there are no quantitative methods to predict leaders of change. This dissertation goes beyond traditional studies of gender variation to create a quantitative methodology to examine leaders in linguistic changes and explain gender- based patterns of linguistic behavior. A representative set of vowel tokens from speakers from Southeastern Michigan was measured and normalized for each subject, and these data were used in multiple regression analyses to identify how speakers pattern in respect to the Northern Cities Shift (NCS), a female-led sound change in the vowel system of speakers from urban Great Lakes areas, and possible factors affecting changes. -
Parnell-Mooney, James (2019) Tran/S/Gender: Assessing the Effects of the Social Construction of Gender on Speech: a Focus on Transgender /S/ Realisations
Parnell-Mooney, James (2019) Tran/s/gender: assessing the effects of the social construction of gender on speech: a focus on transgender /s/ realisations. MPhil(R) thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/41151/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Tran/s/gender Assessing the effects of the social construction of gender on speech: A focus on transgender /s/ realisations James Parnell-Mooney Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of MPhil English Language & Linguistics School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow Abstract Assessing the effects of the social construct of gender on speech: A focus on Scottish transgender /s/ realisations The purpose of this study is to gauge how much one’s speech is conditioned by their gender identity rather than by their sex. Many features of speech have been shown to vary depending on speaker sex and gender such as pitch, lexis, syntax and volume. On a more fine-grained level, fricatives have been shown to index speaker sex and this was initially attributed to biological sex differences; ‘larger’ males would have a physically larger vocal tract and thus have lower peak frequencies. -
A Syntactic Analysis of Negation in Latin: Negated Quantifier Phrases
A Syntactic Analysis of Negation in Latin: Negated Quantifier Phrases Maria C Tierney April 2018 New York University Department of Linguistics Senior Honors Thesis Advisor: Professor Chris Collins Second Reader: Professor Richard Kayne Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to give innumerable thanks to my advisor and mentor Professor Chris Collins, without whom this thesis would not have been possible. His endless support, assistance, and enthusiasm allowed me to attempt this project and complete it to my best abilities. All of its failings are my own; however, its successes would not have been possible without the guidance and support of Professor Collins. I could not have wished or hoped for a better advisor. Next, I would like to thank the other professors and mentors in New York University’s Department of Linguistics who have helped me reach this point in my academic career. In particular, I would like to thank Richard Kayne, an inspiring scholar and professor who was kind enough to offer me his feedback and encouragement. I would also like to thank Hadas Kotek and Stephanie Harves for their support and guidance, as well as Maria Kouneli, who was an encouraging TA in my very first syntax class. The scholars of syntax in the NYU Department of Linguistics are an amazing, world-class group of individuals, and I feel immeasurably lucky to have had the opportunity to work among them. Outside of the realm of syntax, countless other professors and scholars both inside and outside the NYU Department of Linguistics have offered me their support and guidance. -
ED311449.Pdf
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 311 449 CS 212 093 AUTHOR Baron, Dennis TITLE Declining Grammar--and Other Essays on the English Vocabulary. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, Ill. REPORT NO ISBN-0-8141-1073-8 PUB DATE 89 NOTE :)31p. AVAILABLE FROM National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 Kenyon Rd., Urbana, IL 61801 (Stock No. 10738-3020; $9.95 member, $12.95 nonmember). PUB TYPE Books (010) -- Viewpoints (120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC10 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *English; Gr&mmar; Higher Education; *Language Attitudes; *Language Usage; *Lexicology; Linguistics; *Semantics; *Vocabulary IDENTIFIERS Words ABSTRACT This book contains 25 essays about English words, and how they are defined, valued, and discussed. The book is divided into four sections. The first section, "Language Lore," examines some of the myths and misconceptions that affect attitudes toward language--and towards English in particular. The second section, "Language Usage," examines some specific questions of meaning and usage. Section 3, "Language Trends," examines some controversial r trends in English vocabulary, and some developments too new to have received comment before. The fourth section, "Language Politics," treats several aspects of linguistic politics, from special attempts to deal with the ethnic, religious, or sex-specific elements of vocabulary to the broader issues of language both as a reflection of the public consciousness and the U.S. Constitution and as a refuge for the most private forms of expression. (MS) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY J. Maxwell TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." U S. -
Non-Standard English and Dialect Forms
Non-standard English and dialect forms Teaching notes These notes and answers support the student activities that follow on pp.5-7. Task one: Standard and non-standard sentences All the sentences are examples of non-standard English, and many feature regional dialect forms. Sentence Notes 1 We were stood at the Although this is primarily a regional dialect form common to bus stop for ages. northern England and the Midlands, it is becoming more frequent across the UK. At times this and its equivalent with the verb ‘sit’ e.g. ‘They are sat’ can be heard in places where Standard English might be expected (BBC News on TV/radio for example). A quick online search shows that many people are discussing it (even on Mumsnet), which suggests this is a dialect feature that is spreading. 2 I didn’t do nothing. An example of a double negative, a common feature of a range of regional dialects. 3 They got off of the This might be regarded as an example of language change train at the wrong rather than a distinctive regional dialect feature. Speakers station. seem to consider that the first ‘off’ is part of the verb phrase, and as a result an extra preposition is needed. 4 There are less Again, this is an example of language change in action – opportunities now for think of supermarket checkout signs for ‘10 items or less’. young people than in The distinction between countable and uncountable nouns the previous decade. appears to be changing, with the comparative ‘fewer’ (used for countable nouns) falling out of use. -
Le Site Américain Reddit Comme Espace De Variation De L'anglais
lol thats how reddit talks;) : le site américain Reddit comme espace de variation de l’anglais : étude de corpus intersectionnelle et quantitative d’usages non standard, au prisme du genre, de l’âge et de l’ethnicité Marie Flesch To cite this version: Marie Flesch. lol thats how reddit talks;) : le site américain Reddit comme espace de variation de l’anglais : étude de corpus intersectionnelle et quantitative d’usages non standard, au prisme du genre, de l’âge et de l’ethnicité. Linguistique. Université de Lorraine, 2020. Français. NNT : 2020LORR0192. tel-03129082 HAL Id: tel-03129082 https://hal.univ-lorraine.fr/tel-03129082 Submitted on 2 Feb 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. AVERTISSEMENT Ce document est le fruit d'un long travail approuvé par le jury de soutenance et mis à disposition de l'ensemble de la communauté universitaire élargie. Il est soumis à la propriété intellectuelle de l'auteur. Ceci implique une obligation de citation et de référencement lors de l’utilisation de ce document. D'autre part, toute contrefaçon, plagiat, reproduction illicite encourt une poursuite pénale. Contact : [email protected] LIENS Code de la Propriété Intellectuelle. -
Liminality As a Lens on Social Meaning: a Cross-Variable Study of Gender in New Zealand English
Liminality as a lens on social meaning: A cross-variable study of gender in New Zealand English Evan Hazenberg A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Abstract The variationist sociolinguistic enterprise has been successful in developing models of structural (i.e., language-internal) drivers of variation and change, but one of the barriers preventing the development of a parallel model accounting for social drivers is the difficulty in operationalising salience. Using a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews collected in Auckland, New Zealand between 2013 and 2015, this project examines the relationship between language variation and gendered identity, and proposes an analytical approach of liminality – of examining the linguistic practices of people who have crossed a culturally-reified category boundary – as a possible solution to the problem of identifying socially salient variables. The participants in this study are straight, queer, and transsexual native speakers of New Zealand English (NZE), representing two age groups that straddle the period of social change in the 1980s that saw a destabilisation of traditional gender roles in New Zealand. Variation in three linguistic systems is examined: adjectival modifiers (intensifiers and moderators), sibilants (/s/, /z/ and /ʃ/), and the vowels of NZE. The project uses established variationist and sociophonetic methodologies, as well as introducing a new metric for making comparisons across the vowel space as a whole. The findings show that speakers are able to encode their gendered identity across multiple variables, and that subtle linguistic signals can be used to affiliate with (or distance from) particular groups. -
A Bi-Clausal Account of English 'To'-Modal Auxiliary Verbs
A Bi-clausal Account of English ‘to’-Modal Auxiliary Verbs Sungshim Hong Chungnam National University Sungshim Hong. 2014. A Bi-clausal Account of English ‘to’-Modal Auxiliary Verbs. Language and Information 18.1 , 33–52. This paper pro- poses a unified structural account of some instances of the English Modals and Semi-auxiliaries. The classification and the syntactic/structural description of the English Modal auxiliary verbs and verb-related elements have long been the center for many proposals in the history of generative syntax. According to van Gelderen (1993) and Lightfoot (2002), it was sometime around 1380 that the Tense-node (T) appeared in the phrasal structures of the English language, and the T-node is under which the English Modal auxiliaries occupy. Closely related is the existing evidence that English Modals were used as main verbs up to the early sixteenth century (Lightfoot 1991, Han 2000). This paper argues for a bi-clausal approach to English Modal auxiliaries with the infinitival par- ticle ‘to’ such as ‘ought to’ ‘used to’ and ‘dare (to)’ ‘need (to)’, etc. and Semi- auxiliaries including ‘be to’ and ‘have to’. More specifically, ‘ought’ in ‘ought to’ constructions, for instance, undergoes V-to-T movement within the matrix clause, just like ‘HAVEAux’ and all instances of ‘BE’, whereas ‘to’ occupies the T position of the embedded complement clause. By proposing the bi-clausal account, Radford’s (2004, 2009) problems can be solved. Further, the historical motivation for the account takes a stance along with Norde (2009) and Brin- ton & Traugott (2005) in that Radford’s (2004, 2009) syncretization of the two positions of the infinitival particle ‘to’ is no di↵erent from the ‘boundary loss’ in the process of Grammariticalization. -
Accent Levelling in the Regional French of Alsace Submitted By
1 Accent Levelling in the Regional French of Alsace Submitted by Katharine Joanna Pipe, to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French, April 2014 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. (Signature) ……………………………………………………………………………… 2 Abstract The aim of this study is to investigate the process of accent levelling in the Regional French of Alsace and its relationship with the social variables of age, gender, social class, urban or rural origin of speakers and feelings of regional attachment. Accent levelling, which can be defined as the process of speakers abandoning local phonological forms in favour of supralocal variants, has been the focus of much recent sociolinguistic research on British English, French and other languages. Since knowledge of Alsatian (a Germanic language spoken in Alsace) is decreasing, it is possible that the resulting lack of interference between Alsatian and French is leading to levelling of the traditional accent features of Alsatian Regional French. In order to provide data for this research project, sociolinguistic interviews were conducted and written questionnaires used in Strasbourg and in the village of Helsheim (a fictional name used for reasons of confidentiality) with 56 informants. The data obtained were then subjected to quantitative analysis with regard to the linguistic variables of aspirate h (which can be realised as a supralocal zero variant or as a regional [h] variant) and the devoicing of canonically voiced plosives and fricatives (for example, sage pronounced [saʃ]). -
Cognitive Analysis of Double Negation
ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 1, No. 10, pp. 1442-1445, October 2011 © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.1.10.1442-1445 A Constructive Study of English and Chinese Double Negation Fushan Sun Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China Email: [email protected] Abstract—As a universally used linguistic structure, double negation has long attracted the attention of scholars in Chinese and foreign countries. But so far the research of double negation is limited to the study and analysis of negative words, negative markers and the surface structure of double negation, and is also restricted to one particular language. In this essay, based on contrastive linguistics and cognitive linguistics, I launch a comparison between English double negation and its Chinese counterpart from the cognitive perspective to identify similarities and differences between them, and furthermore I also attempt to elaborate the causes and motivations for its meaning. Index Terms—double negation, cognitive, iconicity, M—Principle What is the basis of the sense of double negation? Many linguists are interested in and concentrate on this issue. Palmer and Otto Jespersen are the most typical representatives of these scholars. Palmer said that two negative elements cancel each other to form a positive sense in a sentence. Otto Jespersen (1939) explains "All the languages seem to have a common law, that is, two negative makes a positive". In fact, this theoretical basis used the principle of logic that "two noes mean a yes". As to the issue why double negation can strengthen the. -
On the Interpretation of Negation in Mandarin Chinese Feifei Li
ADVERTIMENT. Lʼaccés als continguts dʼaquesta tesi queda condicionat a lʼacceptació de les condicions dʼús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons: http://cat.creativecommons.org/?page_id=184 ADVERTENCIA. El acceso a los contenidos de esta tesis queda condicionado a la aceptación de las condiciones de uso establecidas por la siguiente licencia Creative Commons: http://es.creativecommons.org/blog/licencias/ WARNING. The access to the contents of this doctoral thesis it is limited to the acceptance of the use conditions set by the following Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en On the interpretation of negation in Mandarin Chinese Feifei Li Ph.D. Dissertation Ph.D. program in Cognitive Science and Langauge Supervisor: M.Teresa Espinal Centre de Lingüística Teòrica Departament de Filologia Catalana Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres 2019 Table of contents Table of contents ........................................................................................................... i Abstract ........................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ............................................................................................................... ix List of Figures ............................................................................................................... x Abbreviations